Social & Cultural Anthropology

The book I read to research this post was Social & Cultural Anthropology A Very Short Introduction by John Monaghan which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. This book looks at various cultures and contrasts them and looks at what they have in common. In particular they try to look at a culture for what it is and not pass judgement on whether it’s better or worse than another. In a lot of cultures we have seen a kind of westernisation as they have often converted to either islam or christianity and members have tried to get jobs and get modern luxuries. In many places we have seen the laying on of electricity and water supplies etc. One group in particular they study is a group in Indonesia who are quite close knit and have refused to be inducted into this westernisation mostly. They don’t have utilities like electricity and stick with their religion and laws. They live in teak houses on stilts in a remote part of Bali & view our culture with great suspicion. Some members have converted to christianity and islam and got jobs but are seen as outcasts. They have their own laws and traditions and their own kind of medicine. The witch doctors sort a lot of their problems out. There was one case where one man threatened a lady because she was betrothed to someone else and she falsely accused him of hitting her and although everyone knew he hadn’t he was fined and forced to beg her forgiveness to keep with tradition. He had broken their etiquette in a very serious way. In many cultures there has also been problems with western diseases and even enslavement as they have been integrated with the west as well.

Science & Religion

The book I read to research this post was Science and Religion A Very Short Introduction by Thomas Dixon which is an excellent book which I bought from kindle. This book is about how science relates to religion on things like the creation of the world and evolution etc. Many books on this subject are either pro science or pro religion but this book takes the middle road and aims to help you make an informed choice. Interestingly in the renaissance much scientific experimentation was funded by the catholic church. Galileo despite disagreeing with the church because he found out that the earth goes around the sun where as the church thought the earth was the centre of the universe and everything went around it, he was a religious man. He never set out to have a battle with the church. It just happened to be at the time of the 30 years war when protestants were fighting catholics and the church was in a bit of trouble which led him to over react. Galileo had a relatively powerful telescope which enabled him to discover many things including that venus waxed and waned like the moon which meant it was reflecting sunlight and went around the sun. The pope argued that god had made it do that as a test and in reality it went around the earth. Galileo wrote a book which among other things ridiculed that argument and the pope although he had been a fan of Galileo up till that point and had let him carry on working then took offence.

Another item in this book is Intelligent Design where the argument put forward is we are very complex as is a lot of things in the universe hence something of extremely high intelligence must have made it. If for example you look it is very complex so you can tell a high intelligence created it. I personally think it is a good point.  In the book Thomas says it needs to be studied before we can take it as fact. When the Big Bang happened in the creation of the universe if that had been a little bigger or a little smaller no planets or stars would have been created. Equally conditions on the earth wouldn’t have to change much for us to be wiped out. This is a very interesting book.