{"id":1174,"date":"2015-10-09T06:16:46","date_gmt":"2015-10-09T11:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/?p=1174"},"modified":"2015-10-09T16:50:17","modified_gmt":"2015-10-09T21:50:17","slug":"1174","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/2015\/10\/09\/1174\/","title":{"rendered":"Freethought #FridayReads (REPOST) &#8211; A Corner of the Veil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The proof was neither arithmetical, nor physical, nor esthetical, nor astronomical; it was irrefutable. The proof of God&#8217;s existence had been achieved.&#8221;<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 120px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/CORNER-OF-THE-VEIL-Novel\/dp\/0684846675\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full \" src=\"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/files\/2013\/03\/20130301-171845.jpg\" alt=\"20130301-171845.jpg\" width=\"120\" height=\"182\" \/><\/a><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Corner of the Veil<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Just imagine it \u2013 an unassailable, irrefutable, irresistible proof of the existence of God. What would humanity do with such an artifact? Lawrence Coss\u00e9 posits that it might not carry the broadly beneficial effects that most people have come to associate with theism, and instead flirts with the possibility that a rock-solid proof of god should be classed in with such potentially civilization-ending plot devices as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ice-nine\">ice-nine<\/a> from Kurt Vonnegut, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Deplorable_Word\">Deplorable Word<\/a> from C.S. Lewis, the floating corpse of Jehovah in James Morrow\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Godhead_Trilogy#Godhead_Trilogy\"><span style=\"color: blue\">Godhead Trilogy<\/span><\/a>, or the hypothetical zombie contagion in far too many books to name.<\/p>\n<p>In the process, the author has a go at the ecclesiastical establishment, the political establishment, and any number of social conventions and institutions, in the proud tradition of French satire. While this book may not quite fit the expectations of English-speaking audiences craving a continental thriller, after reading Dan Brown, I&#8217;m inclined to think this is probably for the best.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The proof was neither arithmetical, nor physical, nor esthetical, nor astronomical; it was irrefutable. The proof of God&#8217;s existence had&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freethought-in-popular-culture","category-friday-reads"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1174\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/backgroundprobability\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}