Foyle is only repeating the opinion of many in our culture, a culture which tends to be blind to anything before the Enlightenment. Theology is most certainly a science; that is, a disciplined conversation and enquiry; and as a conversation which continues across time and in relation to a variety of cultures, naturally it is ongoing and develops.

The natural sciences (once called 'natural philosophy'!) do not simply gather 'evidence' but seek to understand the structures and processes of physical reality, through postulation and experimentation, provisional hypotheses, modelling and--yes--imagination. (The old joke goes, 'There's speculation, then wild speculation, then cosmology'.) The methodologies of different branches are not identical. The kinds of 'evidence' and the means of evaluating such evidence are varied and not always straightforward and certainly not open and obvious to 'everyman'. Those bodies of knowledge called 'sciences' all require involvement in a hard-won tradition, apprenticeship in the skills and practices requisite to their particular enquiry, and so forth. The scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi has made that plainer than anyone else I know.

Theology, because its 'object' is not the structure or processes of the natural world, has different concerns to the various natural sciences. Its better analogues are history and philosophy though it is more than both. The 'question' of God appears for philosophers at the level of metaphysics (why and how this universe?) and in ethics but much more importantly for Jews and Christians in history - and this is the realm of testimony. Theology, as a 'science of convictions' looks at articulation and interrelation of these convictions and their relationship to everything else.

There's a lot more to this than the mere opinion of one Terry Lane.

When is Sells going to get hip and truly sophisticated?
Doesnt the existence of Real God demand sophistication, especially from someone who works in a university.

His essay is about godless meat-body "religion" which reduces humankind to mortal meat-body existence only. And despite all the religion-speak he shares the same dismal reductionistic assumptions about what we as human beings as Dawkins & co.

Fear thus rules to here http://www.ispeace723.org/liberationfromego2.html

Therefore, true religion must retire to Light!
The heart must be permitted to achieve a universal feeling ecstasy!

What would Happen if all of humankind were--now, and forever hereafter--allowed complete, unobstructed, and Perfectly ecstatic access to Inherently egoless Truth Itself?

What would Happen if, instead of access merely to worldly, or gross "realist", or scientific materialist, or exclusively exoteric, and traditionally "official" and anti-ecstatic, and anti-magical, and anti-metaphysical, and anti-Spiritual ego-"truth" and pseudo-Ultimacy---all of humankind were, from now on, allowed complete and unobstructed and Perfectly ecstatic access to Inherently egoless Truth Itself?

What would Happen if--from now on--the political, social, economic, and cultural totality of humankind were allowed to establish and perpetuate itself entirely and only on the Perfectly ecstatic basis of the Inherently egoless Truth That IS Reality Itself?

Happiness is the now-and-forever Mystery that IS the Real Heart and the Only Real God of every one http://www.dabase.org/happytxt.htm

True Religion is the esoteric science, or luminous sacred process, of direct, and directly ego-transcending, investigation of, or enquiry into LIGHT itself. The method of true religion is devotional surrender of the total body-mind of the investigator to and into LIGHT, or the Self-Existing, Self-Radiant Conscious Light. Even to the degree of most perfect realization of indivisible oneness.

True religion is the esoteric science, or True Divine Way, of TRULY knowing, and, thereby BEING, the unbroken Light, Self-Radiant AS Love-Bliss itself.

What Sells calls "religion" is a form of pious and childish consumerism. Full of posturing, bargain hunting, haggling, and deceitful practices of all kinds---whereby the separate "self", or the client like ego-"I", whetther as an individual or as a socially defined cultural collective, seeks to acquire what, from the egoic point of view is desired, or whatever it hopes that the santa-claus "god" can provide for the wanting-demanding ego-"I" itself.

The "religious" consumer ego wants and seeks, as if in a marketplace, what it can beg, take, somehow earn, or otherwise acquire from the presumed storeowning shopkeeper "god".

The proposing of "religious" myths and illusions has a traditional function in the domain of childhood---but the world of truly and responsibly adult life requires a mature and truly civilized culture, founded in REALITY itself.

"Religion" is a part of ancient culture which was in the public sphere based on illusionism. The culture of illusionism is the culture of make-believe, engaged for the purpose of pacifying primitive, or infantile, human emotions, especially the infantile fear of death.

Who or what is Truth?
Truth is not a person, or a thing, or a knowable object, or a thought.
Truth is a Process.
Who or what is "I"?
"I" is not a person, or a thing, or a knowable entity, or a thought.
"I" is a Process.
The Process that is Truth and the Process that is "I" are one and the same.
What is the Process that is "I" and that is Truth?
It is positive, or self-transcending, bodily submission into the Radiant, All-Pervadinf Life-Principle.
It is the bodily love of Life, done to the absolute degree, until their is only Radiant Existence-Being.
This is the Divine Law, and it is all you need to know.
Do this, be this, and you will Realize Happiness, Enjoyment, Health, Longevity, Wisdom, Joy, Freedom, Humour, Ecstasy, and the Radiant Way that leads beyond Man and beyond Earth.

Plus a unique novel which thoroughly investigates all of the usual dismal "answers" of ordinary life, "religion", and Spirituality.

http://global.adidam.org/books/mummery.html

no, theology is not a science, any more than astrology is or numerology is. sellick can write his bait and switch articles until the cows come home (as if we could stop him), but he shouldn't puff up his silly musings with false labels.

Help OLO! Please limit the number of articles any author may have published each year in OLO. Sellick is grossly over-exposed as are the predictable responses to him. Enough, already. Please. No more until next financial year. Please.

"Dogma is just theology that the church for more than 2,000 years has decided is a firm basis for faith."

Whose church, Peter? Yours? The Catholics? Seventh-Day Adventists? Moslems? Hindus? Doesn't the fact that the numerous practitioners of 'theology' around the world can't even agree on the most fundamental aspects of the discipline indicate that it is an imaginary subject? Or are you going to offer some special pleading to indicate why your particular group of theologians are right and all those you disagree with are wrong?

Evidence, Peter, verifiable evidence. That's all we really want.