You appear to understand neither the history of the university nor my own claims. I didn't claim to define the object of a university (though my last comment about Dante and Shakespeare may have implied it). The object of the university was not "to produce lawyers, judges [etc]" but doctors of law, masters of theology, teachers of philosophy. The university is the place for the advancement of all knowledge - the fact that men who are so well trained in the substance, theory and history of law (cf Jurisprudence) also tend to be excellent practitioners of the law is the happy accident.

Priests were not trained for priesthood at universities but seminaries (for the last five centuries, before then privately by the bishop or his canons at the cathedral chapter). The study of medicine grew naturally from the academic study of science (which is perhaps the faculty closest to its origins in philosophy). Government functionaries, until very recently, hardly studied at university at all - they were privately tutored in the classics, arithmetic etc being examined by this paper.

Perhaps I should just refer people to Bl John Henry Newman's "The Idea of a University", published just forty years before the exam we're discussing was given - already this wrong-headed idea of the university as an expensive finishing school had cropped up.

The thing omitted in that observation however is that until only this very generation, being able to recall with precision what one has learned was a crucial skill in any kind of study. Moderns don't bother remembering anything (even their own phone number) because they can just "look it up". High school students unceasingly complain about having to learn the first principles of mathematics "because I can just do it with my calculator" - how much more in any other discipline (which is not so clearly procedural as mathematics) would students need a "specific education" if there is to be any hope of them learning further?

I do think that universities are mostly to blame here, having flocked to the fashion of generating money-spinning faculties (like "commerce" and "journalism") while abandoning the faculties that gave the university its identity for centuries (philosophy, history, theology).

There are some overlapping faculties (such as engineering) which both teach a mostly technical discipline while also requiring a more advanced theoretical foundation, and these probably do still belong at the university... but perhaps the time is coming when we will have to look more closely at the "BS/BA only candidates" and the "graduate studies material". Actually that's already happened, with a sharp divide between the undergrads who happily toddle off to their careers in industry and never darken the doors of the academy again, and the lifelong academics who seem never to leave at all.

Perhaps the thing I find most objectionable is the indignantly anachronistic egalitarianism on display in the comments here, for the most part by people who know nothing of education (or scholarship in general) beyond their own experiences as a one-time student. Latin and Greek are not "stupid shit" put up as a wall to keep the unwashed masses out, they were (and remain) an exceedingly useful foundation for any advanced study in any discipline with a European vocabulary. At the turn of the (last) century, French may well have taken a dominant role in European correspondence but it only worked because everyone worth writing to had a working knowledge of Latin and Greek.

You clearly haven't looked at the paper. This is for people who want to begin university studies, not end them.

Then there's the fact that the internal combustion engine (driving a car) is based upon entirely 19th century physical principles - unless you're using that new Mass Effect car from India.

Quite frankly, people of average intelligence back then look far more intelligent by our standards because they had to learn everything without the tools we have today - no typed essays, no wikipedia, no sound recording, no calculators. Just scroll down past the Latin, Greek and History sections to the mathematics and tell me if you can work all that out by hand. They hand-wrote and memorised everything, something I think nobody under 50 could do today (even with a doctorate).

A lot of the comments so far are of the tack that "Greek and Latin are useless" or "CS majors don't need to quote Dante". I respond that they have no idea what a university education was for over its thousand year history. If you think you only go to university to learn how to write programmes and get a job in an industry, the 19th (and even 12th) century university man would tell you to get an apprenticeship - the early 20th century university man would tell you to go to a technical school.

Greek and Latin are still the most useful languages available for educated speakers of English because they allow you to decode almost any term in the English language, especially technical terms. Quoting Dante's Mediaeval Italian may make you as good a computer scientist as quoting Shakespeare's Elizabethan English, but the you will also be just as cultured - and I don't think anyone who understands what a university is for can claim that a cultured CS (all other things notwithstanding) is worse than an uncultured one.

Your dismissal of religious scholarship (specifically biblical scholarship) has, apparently unintentionally, also dismissed the scholarship of every non-technical (ie, not physical sciences or engineering) field. You seem not to realise that what you have described is exactly the same for archaeology, music, fine art, literature, philosophy. Your claim that "there is no evidence, no data, only opinion" demonstrates an ignorance of scholarship and standards of proof for the humanities.

It would appear that none of you have a working definition of Faith as someone who actually practices it would hold. Might I suggest you read St Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica? The relevant section is II-II Q4 (second part of the second part, question 4). "On the virtue of faith itself". St Thomas is difficult for the unfamiliar, but if you are genuinely interested in understanding that which you criticise do give it at least a second read through.

If you are open to St Thomas' reasoning within the scope of his premisses, you will see that faith is anything but "an idea with no evidence to back it up", "unearned and not subject to revision" (especially in the Christian context).

Of course for every one person willing to do the above there will be three "Sheldon Coopers" who are self-proclaimed experts in every field ready to dismiss all I've written as worthless drivel. Alas.

In other words, I'm not going to write a peer-review quality thesis for your "+5 insightful". And you know it.

I'm not so hooked on /. cookies to do the work for you.

Your argument is flawed, because they are already a large military power who have repeatedly demonstrated their desire to conquer the world.

Sorry, mystical crap still required. If "your body" is "your" property, do you still exist to own property when you are dead? If you have a soul, then your identity does not vanish (along with all your rights) at the moment of your death. If you don't, then your identity (the "you" to whom your body belongs) ceases to exist when the body dies, along with all rights.

Therefore, if you want to claim any kinds of rights at all (including the right to own property, though it's far from highest on the list) you really do need some "mystical crap".

Or, as I prefer to call it, metaphysics.

In Australia they reasonably expected to find ample space to grow food, build shelter, get a recognisable life going. Later they unreasonably expected to strike gold on the first turn of the shovel. But on Mars, they can't even expect a bucket of air, let alone food to hunt or trees to chop down and live under. Not even close to the same thing.

It wouldn't stop blocked editors from simply re-registering and continuing their noble and righteous correction spree.

Just for the sake of objectivity - did the authorities believe the hormone therapy a punishment or a treatment? If they thought it a treatment (since homosexuality has throughout all of human history been considered more a disordered inclination rather than a calculatedly malevolent crime) then it would be more appropriate to attribute the authorities with a benevolent intent (curing a problem) rather than a(n arguably) penal intent (exacting retribution for wrong done).

I appreciate your interest to my contribution! You have made an excellent distinction between the interpretations of people with different ecclesiological (Puritans vs Catholics) and philosophical (neo-anthropologist) backgrounds.

There is no denying that at its most basic level the Song of Songs discloses a very intimate and detailed sexual relationship. This first point is of great importance because it is the lens by which all other potential insights from the text are examined - for a Puritan Christian, to whom all sexual matters (for argument's sake) must be a hidden, perhaps even shameful affair, the inclusion of this book is at best an embarrassment and at worst an account of Jewish depravity.

For a (catechised) Catholic on the other hand, this book is conclusive proof against the claim that the Catholic religion hates sex - indeed, an entire book of the Bible happily glorifies in sex, and speaks to the joy of what Catholics believe sex should really be (namely, the fullest body-and-soul expression of eternal love between husband and wife).

It's a lot harder for first-language Anglophones to speak about the Orthodox and other Eastern Christians (since their cultural milieu and theological heritage have developed so differently to ours in the Latin West), so please forgive me for leaving them aside.

In my experience most people (believers and non alike) have no exposure to the more obscure books of the old testament - if it doesn't feature Adam and Eve or Moses, people generally don't know about it. This means that when they do stumble upon it, they are generally unprepared - they don't know what to make of it, what it means, why it's even in the Bible. If one is not familiar with the characterisation of God as the victorious bridegroom delighting in his wife, or Israel as the "land that will be married" (both from the Psalms) how can they be expected to read the Song of Songs as God delighting in his eternal marriage to Israel?

This comes back to my point previously about intrinsic and extrinsic consistency - with a text as obscure and confusing as the Song of Songs, one must be suitably prepared to fit it into the greater framework of Sacred Scripture - familiar enough with the other books of the Bible to fit this one into its proper place, and interpret it in light of the others. If taken by itself, without that greater context, then the Song of Songs absolutely does become nothing more than ancient erotica.

But then, returning to context Christians (and Jews, and in a slightly different way Moslems) believe that each book of scripture is divinely inspired, and has a rightful place in man's religious duty to God. Since erotica for its own sake is a selfish act (one that aims at gratifying oneself alone, rather than ordering all things to the greatest good), to conclude that the Song of Songs is simply ancient, self-gratifying erotica places it at odds with the belief that the entirety of sacred scripture is right and good.

You could probably tell me more about what this means to an agnostic, if you have lasted through my ramble. Apologies for my lack of brevity, I sometimes value comprehensiveness at the expense of straightforwardness.

Let me go back to my original post, first of all, and enforce a distinction that I originally made - a particular level of understanding is necessary to understand the Song of Songs. Your question conflated the necessity of learning to understand the Song of Songs with the whole Bible, which is not what I claimed. If we are to talk about the whole Bible, then I would immediately say that different levels of learning are necessary for different books - and the Song of Songs would be at the high end of that range.

Your (and my) Bachelor of Liberal Arts would put you in a better position to critically interpret certain phrases and idiomatic expressions than, say, a Bachelor of Science or high school student. It would not do us much (or even any) better on matters of theological interpretation, since it involves no study of theology.

This leads into the question of the quality of learning - Mr Phelps may claim to be learned in matters theological, but what is the quality of his learning? Are his beliefs intrinsically and extrinsically consistent? Are his theses defensible?

Where they are, you should, and where they are not, you should not defer - but always do so thoughtfully.