On 11 Jul 2012, at 19:36, John Clark wrote:
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 3:29 PM, Evgenii Rudnyi <[email protected]>
wrote:
> In Germany theology still belongs to universities. What I like is
that you will find as a department of theoretical theology as well
as a department of practical theology.
I disagree, I don't like it. You are assuming that there exists a
organized field of knowledge called "theology", but I can not find
the slightest evidence that is in fact true. Lawrence Krauss said
that it is his habit to ask every theologian he meets "what advances
in theology have been made in the last 400 years?",
You are wrong. There has been constant progress. The number of burning
witches has decreased. Also, now when a child is molested by a member
of the clergy there is some hope for him to be listen.
A better question would be what advances in theology have been made in
the last 10.000 years, the answer, I could argue, would be science,
music, and probably many ways to get altered conscious state, and
science does include a part of theology among the inquirers.
You can't reject theology.
You can only reject *a* theology.
To reject *all* theologies, you need *a* theology.
but he has never received a straight answer from a single one of
them, the best he has gotten was "what do you mean by advances?". A
expert in mathematics or physics or biology or literature or ANY
other field would not give a weasel answer like that, they'd just
rattle off a list of advances, but not theology. He also said he was
on a panel at a college and somebody asked another scientist there
why there is something rather than nothing and the scientist said
"that's a question to ask the head of the theology department not
me", but Krauss said "why ask him rather than the college gardener
or plumber or cook?". I have no answer to Krauss's question because
like him I think that where theology is concerned there is no
expertise and no field.
That is not entirely true, at many levels. But it is more a
consequence of or lack of seriousness in the field, and the difficulty
due to the emotional way humans can react on such matter.
An example of non seriousness in theology is the common belief that
science has decided between Aristotle's and Plato's conceptions of
reality. We are just very ignorant on that, but we can suggest
hypotheses and do reasoning.
Bruno
http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/
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