The Graph Of Knowledge vs. Ignorance

As I perused the sheets of my notebook tearing out pages, lots of pages, of incoherent thoughts, scribbling and half-baked ideas…I came across this musing.  

 

I have always considered myself a person of logic or at least tried to be. Everything should make sense.  There should be a formula or axiom explaining all phenomenon…like Newton’s law.  Proven axioms like the gravitational pull between two bodies. Rules like…for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  Formulas like Einstein’s law of relativity. 

 

I like math.  Math has a set of rules that always remain the same. Two plus two is always four, now and forever. Liberal arts, language and history are all far too nebulous.  In my little OCD brain I want everything to be two plus two, no fuzzy math for me, thank you.  I just can’t handle that abstract stuff.  I believe that on the imaginary chart of knowledge versus stupidity there is a point where the lines cross and knowledge is equal to a big zero. 

 

Where knowing everything equals knowing nothing.  Where wisdom and foolishness equal the same thing.  

 

Perhaps this is where faith and hope come in. Where there is no real understanding of the principles involved.  I like to think I understand stuff like how airplanes fly.  But do I?  What is all that mumbo-jumbo about air moving faster over the top of the wing creating a low-pressure zone that sucks the wings up into the sky?  Really? I can’t see the air molecules or what ever it is doing whatever…but I know it works.  Why?  Why should I believe that gibberish?  I have proven that it works… many times I have slipped the surly bonds of earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings.  I have no need of faith; I have the proof…even though I don’t understand how it works.        

 

I have decided to go with the belief in God.  I accept God and his Word…hook, line and sinker…all on blind faith...whether I understand or not.

 

Clearly, I don’t have to understand something for it to be true. 

 

  

High Flight   by  John Gillespie Magee Jr.

 

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.