I know what you are saying here, but it does have a few positives. It reveals oil, you can construct preserves and build the national park, and although it obsoletes your monestaries, they start producing double culture (i think they do at least). Granted though, i generally ignore scientific method until i have to research it. There are too many other techs like rail road, combustion, assembly line etc that i would much much rather have. Its essential though if you really really want that free great scientist that you get with physics, which all the other AI's seem to crave.
You need biology for national park, not sci meth. Sci meth opens up communism and bio though, and these are potentially game-changing techs, so there's some incentive there.
And I think Scientific Method should provide a 10-25% research boost to all cities at least, to make it worthwhile (still, it will interfere with earlier culture victory plans).
If you're going for culture that does not involve corporations, you should probably not be teching sci meth.
On Archery:
Avoiding it is a sub immortal/deity luxury. You don't have time on those 2 levels to always get strategic resources. While in a lot of cases, you can spawn bust effectively with warriors, if you get a lot of land you have no choice but to go archery to stay upright.
Military Science, because If I can't build grenadiers, I can still build maces, which can get the CR promos, which can then be upgraded to CR Rifles.
Doing this after you have rifling is a pretty bad idea, unless you're vikings or something. Even then it's probably a bad idea (just take amphibious after combat II). Upgrades are not cost effective.
Upgrading to hit ASAP before the opponent catches up in tech is another matter though, but if you're doing that you are not teching both military science and rifling. In fact steel is a higher war and peace priority than mil sci generally. Even physics might be.
Meditation. I'll typically get this later rather than sooner (I'll usually trade for it). Polytheism is better, because I need it for the Great Library, and only slightly more expensive. Besides, meditations prime benefit is monasteries, but with OR from mono, you don't need them.
Monasteries are as hammer-efficient as observatories (better if you have any of the wonder bonuses). They obsolete, but you can access them very, very early. Not building them in research-strong cities is a mistake. This tech is very cheap to research compared to stacking counters towards the trade cap.
If you're not planning on teching archery and don't have any resources that require it, you can probably ignore hunting as well.
Agreed if you don't need archers. Then, avoiding hunting means you can build warriors for HR

instead of spears. Camp resources are an incentive but not always an issue.
I have to disagree with the OP's lack of love for Theology. Who doesn't want +2 XP? A free promotion can give you a definite advantage offensively, in any situation. Come to think of it, defensively, too.
Theology's benefits are useful, but never confuse "often optimal" with "free". Almost nothing in civ is free, not even the great people from techs. It all has opportunity costs, although in many cases those are low.
I ignore everything after Flight + Industrialism + Communism + Facism + Artillery. (Edit: Forgot Artillery). If I dont have a big production/military lead by this stage, I lost the game in an earlier age.
No fission + rocketry

? Those are fairly effective terminal techs though, as they allow tanks + air or the naval loop de loop with full strength naval units to match up to anything. Might want advanced flight eventually though, as jet fighters are a considerable upgrade (reach further, truly overwhelm all other air off carriers w/o exception, damage more consistently). Nukes + paras is a good setup too.
Fascism I never get either.
Fascism allows 100% war weariness immunity and if you get there first maybe even unlocks heroic epic w/o a war

. I admit I don't get it *too* often though.
I would disagree with you with Drama, but I'm not an elite player by any means. I just think it's hard to ignore the and from the theatre.
Deity players markedly better than me have advocated drama, and they didn't do so haphazardly.