I should show this to my coworker who appears to believe in the "Hollow Earth" theory [1] which states that essentially the Earth is hollow and there're continents and humans frolicking about.

Ah, but according to him... while it's our Earth that is hollow, it's not the Earth in this "space-time". In a different "space-time", the Earth is hollow.

If you're curious, he believes in Falun Gong, of which I've read the first few pages of essentially their "bible" written in 1993 [2]. The first few pages basically says something like... in our past lives we were god-like but we've done bad things so we were demoted to a lower plane, and we kept doing bad things until we've been demoted to the lowest plane: Humans living on Earth. If you become one with Dafa, you can become divine. Two weeks prior, I had read the first ten chapters of the bible (Genesis) and I thought THAT was truly bizarre. But this is on a whole new level! :)

My coworker believes this with all of his heart - I spotted him yelling at the clouds asking for rain so his plants could grow and when it rained 10 seconds later he smiled at me. I'm 90% sure he believes he has the ability to control the weather. <insert "mind blown" gif here>

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth

[2] http://en.falundafa.org/eng/flg_2006.htm

If you enjoy this kind of reading as I do (holy books of different religions), try reading the Book of Mormon, I bet you will find it on par with the Falun Gong's one.

On a side note some book about the science behind Homeopathy would be incredibly fun to read as well.

Honestly, while I'm sure I will find it amusing and I do find this stuff fascinating, I'm truly afraid of some of this stuff being converted to long term memory and having something more important being discarded :)

That's why I stopped reading the bible after the first 10 chapters or so and why I only lasted a few pages with the Falun Gong book. I have to stop there because I do not want to derail this thread further and because several "Hollow Earth" believers are downvoting my original post :)

Valid point!

Can I have some of the stuff he is smoking? I doubt if this article will help your cause. Given his outlandish beliefs, I doubt whether this co-worker of yours is open to any scientific reasoning.

If you think his beliefs are illogical, just wait until you see his code!

I'm not very knowledgable about his religion, but I think he also shares some of his beliefs with fundamentalist Christianity. He was quite upset about the supreme court ruling on gay marriage and yelled to me "God hates gays!". I simply nodded my head as I wasn't sure how else to respond without offending his beliefs.

As one of the only non-believers in the office, I have to tread lightly. When a different coworker, who is strongly Christian, expressed his doubts about what happens when we die, his faith was restored by others because heaven "sounded good" (because we should totally choose our beliefs based on what sounds good). I personally wanted to advise him to convert to Islam because to me personally having 27 virgins in heaven "sounds better" to me! But I simply keep my mouth shut as anything I say will surely offend someone.

>I simply nodded my head as I wasn't sure how else to respond without offending his beliefs.

I know you have to work with the guy, but some beliefs should be offended. "God hates gays!" is just a delusional anthropomorphic version of saying "I hate gays!".

He can't even take responsibility for his own prejudices!

> When a different coworker, who is strongly Christian

Did he have any opinion about the linked article WRT geologists not finding much evidence of Hell below the surface? I've heard widely varying comments from Christians regarding Hell so I can't even make a prediction.

Not trying to get you in trouble with coworkers, but it is interesting to read alternative interpretations of reality, which is why every post so far is about your coworkers not the article itself. I liked the article. Not bad.

I'm curious, is there any mention of an "underworld" in any Christian Bible?

I had the impression it appeared in other mythologies, whereas the Christian "Hell" is either on "a different plane of existence" (same for the "Heaven") or it doesn't exist yet (and will be created after the "second coming" and "Final Judgement"), depending who you ask.

> I'm curious, is there any mention of an "underworld" in any Christian Bible?

The idea that Christianity is contained entirely within the Bible is a fairly new idea within Christianity (its one of the new doctrines that separated some branches of Protestantism from the established Catholic -- as well as Orthodox, and even other Protestant -- belief.)

The Christian bible does not definitively state where Hell is, and doesn't explicitly call it an "underworld". But there are also no references to different "planes of existence".

There are of course no actual references to "hell" in the original texts at all. Several other words are used in the old and new testaments. Which of these correspond to "hell" is up to the translator and the translations don't agree. Some of the words (Hades) were literally underground. Others (Gehenna) not so much.

Wikipedia has a discussion about it. It seems like the "literally inside the Earth" interpretation is trending downward, which isn't surprising since biblical literalism in general seems to be declining.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_views_on_hell#Hell_a...

> Some of the words (Hades) were literally underground. Others (Gehenna) not so much.

AFAIK, Hades isn't in the original text either; I do know it appears in Greek OT texts as a translation of the Hebrew Sheol (while the Hades of Greek mythology is literally an underworld, the Sheol of pre-Christian Jewish belief is, again AFAIK, not.)

> It seems like the "literally inside the Earth" interpretation is trending downward, which isn't surprising since biblical literalism in general seems to be declining.

The "literally inside the Earth" interpretation isn't particularly grounded in Biblical literalism (though the groups holding to those two beliefs may overlap significantly.)

"Hades" wouldn't be in the original Old Testament, but it is in the New Testament. As you noted, it's basically how "Sheol" was translated into Greek. So in the New Testament, they continued using "Hades". That's my understanding, anyway.

It seems like Sheol was considered to be underground, though, since it referred to the grave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheol#Judaism

Again, though, this is just my understanding. I'm not a biblical scholar and I can't read Greek or Hebrew.

Oh, right. Because Christians are stupid. I get it. Hehehehehehe

> As one of the only non-believers in the office, I have to tread lightly.

Isn't he one of the only Hollow-Earthers in the office? If his beliefs are tolerated, do you have any specific reason to believe that yours won't be?

I happen to share a private office with him so I'm more aware of his beliefs than others. And yes I have specific reasons, but I'm not going to state them publicly. He has confided in me some personal family matters which demonstrate to me his intolerance.

I meant more along the lines of the office in general tolerating your beliefs, but if you share an office with him, that might be more of a concern.

And fair enough; your situation is your own, and you know it better than the rest of us.

Science? Pfft. They just want to keep you locked-up inside your little box. The elite know all about the hollow-earth, there are aliens that live under our earths core, they have a small ball of magnetar they have transported there which powers their civilisation and enables the so called 'gravity' effect on the surface. The aliens experiment on us all the time, even leaving messages to taunt us (crop circles etc). If you believe you will know the truth.

/s

Admittedly, some of them can play a pretty good version of "Stairway To Heaven" on their "magnetar".

And I believe, "Elite" should be spelled with two threes and a plus.

Obligatory YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P47OC439x88

I'd love more stories like this. It's weird to think about some of the big gaps in knowledge I take for granted. There's plenty we learned through school about the world around us, but a surprisingly small amount of that came with "and this is how we know."

Which is really really important in sorting out information from misinformation now that I think about it.