College is better than high school. Period. The only ones who may deny this either didn't go or enjoyed an extremely rare high school experience (or an exceptionally bad college one). One of my recent assignments allowed me to reflect on just how different the nature of the two establishments are. In high school, children - yes, i do mean children - are asked to spit back what was thrown at them or maybe tossed is a better description. One of the major reasons they (excuse me, we) remain children is because we were not asked to take something, whether it be literature, science, or math, and see it for what it is. We are told to see it as it is seen by our teacher and assess its contents and value only from their interpretation. We learn to take an outline of a paper and fill in the blanks with a topic we are assigned - anyone who's experienced the 5 paragraph essay will know exactly what I'm talking about. There are the rare, glorious high school teachers who rise above this standard but in my experience they are few and far between. I'm going far more into this then I intended; I merely meant to introduce my assignment, but I got a little carried away. In my English Composition class, we were asked to give our responses to any article that we had been assigned in the previous week.
The reason I wanted to share this was because the issue it addresses came up twice in my personal life this past week and I figured that meant something. It is discussing an article written by Charles Krauthammer in which he addresses religion's views of science. Take a look below if you're interested. I actually had fun writing this for class. Hopefully you'll enjoy reading it.
The How vs. The Why
Charles Krauthammer’s article “Let’s have No More Monkey Trials” is a very interesting insight into the possibilities of miscommunication. His understanding of a quote and the motives of a man, which he provides generously in the article, is completely false. The man whose words he is misinterpreting is Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna. Krauthammer quotes him several times and in my estimation is just missing the point. Granted, it is not always easy to understand someone by what they say, especially if you do not understand their intentions. I think the big misunderstanding is rather then “fill the gaps of science with divinity” as Krauthammer is suggesting Cardinal Schönborn is trying to do, Cardinal Schönborn is trying to explain that God’s plan is through what we label as science.
Krauthammer is correct when he says that science and faith are different and must be approached in different ways. Faith and religion is all about explaining the “Why” while science is all about explaining the “How.” He believes that they are both trying to explain the same thing. “There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton’s universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein’s revisions.” The church is not saying “Oh, we don’t know how this happened. It must be God.” They try to explain that his plan is far beyond what we can determine for ourselves. But isn’t it amazing how far we’ve come? Isn’t it wonderful how much of God and his nature we’ve been able to discover? You see, with faith, you don’t need to know all of the “How.” That’s what science is for.
As a side note - I wanted to give a shout out to all the teachers who give all they have to their students, and get so little in return. You are appreciated, even if you don't know it. I know that in my experience, a little piece of all of you will remain with someone forever.
