hi armp,
you are welcome to go down the path you wish to, whether it be historical or theological.
my first post about al ghazali was intended to describe how an innocent-seeming religious premise can frustrate the development of valuable and apparently unrelated ideas for a very long time.
i see this problem emerge in christianity during the dispute between arius and athanasius, which was resolved at the council of nicaea in, i think, 325 AD.
athanasius' victory - which led to the declaration more-or-less that jesus equals god (homo-ousion rather than homoi-ousion) - was a big step in turning a conversation into division and splitting christianity between orthodoxy and heresy. the historian edward gibbon and the roman emperor julian both saw christianity as ruining the roman martial virtues and setting in train the end of the roman empire. i see christianity as destroying the entire wide-open philosophy of the polytheistic roman era and replacing it with something narrow and restrictive which it took the development of technology and techniques of careful observation to revoke.
the effect of defining orthodoxy in strict terms (you cannot argue with a person who has the substance of god) was to put a cork into heterodox views for a millenium. the restriction on thinking is neatly encapsulated in the forced retraction and incarceration of galileo, but the theme is easily observable in the treatent of giordano bruno and continues (in slightly different garb) at least until the time of darwin. but as curiosity emerges, a universe defined around mankind gradually retreats in favour of an indifferent universe in which life fortunately emerges on this little planet, albeit perhaps as pond scum!
so the far end of catholic inquisition and taxation was the release, provided by secular thinking, of various kinds: from politics, through science, to law.
that is not to say that individual catholics did not participate in science. but the church is an organism which attempted to explain the universe with its biblical narrative for a very long period; it competed with modern science; it tried to silence it; it lost because science explained things better and the word got around.
religion changed as a result. popes stopped trying to tell folks they could explain life, the universe and everything better than other people. it took a role that is more concerned with things like morality and redemption. steven jay gould describes science and faith as operating within different domains or magisteria. but i think this is a view of science and religion which is fundamentally modern. (it is also controversial amongst scientists but let's set that aside).
it seems to me that this retreat of religion towards the realms beyond scientific enquiry hasn't yet occurred with islam. it claims a legal, scientific, political and religious territory which is fated to cause difficulty.
but just because religious explanations of the universe turned out to be weak doesn't mean scientific ones replace one stone tablet with another. the processes of science mean that it is constantly changing its explanations. its truths are always contingent. science is one way in which we expand human curiosity along the endless frontier of knowledge. there are others. i like a human curiosity which is unrestrained by religious dogma.
i am curious to learn how you come to the view that theology is a science, rather than merely a study. hopefully you don't need me to accept your definition of science in order to explain your position. i am happy to listen and give you my opinions. i am slightly worried that you are going to insert god where uncertainty and the difficulty of measurement currently reside. that is an argument which has been much discussed and you don't need me to address it, as many folks much smarter than i am have already done so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZFErADIY8E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRHefbIgKxk
but why not have at it.
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