Philosophy vs. Theology

So I spent much of Monday pondering how psychology, theology, and philosophy intertwine; a question that was first posed while learning about Kierkegaard’s notion of the “leap of faith” and later addressed in my World Religion class as we studied Taoism and Confucianism, two belief systems that seriously blur the lines between philosophical and religious beliefs, in Eastern Asia. The way I see it is the philosophy attempts to define how people think and the reasons people do the things that they do, while theology studies what it is people believe and how these beliefs fuel lifestyle choices.

Both of these practices are simply two different ways of studying the human mind, which would make them both, in some manner, smaller branches within the broad topic of psychology. However, neither theology nor philosophy fit into the scientific aspects of psychology, thus why they must be considered distinctly, as to leave a standard of credibility to the actual practice of psychology.

Many philosophers considered themselves above religions, but the practice of philosophy is a no less subjective study of the same topics that theology attempts to explain, except that philosophers claim credibility through “logic”, which is still as man-made a concept as any religious text can even be accused of being and thus open to the same flaws, particularly that man lack omniscience, or even any sort of truly known awareness beyond, what, 120 years, at most? That is also the most inherent flaw in both philosophy and theology, the fact that they both attempt to set such blanket terms on people across an innumerable set of times and places.