Reply #11: He is one of the most respected linguists in America. I presume that... [View All]

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...when he says he did field work on this that he's using methodology that is the benchmark for other linguists.

Your logic is a little strange here. You say that a linguist shouldn't be studying religion because he isn't trained in religious studies, but now you're saying that you'd trust a religious studies professors linguistic analysis? But religious studies professors don't do linguistics?

This is more like a linguist visisting a foreign country and doing a study on linguistics in that foreign country rather than a study on history or art. Lakoff is totally within his field of expertise here.

Furthermore, like I said above, your argument is more like you don't believe that there isn't any left theologian who can't provide a coherent articulation of their theology (and your evidence is that there are plenty at Harvard, Yale and Chicago who can). That's not what Lakoff says. He says that the AVERAGE liberal christian (the member of the +40% of Americans) has a harder time explaining their theology relative to the average conservative chrisian.