What expertise can theologians bring to deep cosmological questions that scientists cannot?
That’s what Richard Dawkins asked on page 79 in his book called “The GOD Delusion”.
Now, theology comes from two words, theo (God) and logos (word, message, teaching). So theology is basically the study of God. Richard Dawkins is a biologist. Biology comes from bios (life) and logos (word, message, teaching). He is not a cosmologist, and he is certainly not a trained theologian (even if he teaches a disturbing kind of theology).
Having considered this, read the quote again. Do you notice something? He carefully picked the word, scientist, to give you some weird impression that he—being a biologist—is somehow a tiny bit more capable of understanding the grand universe outside the boundaries of Earth than do a theologian. What is more appalling is, however, that he as a biologist wrote this book on theology—well yes, that’s what it is, when you claim God is a bastard that doesn’t exist—and yet the deep irony of his statement never even occurred to him (he is neither cosmologist nor theologian, yet has strong opinions about both areas).
It would seem this happens to be another doctrine of the New Atheist Church:
We’re basically experts on everything.
The Loving Judge 