Taking its place has been an unending stream of food-like substitutes - "products constructed largely around commerce and hope, supported by frighteningly little actual knowledge".
Like all religious liberals, he came under fire from two sides: from the orthodox, who accused him of infidelity, of turning God into a "stream of tendency" and of substituting vague emotion for definite belief; and from the infidels, for clinging to the church and retaining certain Christian beliefs of which he had undermined the foundations.
The time-travel plot raises an old metaphysical question: Can there be an alternative to what has taken place, a substitute stream of actuality?
Call it stream-of-consciousness shopping.
This means that it will almost certainly be impossible to reduce greenhouse gas concentrations to sustainable levels unless large quantities of low-carbon energy can be brought on-stream to substitute for fossil fuels.
But he suggested that, for Mr. Rangel, the stream of announcements might serve as a substitute for more laborious campaigning that, because of his age and serious back problems, is more challenging this year.
He meant to say "methodology"; regardless, tortured syntax is a poor substitute for a roiling stream of angry invective.
The monumentality of the gallery opening is substituted for an ongoing stream of contact within a balkanized network of peers.
There's also a steady stream of exclusive, limited-edition items: Lacoste shirts reimagined with Snoopy and Woodstock substituting for the crocodile logos, Emissar pilot bags and Jeremy Scott's take on the Swatch.
Instead of installing ventilators, for example, they might substitute different raw materials, eliminating the offending toxin from the stream of production.
But an equaliser finally came after 68 minutes when Carlton Cole, on as substitute for Chamakh, leapt to meet the latest of a stream of crosses from Matt Jarvis on the left.
