The Fracture of An Illusion

Frankfurt Templeton Lectures 2008

. . . . People use their religious concepts to account for their uncle’s death or their child’s illness or their neighbor’s good fortune, not to explain the persistence of evil or the existence of the universe. This puts special gloss on Dr. Faust’s famous lament:

I have now studied Philosophy,
And Jurispudence, Medicine,
And even alas! Theology,,…..
And here, a poor fool! With all my knowledge
I stand, no wiser than before.

So that knowing theology, or being conversant with the scriptural traditions, does not, unfortunately, and much to our understanding of religious thought and behaviour, because most human societies through history have managed to have religion without theology.