What value do you see in studying theology in concerns to Christianity?

[Acrobat]

You're missing the point. Of course there was no "scientific" way of thinking in the bronze ages; modern science didn't even being to develop until the 16th century.

That doesn't mean, however, that religious texts, stories and/or myths weren't an honest attempt at understanding the world around them.

The world around them, was viewed like a story book. Telelogical. People viewed themselves as part of some grand narrative, in which they were characters of. So the purpose of trying to understand elements of the world around them, was for the sake of understanding the purpose and intent of an author, in recognizing what roles they play in it's work. It why their religious writing often rely on conveying this understanding through stories themselves. They read these stories just like most people read stories, or great novels, they just read them, and contemplate them within the confines of them. The writers weren't pretending to have special knowledge of how the world was formed, they were just telling a story, to convey whatever meaning they saw life possessing. They weren't inviting you to ask whether these stories were literal or not, but just to read them for what they are.

When we were kids, the teacher told us the story of three little pigs. She didn't have to tell us beforehand whether the story was literal or not. We just heard the story, and tried to decipher the meaning in its own terms. Now imagine if the teacher told us, this is also literal history. It's easy to see that our minds rather than thinking about the meaning of the story, would probably start wondering about the nature of talking pigs, that could build houses etc... But no such thinking really arose around scripture. Literalism is not something the readers are particularly thinking about, nor are their communities, or writers pushing them to think about it. The sort of development in religion of fundie literalist, doctrines of Innerrancy, AIG, etc... were all recent phenomena's with no real parallels to the past.


The very nature of the Truth in the ancient world, is also quite distinct from how truth is often understood in our age, especially by atheists. We only think of truth primarily in scientific and historic terms, and that there is no such thing as Truth outside of that. We can easily see how different that is from the past, by looking at such sentiments like " I am the way the Truth and the life", "The Truth shall set you free", that Truth doesn't mean like what we mean by truth in a scientific or historic sense.

Humans like to know what is happening in the world around them. We're rarely content with simply saying, "I don't know." That's where your idea doesn't hold up.

Of course we are. We're perfectly fine saying we don't know about the things we don't care about. You ask me what's the weather like in China, I'll tell you I don't know. If you ask me to explain to you how clouds are formed, astrophysics, the makeup of stars, or who won the football game etc... you'll get the same response.

Science classes for most people were probably pretty boring, and not because they didn't think that whatever was being taught in them wasn't true, just not interesting for them to care enough to retain.

Even when it comes to science, hardly anyone supports the resources poured into it teaching children science, purely to acquire idle knowledge about the world around them, but rather because of prospects of usefulness, it good to learn to think like a scientist, its good to possess knowledge that could be used in your profession, or in some other way, maybe to look less dumb in social circles, etc.. 

The sort of knowledge we share, want others to have, is because we see it as useful, or potential to be useful, or for contemplative purposes.

Don't waste my tax money teaching my children useless knowledge about the world, even if it is true.