Editing Thealogy (section)

==Criticisms==
At least one Christian theologian dismisses thealogy as the creation of a new deity made up by radical feminists.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Damian|first=Constantin-Iulian|title=Radical Feminist Theology: From Protest to the Goddess|journal=Scientific Annals of the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza" University of Iasi – Orthodox Theology|date=January 2009|issue=1|pages=171–186|url=http://www.ceeol.com/aspx/issuedetails.aspx?issueid=19bbe2f0-b402-4b52-b9f3-fe640d2301dd&articleId=ec765e94-330b-4ed5-a828-5399736c8b53|access-date=11 December 2012|quote=Finally, we point out the antichristian character that animates the construction of this new deity, created "after the image and likeness of man".}}</ref> Paul Reid-Bowen and Chaone Mallory point out that [[essentialism]] is a problematic [[slippery slope]] when Goddess feminists argue that women are inherently better than men or inherently closer to the Goddess.<ref>{{cite book|last=Reid-Bowen|first=Paul|title=Goddess As Nature: Towards a Philosophical Thealogy|year=2007|publisher=Ashgate Publishing|isbn=9780754656272|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0MOmj9WpwI0C&pg=PA156|access-date=10 December 2012|page=156|quote=First, there are those feminist thealogical claims that suggest that women are essentially caring, nurturing and biophilic, while men are essential violent, destructive and necrophilic.... Second, there are those claims that suggest that women are somehow closer to the Goddess and/or nature than men.}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last=Mallory |first=Chaone |title=The Spiritual is Political: Gender, Spirituality, and Essentialism in Forest Defense |journal=[[Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture]] |year=2010 |volume=4 |issue=1 |pages=48–71 |doi= 10.1558/jsrnc.v4i1.48|url=http://www.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/5203 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130122153332/http://www.equinoxpub.com/JSRNC/article/view/5203 |url-status=dead |archive-date=22 January 2013 |access-date=11 December 2012 |issn=1363-7320 |quote=The deployment of such textual imagery in the service of a woman-centered environmentalism that strongly suggested—at times even explicitly asserted and celebrated—that women have an inherent, likely biological connection with nature that men do not generated the typical criticisms of ecofeminism already noted.}}</ref>  In his book ''Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality'', Philip G. Davis levies a number of criticisms against the Goddess movement, including [[fallacy|logical fallacies]], [[hypocrisy|hypocrisies]], and essentialism.<ref>{{cite book|last=Davis|first=Philip G.|title=Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neopagan Feminist Spirituality|year=1998|publisher=Spence Publishing Company|location=Dallas|isbn=0965320898|pages=86–100|chapter=The Foundations of "Theology"}}</ref>

Thealogy has also been criticized for its objection to [[empiricism]] and [[reason]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Graham|first=Elaine L.|title=Representations of the Post/Human: Monsters, Aliens and Others in Popular Culture|year=2002|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=9780813530598|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NDX1J9wb8r8C&pg=PA215|access-date=10 December 2012|page=215|quote=While this valorization of experience and suspicion of reason is a valuable corrective, the danger comes when as a result women deny themselves a stake in rational thought.  Critics of thealogy have pointed out its lack of rigour, as for example over the issue of valid historical evidence.}}</ref> In this critique, thealogy is seen as flawed by rejecting a purely empirical worldview for a purely relativistic one.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fang-Long|first=Shih|title=The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion|year=2010|publisher=John Wiley & Sons|isbn=9781444320794|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RheC7rG9u6gC|editor=Bryan S. Turner|page=234|chapter=Women, Religions, and Feminism|quote=One the one hand, there are social constructivists, postmodernists and relativists for whom there are no facts, only rhetoric and power, and on the other, there are positivists and empiricists for whom facts are value-free and given directly to experience, waiting patiently to be discovered.}}</ref>  Meanwhile, scholars like [[Sandra Harding|Harding]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Harding|first=Sandra G.|author-link=Sandra Harding|title=Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?: Thinking from Women's Lives|year=1991|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=9780801497469|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=eSmPEH7-u2oC|access-date=10 December 2012|page=142|quote=A feminist standpoint epistemology requires strengthened standards of objectivity.... They call for the acknowledgement that all human beliefs – including our best scientific beliefs - are socially situated, but they also require a critical evaluation to determine which social situations tend to generate the most objective knowledge claims.}}</ref> and [[Donna Haraway|Haraway]]<ref>{{cite book|last=Haraway|first=Donna J.|author-link=Donna Haraway|title=Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature|year=1991|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=9780415903875|pages=[https://archive.org/details/simianscyborgswo0000hara/page/312 312]|chapter-url=http://science.consumercide.com/haraway_sit-knowl.html|access-date=10 December 2012|chapter=Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective|quote=So, I think my problem and 'our' problem is how to have simultaneously an account of radical historical contingency for all knowledge claims and knowing subjects, a critical practice for recognizing our own 'semiotic technologies' for making meanings, and a no-nonsense commitment to faithful accounts of a 'real' world|url=https://archive.org/details/simianscyborgswo0000hara/page/312}}</ref> seek a middle ground of feminist empiricism.