I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity

Yet these non-scientific methods of assessing the veracity of theological claims remain entirely absent from your posts....Here, again, is the original question: If you can't answer that question just say so. It's not immaterial to the question asked. To say that the "scientific method is totally useless and worthless" when investigating how cultures and peoples form is obviously idiotic. History, anthropology, psychology, archaeology etc. are all entirely relevant.As for the Rabbi - He may well be correct that a collection of theological stories were entirely relevant to the formation of a peoples or culture. But that has no bearing on the veracity of those theological stories does it? Meaningless trivialities like wanting to believe things that are correct rather than wrong you mean.....?

OK. I'm interested in how the veracity of a theological claim that cannot be tested scientifically is assessed. So pick any theological claim you like that best exemplifies these non-scientific methods you speak of.What is the theological claim in question and what methods can be used to determine if this theological claim is likely to be true?

Yes.Which is why "I don't believe in God, I believe in Gravity".

Claim: Angel feathers falling from on high cause the smell of god's armpit to fill your nose as they brush past you.Non-scientific method of proof: Pray real hard and god will guide you to interpret the bible accordingly.Well, that was easy. Wanna nother one?

Can we apply the same method when deciding which theory of gravity to adopt?

You mean there's more than one?Angles pushing you down so you don't float up to heaven before your time.That's it, man. I've prayed on it hard and interpreted it hard and that's what god revealed to me. And so it is.Anything else you might pull out your butt to compete with this, like that apple guy or the weird hair dude, well that's all just science and is not in the bible.

Does the fact that adopting the theories of the apple guy and the crazy hair dude allowed us to put men on the moon and discover/predict a range of new observable phenomena indicate that these theories are in any way accurate descriptions of reality? Has the angel theory you mention any similar track record of success?

Yes, true or false are irrelevant as I pointed out when dealing with things that are both true and false.

Well that would seem to be a rather obvious difference between how we go about adopting a theory of gravity and how people go about adopting theological positions.

Again, I have already pointed that out way back in Message 73 as you know.

In that message you listed a bunch of stuff that can be tested scientifically and spouted some obviously erroneous nonsense about how "the scientific method is totally useless and worthless" when it comes to investigating how peoples and cultures are formed.That was in response to being asked what methods other than scientific methods you were suggesting be applied to theological questions.It really isn't a post to be proud of.Furthermore the original question remains unanswered: Because all the answers you have provided require abandonment of the "likely to be true" stipulation.Which in itself is rather telling of theological positions....

And again, that too was asked and answered in [mid-709952] as well as others.

You miss my point completely.
Your assessment of what is likely to be correct is garnered from thousands of years of human development.
Bronze age people did not have that advantage.It is a bit disingenuous to make claims of the bible being scientifically inferior to a modern text book on quantum mechanics.

The question was whether or not the stories in the Bible helped to create a culture.You could ask if British imperialism helped or hurt aboriginal australian art. That's not something you could investigate scientifically.

No. The question was this:If one wants to believe things that are likely to be true how does one decide which parts of the bible are helpful and which are a hindrance?Because jar was unable to answer that question he sought to change the question. As he always invariably does. Nor is it a question of theological belief nor a question related to gravity.