Why is theology with its arcane scripts from ages long dead still even tolerated in twenty-first-century institutions of higher learning alongside geochemistry and biotechnology and disciplines that use synchrotrons and things? In Australia at least public universities rely on funding that is awarded in response to the research output that can be demonstrated to provide some socio-economic benefit to the community.
Unless academics can demonstrate such a benefit for their research proposals they get no public funding. What socio-economic benefit can theology offer? Why is theology even considered a respectable discipline in a scientific age when many westerners look aghast across at the dominance of mullahs in less industrialized societies? We think we should keep faith-based science out of schools, so why do we even tolerate a faith-based history discipline in a modern public institution of higher-learning?
I was re-reading an old book from my student days, The Social Sciences as Sorcery by Andreski, and came across this interesting passage explaining how it was that science appeared in universities without at the same time getting rid of theology: Continue reading “Theology: a Vestigial Course in the Universities”