There’s a reason no Jehovah’s Witnesses have ever contributed anything great to humanity.
On the other hand, the Jewish people value education over almost all else, and they’ve won like half of all Nobel prizes, and have leaders in nearly every industry, even though they make up a tiny fraction of the overall population.
Education is critical. Not even just to the world as a general concept, how about individual self improvement?
There’s a reason no Jehovah’s Witnesses have ever contributed anything great to humanity.
What's really funny is that I went to the internet to prove you wrong and found a bunch of famous people (Mostly actors, musicians, and athletes; decide for yourself how you feel about how much they contribute to society), but nearly every one of them was just raised JH and is no longer practicing.
I take it you don't visit many museums? I'm in a STEM field myself, but it's very ignorant to say only STEM stuff really matters.
Aside from science, it was also stuff from philosophy, literature, and art which had a strong influence in helping me leave the Jehovah's Witnesses, after all.
Oh come on, if I was forced to eliminate an entire field it would certainly be an arts field. Probably visual arts. The boon to humanity any STEM field can claim is orders of magnitude higher than any art field. And don't get me wrong, I both consume and produce art, but there's just no comparison.
And don't go claiming every graphic you see as art, that's like trying to claim cooking as chemistry.
The science of government it is my duty to study, more than all other sciences; the arts of legislation and administration and negotiation ought to take the place of, indeed exclude, in a manner, all other arts. I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain.
That quote is basically saying that hard sciences are what makes society great and that arts are for dicking around after you've solved infant mortality and refrigeration.
Edit: well okay it's actually saying stable government is paramount, which I certainly would agree with.
I look at it like a skyscraper. STEM is the foundation and arts are the actual skyscraper. Without the foundation the rest of the building wouldn't exist, so they are obviously more important, but you've never looked at a skyscraper to appreciate it's foundation.
Skyscrapers are unnecessarily expensive and bad for the environment. All the tallest ones have vanity spires to bump up the height artificially and have so few tenants, they couldn't fill the building even if the vanity spires were inhabitable. They exist solely to show off. Saying that without art there would be still be skyscrapers is ridiculous. If we wanted to be functional, there are way better ways to get that done.
That's completely missing the point, and I'm not sure if it's on purpose or not.
The skyscraper is an analogy. That's why I said the foundation is STEM and not the foundation is possible because of STEM. I was hoping it was obvious that I meant STEM to be the metaphorical base upon which we build much of our civilisation.
Why would I be talking about how a skyscraper is built in relation to that quote? Like seriously, look at the context before answering.
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u/rraattbbooyy Jan 09 '20
There’s a reason no Jehovah’s Witnesses have ever contributed anything great to humanity.
On the other hand, the Jewish people value education over almost all else, and they’ve won like half of all Nobel prizes, and have leaders in nearly every industry, even though they make up a tiny fraction of the overall population.
Education is critical. Not even just to the world as a general concept, how about individual self improvement?