Eternal value of education

Posted by on 7 November 2011 15:42 Leave a comment (4) Go to comments

One of my core beliefs is the eternal nature of the soul. When we die, we’ll take with us the knowledge gained in this life. The question, then, is what things are most important to learn in a short human life. Cecil O. Samuelson, a retired physician and current president of Brigham Young University, remarked once that he doubted there would be a need for rheumatologists in the next life. Will there be a need for computer programmers? I highly doubt it. But there will be a need for scientists of all disciplines to understand and teach principles of chemistry, biology, physics, and mathematics. While specifics of the engineering disciplines may not be necessary there, the general scientific knowledge they apply will be invaluable. Beside that, if nothing else, engineers help improve our world while we’re still here.

CS 404, education
  • Sam Curren

    I’m not so sure. Other scientific fields need raw materials to work with. In computer science, we come the closest to creating things out of pure ‘thought stuff’. In reality, we do need electrons, but that is about it. Perhaps the world was first designed spiritually as a class, and and then instantiated? There is also an xkcd about this. :)

  • http://globalconstant.scnay.com/ Steve Nay

    That’s a good point. I think of computer science as a mathematical field, but it often has more to do with language than anything else—expressing ideas concisely and accurately in a structured way. Spiritual creation is probably more akin to programming than I had first thought. :)

  • Christopher Kuchin

    One of the great things about Computer Science is that is constantly changing and moving forward and there is always something new to learn.

  • Wesley Holley

    I’ve thought about this quite a bit as well.  Most of our professions aren’t themselves going to be useful after this life.  We don’t need many doctors in heaven, but we probably do need those with deep understanding biology and chemistry.  We probably won’t need business-people but maybe we’ll need people with strong management skills, etc.