Carse 2008 Project Announcement

August 11, 2024

James Carse’s The Religious Case Against Belief, published in 2008, was a groundbreaking work. Tragically, Carse passed away in 2020, just as large language models (LLMs) were making amazing advances. The book’s complex language, likely with a Flesch-Kincaid score above 15, makes it inaccessible to many readers. This is unfortunate, as its insights deserve a wider audience. Imagine if this influential book could be simplified without losing its core message.

My tentative plan:

• Convert the epub version of the book into asciidoc.
• Store the whole thing in GIT with one sentence per line.
• Render it using hugo.
• Gradually simplify the original text using some LLM(s).

I have no timeline on this work. It might take a long time.

Penguin Press holds the copywrite on the original text so I can’t make this project public until the original text is largely replaced. Contact me if you want to collaborate.