geo wrote: ↑Tue May 23, 2023 7:17 pm correlation between flat earth belief and a literal interpretation of the Bible, and it starts to make sense. And that's the motivation for perhaps most flat-earthers.

The traditional triple decker universe with hell below and heaven above us directly implies a flat earth theory.

I finally received my copy of Homo Deus and just finished reading the first chapter. I will comment on one section of interest. In his opening chapter, The New Human Agenda, Harari identifies the right to happiness as the second big human project after the pursuit of immortality. Many people in the...

Chapter Three, The Groping City In “a vast and not merely local catastrophe, … the only signs of life were a few people here and there cautiously groping their way along the shop fronts.” Everyone is blind. Bill shares with us his initial uncertainties about taking food from shops that now have no p...

Writing before the COVID pandemic, Harari makes a few comments that look overly optimistic. He gives a great summary of the death toll from various plagues, but expresses confidence that by 2050 medicine will be able to deal with them more efficiently. He suggests a plague killing millions would be ...

I just started this book and will try to comment on things as they arise. Harari says "We know quite well what needs to be done in order to prevent famine, plague and war – and we usually succeed in doing it.” I look forward with interest to whether he will comprehend how fragile is our current...

Analysis of language about God requires extensive contextualisation to understand the meaning of what is claimed. The empirical evidence must start from the social placement of belief. Speaking of a "rational basis" for any belief can address both whether the belief is true and whether it ...

Well you're certainly in a unique category Mr. Tulip. 😁 I s'pose the list I generated isn't as interesting as expected, but I wanted to point out there are new divisions and Christianity will likely continue to splinter. Many of these are newcomers are divided based on LGBT, Trump, and how ferventl...

The discovery that triffids were carnivorous and could sting a man to death from ten feet away prompted mass removal of the weeds in temperate climes, “where man had succeeded in putting most forms of nature save his own under a reasonable degree of restraint.” However, in the tropics, they became a...

I think The Handmaid's Tale would be best. I only watched the TV series sporadically but my wife was a big fan of it. I find the whole question of natalism raised by this book extremely interesting.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale and text.

Thanks notnilc, welcome to Booktalk. Euler's identity is explained at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity
e to the i pi + 1 = 0

Does this just show an intrinsic relationship between natural logarithms and the circle?

Interesting take on why to believe in God!