When doing theology, I think like a scientist

I have noticed a big difference in the way I think about the way I think about theology, compared with almost everyone else. 

Which is: that I think like a scientist - whereas they think like theologians!

I state this as a matter of observation, rather than trying to assert the superiority of the way that I think - after all, very few people are, or ever have been "a scientist"... 

Indeed extremely-few "scientists" - i.e. professional researchers and scholars in self-styled science subjects - are or ever have been scientists. 

Modern professional and accredited "scientists" do not (with very rare exceptions) think like scientists - for instance, they do not seek and speak the truth - but instead they think like the careerist bureaucrats that they ultimately are. 

Anyway, what I mean is that theologians clearly feel the weight of authority and tradition so heavily that they believe that it would be a ridiculous presumption if they, as an individual person, was to critique, confront, or overturn that inertial mass on the basis of the thoughts of "little old me".   

I don't feel that way. 

As a scientist (especially the kind of theoretical scientist that I was) it is perfectly normal, indeed it is expected and necessary, that "I" am prepared to critique, confront, or overturn decades, hundreds or thousands of years of authority and tradition. 

That is now just allowable - it the job of a real scientist - if possible. That is what the very best scientists of history, the ones we are taught to admire and emulate, have always done. 

Furthermore; the way that science works is by making different (and perhaps new) assumptions, or "hypotheses" and then... trying them out. 

Unless we do this, then we will not make any qualitative difference to science - unless we do this, we will just be extrapolating or interpolating on already-existing science (potentially worthwhile, but an activity that comes almost automatically for competent technicians of science). 

In other words; to do significant science entails being able creatively (and creativity is always and necessarily personal) to select from and reframe existing "evidence" in the making of new "theories". 

Then... taking that new theory and exploring reality on that basis - to see if it holds-up, to see if it has any advantages. 

This is pretty much what I do with theology - i.e. I approach it in a manner analogous to that of the kind of creative scientist that I aspired to be. 

I seek truth in a scientist's kind of way; but that truth is much bigger than the truths of science...

Theological truth is, indeed, as big a truth as I can imagine and express.