The Risk of Discovery
&quot;Physics seems to us a promising thing to work on, and alchemy and theology obvious wastes of time.&quot;<p>I&#x27;m not sure which &quot;us&quot; pg is referring to, but the essay gives me the impression that he meant something like &quot;most people&quot; (I could be reading him wrong, but that was my impression).  Alchemy is obviously a waste of time -- I won&#x27;t dispute that, and I suspect that &quot;most people&quot; would agree with that assertion.<p>Being that pg is an atheist, I would expect him to personally believe that the study of theology is a waste of time.  However, even just taking Christian theology into account, given that over 100 million Bibles are sold or given away in the world every year (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reference.com&#x2F;world-view&#x2F;many-copies-bible-sold-year-3a42fbe0f6956bb2" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reference.com&#x2F;world-view&#x2F;many-copies-bible-sold-...</a>), and the Bible continues to be &quot;the most widely distributed and best-selling book in the world.&quot;, the &quot;us&quot; for which it is true that the study of theology is &quot;crazy&quot; or a &quot;waste of time&quot; seems to me to be much smaller group of people than the essay seems to imply.<p>Again, this is just the impression <i>I</i> got from reading the essay.  I would be happy to have pg respond and let me know if my impression was incorrect.<p>(edited to remove unintentional indenting)