Your “Me believing in Flat Earth” paragraph is not showing the consequences of a false belief but of a (probably strawman for your audience) religious-and-false belief; I expect it to offend rather than illustrate, and considered in the overall structure of the essay, I think it brings in the topic of religion too soon.
I wanted situation where believing the wrong thing will obviously lead to a catastrophe. Maybe I should just kill the captain to save the crew, and leave the bishop out of it? That may do it if I make clear say, that we’re all on the same boat and I’m second in command.
Christians may very well know of the Flat Earth strawman and connect it to their own stereotype of an argumentative atheist. If you include it, you have to explicitly mention that educated people at the time really knew the shape of the Earth, or else some reader will use this as an excuse to dismiss you. Probability near 1.
Your “Me believing in Flat Earth” paragraph is not showing the consequences of a false belief but of a (probably strawman for your audience) religious-and-false belief; I expect it to offend rather than illustrate, and considered in the overall structure of the essay, I think it brings in the topic of religion too soon.
I wanted situation where believing the wrong thing will obviously lead to a catastrophe. Maybe I should just kill the captain to save the crew, and leave the bishop out of it? That may do it if I make clear say, that we’re all on the same boat and I’m second in command.
Christians may very well know of the Flat Earth strawman and connect it to their own stereotype of an argumentative atheist. If you include it, you have to explicitly mention that educated people at the time really knew the shape of the Earth, or else some reader will use this as an excuse to dismiss you. Probability near 1.