No, I'm not talking about something as banal as whether a god exists. I'm saying theology doesn't study anything real. It doesn't have the tools to determine whether a god exists, because it doesn't study reality, it studies scripture. That's not a point of view, that's what theology is. Regardless of whether magic exists, I think we can both agree we can't find out by reading Harry Potter.
The same for philosophy. I like to half joke that modern philosophy is what's left after taking out all the useful parts of ancient natural philosophy and putting them into either mathematics or science.
It's not really an apt analogy. Law is not a field of inquiry like science, philosophy, mathematics, and theology are. Lawyers do not push the boundaries of understanding, they're clerks. That aside, laws are not divorced from reality, they're agreements that members of a society enter into regarding how the society is supposed to function. To study law is to study the way society works. Yes, society is an artificial construct, which why law is not a field of inquiry, but it still provably exists.
What is my viewpoint? Exactly what that I have presented as if it was an objective fact is subjective? Please enlighten me, because I have no idea what you're trying to say.
>Very naive of you to think that religion, scripture, or existence of God are unprovable problems.
When did I say that? What I said was that society provably exists, and I said that to emphasize that the subject matter of law is something real, not to imply by omission that the existence of god/a god/gods is unprovable.
>Many people don’t agree with you on the both sides. Many think there is definitively no God and many think there is.
Cool. I'm not talking about the existence of a god nor about what people think about the topic. I'm talking about theology and philosophy as fields of study.
I’m a different person, but maybe I can help clarify.
> I'm saying theology doesn't study anything real. It doesn't have the tools to determine whether a god exists, because it doesn't study reality, it studies scripture.
This paragraph, especially the italicized portion, implies the statement “scripture isn’t real”.
That can be taken a few different ways. One is that scripture doesn’t exist. Obviously that’s not true, so probably not what you meant.
The other is that scripture is fiction or wrong or made up or not representative of reality or something in this general sphere of belief. Your clarifications, like mentioning Harry Potter, show that this is what you meant.
Stating that scripture is fiction is a viewpoint. You’re not even describing just Christian theology but theology in general. So you’re putting out that every claim that some text was divinely inspired is false. I’m not arguing with you on this, just saying it’s a viewpoint you’re putting out.
I don’t think you mentioned it explicitly, but theologians also study more than scripture. So to say theologians don’t study reality is to also say this is t real (although you didn’t say that explicitly).
This all adds up to you taking some position, having some viewpoint in the realm of metaphysics, ontology, theology, etc. You’re saying some things are and are not true about god, like the holy bible is not truth based on reality.
I agree with this. On top of what he said, I can add this just to clarify more:
> I'm saying theology doesn't study anything real. It doesn't have the tools to determine whether a god exists, because it doesn't study reality, it studies scripture.
Your viewpoint unshared by many others here is that we cannot determine the existence of god by studying scripture. I say 'unshared by others' to emphasize they are subjective.
The same for philosophy. I like to half joke that modern philosophy is what's left after taking out all the useful parts of ancient natural philosophy and putting them into either mathematics or science.