Actually, I was quoting from a physics monograph there, you'd have to take that claim up with Haag. My claim is that the action principle was clearly and obviously a development from theological principles. Those who developed it were quite clear about their rationale. They happened to be right about its importance, and it was their theological presuppositions and theological worldview that enabled both earlier developments upon which the action principle emerged formally (namely, Newtonian mechanics, which were also clearly and explicitly developed by Newton both as evidence for God and based on theological principles of a rational cosmos created by a rational deity) as well as their own work.
So, again, at best theology inspired people, in this case Newton. If you know calculus, you'll note there are exactly zero appeals to divinity in it. Indeed, if you try to put divinity into calculus, you ruin the calculus.
Theology isn't in calculus, cannot be derived from calculus and at the very best inspired its creation. Theology itself did not produce calculus. You cannot derive calculus from theology.
I don't have much use for it and don't find any in physics, although I find it interesting in general. That said, I know that in particular certain work in logic and set theory as well as other foundational mathematics continues to be furthered due to theological arguments by theologians and philosophers, both believers and non-believers (see e.g., Logic and Theism by Sobel and the later references to his work on Gödel's unpublished argument for god. It's not much, certainly. There may be more that theology continues to offer the sciences and mathematics that I am not aware of. Mostly I think its importance comes (at least within foundation physics and cosmology) from understanding where a great many of our modern tools, models, approaches, and ideas have their origin since they now appear mysterious to us but apparently were not so long ago when we knew considerably less about the physical world. But like a lot of academic work, I think that most theology (and again, I'm not a theologian but a physicist so I'm biased on this) is like many other fields- important to those in the field and those interested in it, but with little influence outside of its scope.
Current debates on e.g., multiverse theory among physicists and cosmologists continue to be inspired by the ability to "explain" without a creator:
"To the hard-line physicist, the multiverse may not be entirely respectable, but it is at least preferable to invoking a Creator. Indeed anthropically inclined physicists like Susskind and Weinberg are attracted to the multiverse precisely because it seems to dispense with God as the explanation of cosmic design"
from the editor's introduction to the volume Carr, B. (Ed.). (2007). Universe or Multiverse?. Cambridge University Press.
This is self-contradictory.
Have you read much of what Newton wrote?
Theology offers nothing to sciences and mathematics. What could it possibly offer? Some new metaphor, desperately engaging in mental gymnastics to link scripture to science?
Theology is nothing more than complicated metaphor invoking. It's only interesting to fellow believers because those believers share in the same worldview and religious communication culture.
In fact, you could produce exactly the same arguments, equally compelling, from a Lord of the Rings theology as you can from a Christian theology. It's just that the only people who'd be interested in such a theology are those well versed in Tolkien's mythologies.
My point is that Christian theology is derived from a religious cultural system that structures a way of thinking, communicating and experiencing reality. From there, people encultured to this system interpret and experience science, philosophy and math.
However, science and math are not reliant on theology; it's entirely worthless to their pursuits except as inspiration. Theology is in none of our scientific models. It doesn't inform them, cannot add to them. The very best theology can do is interpret them for those encultured to Christianity or whatever religious system is used to translate science to believers.
So, you've provided examples of people inspired by theology. Now provide a scientific theory that requires theology. Put the Thor into the lightning so to speak. If you can do that, you've got a case.
