Night Off

[sammywol]

In spite of remnants of lurgy still dogging me I stole the chance last night to have a night off from children. People who know me know I am a frequent visitor at PZ Myers's blog Pharyngula which is a hotbed of information and discussion on topics of science in education, evolution, anti-creationism, bacon and atheism. PZ has been in Ireland for a

Comments

[alaimacerc]

Not nearly Godless enough! They keep electing Ronan Mullen! Unless he gets in entirely by means of the Maynooth block vote. (Irish seminarians vote early, and often?)

Sorry to hear about the poor prospects for a ET Cork secondary. Let's hope they get there eventually, though "sooner" would be better.

Mrmmm, baaaaaacon.

[sammywol]

Oh they aren't really godless and never have been but they were vilified by Daniel O'Connell for not dragooning students to regular worship. He wanted proper Catholic institutions not just institutions lacking Oxbridge's then ban on Catholics graduating. For once the poor Brits were trying to be 'sensitive' but it did not get them very far, except of course that we still have the colleges (and some nice statues of Queen Vic) and, for three of them at least, the British authorities are no longer an issue.

[alaimacerc]

Somewhat as I suspected; from the same school of thought that gave rise to a pie chart by religion and major denominational division that I once saw, one segment of which was labelled "Protestants (including agnostics and atheists)".

[sammywol]

Not quite. The point about the Queen's University Colleges was that they were disestablished. They were not Protestant institutions at all. This was all going on around the time of Catholic Emancipation and British unis were in no hurry to accept non-recanting Catholics. These Irish Colleges accepted all comers equally. There was not even a college chapel in UCC before the C20th.

[alaimacerc]

From the same line of thought on Daniel O'Connell's part, I was suggesting, not on that of the founders.

[sammywol]

OK From what I recall of my history of that period precious little pleased old Daniel.

[alaimacerc]

I might be trying to over-parse him, of course. Heaven forfend that someone ends up doing so with my random ventings, decades hence. (Small danger of that, mind.)

Wonkypedia ({{citation needed}}ly}} says that "In order to appease Protestant demands, the colleges were not permitted to give instruction in theology." So that would be a technically valid cause of allegations-of-godlessness, to be fair.