Bones to Pick - The Fossil Chronicles - page 193

ity to conceive of God.” 32 According to Maser and Gallup's fascinating
theory, religion, the great comforter, emerged as a means to cope with
the existential terror wrought by our big-brained self-awareness.
And where are scientists, including the subset that includes paleo-
anthropologists (biologists), in all of this? A 2009 survey conducted by
the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Pew
Research Center found that 33 percent of scientists believe in a personal
God. 33 However, this estimate may be too imprecise and perhaps too high.
An earlier study that polled members of the elite United States National
Academy of Sciences (NAS) suggested that the figure is only 7 percent for
“greater” scientists. 34 Further, only 7.9 percent of the polled NAS mem-
bers believe in human immortality. Interestingly, the survey found the
highest percentage of NAS believers among mathematicians (14.3 percent
believe in God, 15.0 percent in immortality) and the lowest among the
biological scientists (5.5 percent believe in God, 7.1 percent in immortal-
ity). To some, these results indicate that dedicated scientists tend to be
doubters, because science and religion are inherently antithetical . 35
I wonder if another explanation might not be equally likely. Perhaps
science itself has become the “great comforter” for many dedicated
researchers, as well as a perceived way to achieve a type of immortal-
ity by contributing to the advancement of their fields. In other words,
science may sometimes take the place of religion. As we have seen, sci-
entists (especially paleoanthropologists) can be as emotionally invested
in their explanations of human origins as religious fundamentalists are
in theirs. After all, the topic literally entails matters of life and death.
Perhaps this accounts, if only in part, for the emotionally charged debates
that greeted historically important discoveries of fossil hominins. It is
important to emphasize, however, that religious fundamentalists are
unlikely to change their views about human origins in light of new
discoveries, but scientists eventually (if belatedly) do, as shown by the
example of Taung.
For as long as they have been around, fossil hominins have stoked
fervent debates about what schools should or should not teach students