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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 1, 1958
Why Do We Believe?
Sunday we celebrate the greatest day in the year, the day which commemorates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is a time for great happiness and rejoicing.
The weekend before Easter has been historically a time for the examination of ourselves, of our relationship to others and, most important, of our relationship to The Supreme Being, whatever we may call Him.
Many of us, since our enrolment in the University, have become skeptical of the existence of a God and of the necessity for religious activity.
Much of our skepticism has been prompted by a culture which is being dominated increasingly by science. This science, unfortunately, is Baconian, rather than Platonic, in orientation. Our associates and our superiors have required that we demand a material and practical proof of everything in our environment. Things of the mind have become unimportant and many times are even ridiculed.
Matters of religion are necessarily things of
the mind. Although we may apply Baconian concepts to religion, it is heresy to do so. In considering the question of whether there is a God or not we must throw away our established criteria for the proof of existence, because they cannot prove satisfactorily the existence of a God.
This weekend would be a good time to try substituting a Platonic approach for a Baconian approach to matters of religion. Instead of stressing how a God rules the universe, we might attempt to analyze why we can believe readily in the existence of a God.
Unless we settle, in our own minds, our relationship with The Supreme Being, any examination of ourselves and of our relationship with others will have no meaning and therefore our lives will have no meaning.
We owe it to ourselves to regain our former childlike belief in a God. Why not begin the task today? Then this Easter really will be a time for happiness and rejoicing.
Soviet Education May Cause Trouble
—Carol Stilwell
The average 12th grade Russian student has a better scientific education than most American college graduates. That's the observation of world traveler John Gunther, who recently returned from a tour of Russia.
Soviet emphasis on science demands grueling effort from pupils, Gunther says in his new book, "Inside Russia Today." Every student preparing for college must take ten years of math, four of chemistry, five of physics and six of biology.
The Soviet child attends school 213 days a year, as against 180 in the United States. Homework assignments requiring from four to six hours work daily are not uncommon.
Being accepted into college is probably the most important single event in a Soviet citizen's life. Gunther feels. The university graduate inevitably wins honor and financial rewards—often much sooner than our own graduates. All that the non-graduate can hope for is a manual or clerical job on a farm or factory.
Moscow University, completed in 1953, is the city's proudest building, Gunther writes. It is, except for the Eiffel Tower, the tallest structure in Europe. It cost $750 million, was greater than the total combined endowments of Harvard, Yale and Princeton.
University standards are severe, but there are many inducements for the student. He is paid by the state to go to college and can earn substantial bonuses if his work is considered above par. In addition, he is exempted from military service.
Careful planning has paid off for the Soviet government, Gunther writes. Of all students enrolled in Russian colleges, 65 per cent aim for science degrees, as against only 10 per cent in the United States.
But impressive as it is, the Soviet educational system has its drawbacks, Gunther reports. Great gaps exist in the knowledge of even the best educated. "The Russians are the most ignorant people in the world about affairs outside their own country," he writes.
He detects a possibility that, in its eagerness to educate the great mass of its citizens, the Soviet government may eventually loosen or change its structure.
"Once a class is created which is taught to think, particularly in scientific terms," he writes, "it will sooner or later begin to think for itself in other fields."
She Uses Process Of Elimination
MEMPHIS, Tenn.—Mrs. Roy Vowell disclosed the method she used in solving tricky crossword-type contest puzzles for a $400 prize.
—Reader's Digest
hard one. I just ask my husband what he thinks.
"I do all the words I think are easy," she said. "When I get to a
"Then, whatever word he chooses,
I use the other one."
The highest point in Kansas is in Wallace County. It is 4,135 feet.
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS By Dick Bibler
"I ENJOY A CLASS MORE WHERE TH' PROF HAS A SENSE OF HUMOR."
Letters
Answer Please
Editor:
As we understand it, a person must obtain at least 250 names on a petition before filing for said office. After going through this trouble-some procedure, why would a person withdraw from the election?
In addition to this there have been many rumors concerning pressure politics. How about some clarification on this matter? The undersigned, as students interested in better government on the campus at the University of Kansas, consider it extremely urgent that this matter be resolved
Prior to the recent election Mary Olson, who had been a candidate for A.S.C. vice-president, requested that her name be stricken from the ballot.
John E. Blake
Daily Hansan
John E. Blake
Kansas City, 1st year law
Richard L. Winter
Buhler senior
William Sarantakos
Newburyport, Mass. junior
University of Kansas student newspaper
1904.
triequality 1908, daily jam. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIkling 3-2700
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Associated Collegiate Press. Represented by National Advertising Service, 420 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. News service: United Press. Mail subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon during the University year except holiday holidays, and examination periods. Enforced as second-class matter Sept. 17, 1910 at Lawrence, Kan, post office under act of March 3, 1879.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Dick Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Del Haley Editorial Editor
Quotes From The News
HAVANA — Cuban Rebel Leader Fidel Castro, in predicting the fall by April 15 of President Fulgencio Batista's government:
"The revolution is at hand and the people of Cuba are willing to make any sacrifice to rid themselves of this tyrant they have been saddled with for so many years."
PARIS — Choreographer Serge Lifar, 52, after being pinked in a duel with the Marquis De Cuevas, 72, an old friend;
"I love the marquis, although I did not expect him to be so fast and full of youth."
The marquis:
"I am so sad. It is just like I had injured my child."
A FRAT TO REMEMBER
Every year, as we all know, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Collegiate Fraternities awards a highly coveted prize to the fraternity house which, in its judgment, has done the most to promote and enhance the fraternity way of life. The prize this year—eight hundred pounds of putty—goes to the Alpha Hernia chapter of the South Dakota College of Dentistry and Renaissance Art.
The award this year is exceptionally richly deserved, for the Alpha Hernia house is the very model of all a fraternity should be. It is, first of all, a most attractive house physically. The outside walls are tastefully covered with sequins. Running along the upper story is a widow's walk, with a widow stationed every three feet. Moored to the chinneypot is the Graf Zeppelin.
...a widows walk, with a widow gladiated every three feet ...
Indoors the house gives an impression of simple, casual charm. The chapter room is furnished in homey maple and chintz, with a dash of verve provided by a carp pool three hundred feet in diameter. A waterspout rises from the center of the pool with the housemother bouncing on the top.
Members' rooms are gracious and airy and are provided with beds which fold into the wall and are never seen again. Each room also has a desk, a comfortable chair, a good reading lamp, and a catapult for skeet-shooting. Kidney-shaped desks are available for kidney-shaped members.
Perhaps the most fetching feature of the house are the packs of Marlboros stacked in heaps wherever one goes. If one wishes to enjoy a fine filtered cigarette in any room of the house, all one need do is reach out one's hand in any direction and pick up a Marlboro. Then one rubs pledges together, lights one's Marlboro, and puffs with sweet content the tastiest smoke the mind of man has yet devised.
The decor, the grace, the Marlboros, all combine to make Alpha Hernia a real gasser of a fraternity. But a fraternity is more than things; it is also people. And it is in the people department that Alpha Hernia really shines.
Alpha Hernia has among its members the biggest BMOCs on the entire campus of the South Dakota College of Dentistry and Renaissance Art. There is, for instance, William Makepeace Sigafos, charcoal and bun chairman of the annual Stamp Club outing. Then there is Dun Rovin, winner of last year's All-South Dakota State Monoply Championship, 135 Pound Class. Then there is Rock Schwartz, who can sleep standing up. Then there is Tremblant Placebo, who can crack pecans in his armpits. Then there is Ralph Tungsten, who went bald at eight.
But why go on? One can see what a splendid bunch of chaps there is in Alpha Hernia, and when one sees them at the house in the cool of the evening, all busy with their tasks—some picking locks, some playing Jacks-or-Better, some clipping Playboy—one's heart fills up and one's eyes grow misty, and one cannot but give three cheers and a tiger for Alpha Hernia, fraternity of the year!
$ \textcircled{c} $ 1958 Max Shulman
And, if you don't mind, a rousing huzzah for Marlboro, cigarette of the year, whose makers take pleasure in picking up the tab for this column.