Jesus gradually being phased out of American society?

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oh jesus.

Theology in all of its manifestations is empirically unsupported. It is nonsense. It is word play. It has no practical use.

ruveyn

String theory.

[not to be taken as an updating of horsefeathers]

And while we are at it, Government and Binding, which I for fun always called Government and Bondage.

Large portions of a great many sciences [and be so good as to bear in mind I use the word diffderently from my brother, which is no less legit than the guy I was listening to last night proclaiming there are no Frenchmen - but in any case the statement is valid even with my brother's definition] deal with subjects that are neither material nor empirical.

Enough for now.

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What you write matches what Einstein wrote about the Bible: it is ~ a collection of goat herders' campfire stories.

May 17, 2008 ... A letter Albert Einstein wrote in 1954 in which he described the Bible as “pretty childish” sold for $404000 at an auction in London. (Google)

You neglect to point out that Albert Einstein was Jewish not an atheist.

[quote="Inuyasha"

You neglect to point out that Albert Einstein was Jewish not an atheist.[/quote]

Einstein was not an observant Jew. His concept of God was very abstract. His God was not the personal God who to talked with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Einstein was more like a Deist than a Jew in that respect.

ruveyn

Ruveyn:

"Theology in all of its manifestations is empirically unsupported. It is nonsense. It is word play. It has no practical use. "

I will not, I will not, I will not take the low road and poke at string theory. This is not a poke at string theory, which I very sincerely hope physics will sort out in my lifetime, because a viable string theory would be really useful in some kinds of theistic cosmology.

I will say:

My PhD supervisor read a passage in my great contribution to science [almost illegible, because young scientists WILL assume they need jargon, that if they talk straight they will sound unimpressive] in which I asserted that a certain type of sound change is very common in certain languages.

He said, "You are free to assert this, but I DO NOT KNOW OF ANY EVIDENCE SUPPORTING THIS ASSERTION, and if you include it, and the examiners question it, I will not be able to back you up."

Now I happen to know the sound shift in question IS common. I could off my head list you a few dozen languages in the group that do exactly that.

AND I happen to know that a language my professor worked with intemnsively for years - he was one of the authorities on the language - is a prime example of the precise phenomenon I was talking about.

BUT - though he knew the language well - he KNEW OF NO EVIDENCE supporting my claim.

The guy - great scholar, great logician, but a rigid thinker - was not suddenly going to see that the phenomenon in his language was the same, that I had a point.

It stung, but I needed the degree. I took the statement out. Nevertheless, it does move.

A good many theologians [I do not say ALL, any more than I say ALL historians or ALL mathematicians] have looked carefully and found empirical evidence.

True, some are doing what certain scientists WILL insist on doing, and pushing words around: "IF Chomsky is right, then this language ought to show this trait, but at first glance it seems to to. Yet if we incorporate Ribbenthal's Amendment to Optimal Positioning, we can see there is no contradiction, as is demonstrated by these six sentences I made up, which half of the six people I asked agreed were possible in the language."

The details I have changed, but that is in essence a direct quote, and I hate and despise any scientist, be he sociologist or theologian or chemist, who does that.

But - thank God - not ALL practitioners of all sciences, whether sociology or theology or chemistry, do that.

Winding up - we cannot say OF ANYTHING there is no empirical evidence. We can - I often will - say I / we have not found any empirical evidence YET.