# Dominant group/Theology

Theology is "the rational and systematic study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truth [, or] the learned profession acquired by specialized courses in religion (usually at a college or seminary".
A dominant group may be one associated with theology in some way or a group within theology such as a group of gods (entities, sources, or objects).

## Control groups

A group of intelligent life forms that think and conceive in the abstract may serve as a control group to compare with a dominant group. Such a group may be able to construct tools.
"Recent research indicates chimpanzee stone tool use dates to at least 4,300 years ago. Chimpanzee tool usage includes digging into termite mounds with a large stick tool, and then using a small stick that has been altered to "fish" the termites out. A recent study revealed the use of such advanced tools as spears, with which common chimpanzees in Senegal sharpen with their teeth and use to spear Senegal bushbabies out of small holes in trees."
Adult chimpanzees (common or bonobo) have a general range of brain size from 282-500 cc. Brain complexity may make an individual or species as capable of tool construction and use as a bonobo while possessing a much smaller average brain size range.
The minimal brain size to think and conceive in the abstract may mean that composing spirituality or religion may be limited only to thinking and conceiving in the abstract without the additional complexity shown by larger brained organisms such as humans.

## Theoretical theology

Def. "reasoning or discussion concerning the Deity", is called theologia.
Def. "the science of things divine", is called theology.
Def. "a deity, a god, God" is called a theos.
Def.
* "[t]he single deity of various monotheistic religions",
* "[t]he single male deity of various duotheistic religions",
* "[a]n impersonal and universal spiritual presence or force",
* "[a]n omnipotent being, creator of the universe (as in deism)",
* "[t]he (personification of the) laws of nature", and
* "[t]he Horned God", is called God.
Usage notes
"God is often referred to by masculine pronouns, not necessarily implying that the speaker believes that God is male. He is also referred to by pronouns that begin with a capital letter, as a sign of respect, in many languages written in Latin script. In English, these would include He, Him, His and Himself. Many Jews follow a prohibition in their tradition against using it and other equivalents in writing (see G-d)."

## Academic theology

"During the High Middle Ages, theology was therefore the ultimate subject at universities, being named "The Queen of the Sciences" and serving as the capstone to the Trivium and Quadrivium that young men were expected to study. This meant that the other subjects (including Philosophy) existed primarily to help with theological thought."

## Cognitive ambivalences

“The second stage is "cognitive ambivalence," where they become ambivalent about their ethnic identity as they make progress in acculturation, economic stability, intra-ethnic competition, and the paternalism of the dominant group.”

## Dominant theology

"In so doing, it represents the resurgence of knowledges suppressed by a dominant theology and a dominant culture. ... Rather, it is in the realm of the hidden and in the disguised language of infrapolitics, the speech acts and a range of other practices carried out behind the backs of the dominant group, that the voice of the oppressed is to be found."

## Feminist theology

"I would say that the first reason why it is absolutely essential for white women to dialogue and to be in contact with theologies coming from these other contexts is precisely to demystify the tendency to think that somehow feminist theology is theology coming from white women of the dominant group."
"The particular problem, for feminists, as it was for pragmatists, is that the knowledge enshrined in theology proper's viewing of the absolute has been a result of its own social location and, as feminists point out, the particular interests of the dominant group."

## Hierology

"The existence of blasphemy is tied to the existence of the sacred, and where the latter does not exist, or is not accepted by the dominant group in society, then blasphemy occurs in the denial of the sacred as an aspect of human existence."

## Hospitality

“Susanne Johnson has argued that theological education needs to embody an environment of hospitality which confronts the dominant group with the moral imperative to give hospitality to the stranger (1993, 343).”

## Natural theology

"From the 17th century onwards, it also became possible to use the term 'theology' to refer to study of religious ideas and teachings that are not specifically Christian (e.g., in the phrase 'Natural Theology' which denoted theology based on reasoning from natural facts independent of specifically Christian revelation"

## Privileges

“In the case of racism, people of color are oppressed, yet white privilege also harms those who benefit from it by limiting the cultural awareness, relationships, and experience of the dominant group.”

## Hypotheses

* The first dominant group was the first group of hominins to align themselves with something in the sky above the Earth that was killing people by the millions.