Where can I go with a degree in Philosophy and Theology?

[Laura M]

And get spend another year at uni, you wouldn't believe how many masters students I know are only staying on as they want to stay at uni.

[99yorkpj]

Well I've actually put in Edinburgh as my first choice, so it looks like I'll be doing a 4 year MA anyway! But thanks, it's encouraging to know that I may've made a good decision for once!

[englishangel]

Well I've actually put in Edinburgh as my first choice, so it looks like I'll be doing a 4 year MA anyway! But thanks, it's encouraging to know that I may've made a good decision for once!

My husband did a 4 year sandwich course, failed a year which made it 5 years.
Got an upper second so was offered a research post. He had done Chemical Engineering with business and took the business route towards a PhD. He spent more time in the bookies than researching so hadn't finished his thesis after 3 years. He planned to write it while working but his parents died and that went by the board. He ended up doing Management Accounting and by a rather circuitous route has ended up being paid by the bookies, within a sideline in horse-racing punditry on TV.

[cj]

Well I've actually put in Edinburgh as my first choice, so it looks like I'll be doing a 4 year MA anyway! But thanks, it's encouraging to know that I may've made a good decision for once!

I did my degree at Glasgow - Ma Hons in Archaeology. The Scottish system is quite good in that it gives you years 1 and 2 to study your chosen core subject plus 3 or 4 subsidiary subjects. Then you specialise for years 3 and 4. So you study a wide range of subjects, and have the opportunity to change subject within faculties or decide to do a joint degree (something I would heartily endorse as you are then exempt from a 20,000 word dissertation!). BTW, Glasgow has a very good reputation for Theology, and is a great city in which to be a student. Ignore any bad press you've heard, Edinburgh is just as 'mean' (see 'Trainspotting' and other ethnic tomes by Irvine Welsh)!

[Laura M]

Yeah I got offers from both Edinburgh and Glasgow, but in the end decided that actually I wanted to be as far away from Scotland as possible, so came to Southampton (plus we moved back to London). I think Glasgow is an awesome city great shopping, good night life, and of course the Glasgow tube pub crawl.

[DavebytheSea]

My daughter was accepted to read Maths at Trinity, Cambridge. Even before she went she was having second thoughts, but they would not let her change until term started.

Her decision to read Philosophy for all three parts of the Tripos was treated with some scorn - she was told she was moving from the ranks of the most wanted to the least employable. In fact, as has been stated above several times already, ultimately it is not the course but the individual that counts. She went on to become one of the country's best known fundraisers. Never any problem with getting employment, even at the beginning.

[rockfreak]

Do Philosophy and Theology actually go together?

[Mid A 15]

Do Philosophy and Theology actually go together?

There are Theist philosophers so yes they can. St Thomas Aquinas historically for one. Richard Swinburne is probably the most eminent living theist philosopher.

https://users.ox.ac.uk/~orie0087/

[rockfreak]

I suppose my scepticism derives from my own very firmly held atheism. As I understand it, a theist is someone who believes in a God that not only created the world but is still up there pulling the strings (and having a good laugh if he had anything to do with Donald Trump's election victories). As opposed to a deist who believes the God created it all but then sat back and said "right, it's all yours, get on with it". This I believe is called the intelligent designer.

Getting on for two centuries after Darwin's theory, these ideas seem so implausible to me that I can't believe any common sense, robust. modern day system of philosophy would give them house room. And my atheism today is influenced particularly by the rise of literalist, dogma-driven religious faith in the service of dictatorship - evangelicals in the heartland of America, sharia Islam in the middle east and Old Testament, Zionist fanaticism in Israel. I would ask of any monotheist: show me proof.

[rockfreak]

Louis Theroux's BBC-2 TV doc tonight on the Israeli settler movement was a good example of blind biblical faith being pressed into service in what is essentially a land grab.

[rockfreak]

Religious faith cropped up a few weeks ago when the FT Weekend columnist Camilla Cavendish revealed that her godfather Brian Magee took to believing in God later in his life.
Magee of course was an Old Blue and a well-known author, philosopher and BBC man, so I emailed her and told her that I had been at CH in the decade after Magee and that his late-life move may have had to do with coming out of CH with an earworm of the glories of the Anglican liturgy - the stirring hymns, the noble language of the old King James Bible - and this is hard to shake off. It sounded, I said, like a Proddy version of Lord Marchmain in Brideshead; the twitch on the thread.
She posted back to say that this was interesting and that her own father, a vicar, had also been at the school and that he and Magee had often had discussions about religion.