HOME | POLITICS | SPORTS | LIFE | SCI/TECH | OPEDS | HELPFUL TIPS
|
Feb. 23, 2005 Can Christians be taught to do mathematics? The answer is, "Yes and no." Yes, undoubtedly there have been a few Christians who excelled in mathematics, at least in bygone centuries, when the Papacy exerted tremendous pressure to conform. And no, most Christians don't know the first thing about mathematics. At least, this generalization is true on the streets of America, among whose multitudes I've had the misfortune to spend most of my life. There, one meets countless Christians, always ready to preach, argue and proselytize. They always know everything. They always have all the answers. You cannot discuss, contradict or doubt one word they say. They always have the Bible ready to quote. They always have the correct interpretation of the Bible. But when it comes to the fifth-grade problem of converting a simple fraction to a decimal or a percentage, most Christians are at a loss, even if they have high-school or college diplomas. When it comes time to file a tax return, most Christians start moaning and groaning, or run for help. When you speak of beginning algebra or geometry, they're really bewildered. When you get into calculus, differential equations and other such subjects, you find hardly any Christians in the know. And forget about topology, tensor analysis, complex analysis and integral equations. I hate to sound as though I'm making race-based or faith-based discriminations, but I've noticed that in the realm of higher mathematics, one sees Jewish names in numbers far beyond what would be supposed to be the case in consideration of their proportion of the US population, which is about 2.5%. But most of the Jews who are good mathematicians are not of the religious type. These are usually secular Jews engaged in research or business. Don't think I'm saying this because I'm Jewish or because I'm enamored of Jews. Quite the contrary, their pervasive influence in government and the media annoys me. But you have to give them credit for having good mathematical minds. This Jewish preeminence applies not only to mathematics. It applies to other branches of science too, especially physics and chemistry. If you like to read books on thermodynamics, acoustics, mechanics, optics and the like, you'll read quite a few books written by Jews or people with Jewish-sounding names anyway. Of course, there are many books written by people with seemingly Gentile names, but from my own personal experience, I'd say that the Gentiles with the best minds are generally secularly- oriented. They may or may not come right out and own to atheism or agnosticism, but you have to realize that people in business are loth to make any unnecessary or controversial statements tending to lead to antipathies among clients and colleagues. Their proficiency at mathematics does extend to counting dollars in their billfolds. All of this accords with what I wrote in another article called, "IQ Tests Show Christians Intellectually Inferior to Atheists." There, I noted that Scientific American had found in polls that just 40% of scientists holding no more than the degree of BS believed in God, while only 10% of those regarded as eminent believed in God. This leads to an aphorism I'd like to go on record for originating: You can lead a Christian to mathematics but you can't make him learn. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
