A Religious University.

A religious university is an oxymoronic concept.

Internationally, we have, in addition to purely theological colleges dedicated to training priests pastors and the like, a series of "Religious" Universities. We have catholic, presbyterian, baptist, methodist institutions espousing aspects of christianity and there are presumably similar institutions for other religions and sects.

What is the point?

A university must if it is to achieve anything be a haven supporting untramelled structured inquiry into nature in all its stupefying variety. A religious university however is constrained in a myriad of ways large and small by a jacket of dogma. 

"Look into an issue by all means but never forget we already know the answer or at least enough of the surrounding circumstances as to enable us to circumscribe and restrain many of the conclusions you in your error may have come to."

Governments in secular states should stop any flow of funds to such institutions.

Style v Substance

Have you been to the movies lately? I thought not. Movies are a small industry now compared to TV and Computer games. A visit to the cinema helps tell why. The technical quality of movies is unsurpassed. Picture quality is crystal clear and sound quality while at times a bit OTT is sparkling and incisive. So far so good. So what is wrong?  The movies. Movie makers as artists not technicians seem incapable of delivering films which we might wish to see, films which entertain, films which reflect our lives, films which touch our innermost selves. Much of the output is technically superb and artistically awful.  Plenty of science and no art worth sitting through. And so it is across human endeavour. The scientific, technical achievements are massive - excellent hardware but poor content, poor software as it were. And so we "stay away", we lead lives which are unnecessarily impoverished for lack of excellent social or artistic insights. Books, music, films, theatre all suffer when their content is compared with the technical virtuosity that delivers the experience. Science works, sociology and the arts are struggling.

"Modern" Music

This term is used to describe recently composed orchestral or classical music. It has a very small following. For good reasons. It is painful to listen to and demonstrates the fatuity of its composition. All other forms of music have elements that a normal listener can relate to. Not this. It is cacophanous and in places boringly repetitive. The composers are lauded by a small coterie of enthusiasists but as ever in such situations we are left wondering if they wrote this because they could not write anything better. They can fend for themselves but we should spare a thought or the musicians forced into playing this junk. If we all stay away perhaps it will die the death. We can but hope.