Whilst agreeing with _waves hands_ all of this, just because there aren't (or at least, may not be) any deities doesn't make theology a "fake" discipline. They're using established academic approaches to understanding (literary criticism and forms of logic and philosophical reasoning), often in clever ways. They, however, studying something without an empirical basis, so it's more akin to uses rigorous techniques to study what people believe about yetis, or the Loch Ness monster. It's not a fake discipline (after all, there are plenty of atheists with degrees in theology), it's just really really theoretical subject.