gilly54

Wow, your superstring explanation went SOARING over my head! The highest energy level I have an understanding of is 45Mev. (I'm a medical radiation dosimetrist).

I find it incongruous,if that is an appropriate word, that God knew all about quantum physics, superstrings, microbiology, etc., while he creates woman from one of Adam's ribs, and need to be worshipped by sacrificing animals to him. There can't be anyone out there who still believes that men have one less rib than women, can there?

seebs

Don't I wish! We just got one recently in one of the ChristianForums debates. MY EYES! THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!

gilly54

Seebs,

Now THAT is scary in 2002. It would be too cruel to have that person on our (I hope) future atheist TV show (see Media forum). I guess he/she has never seen a chest x-ray. I hope that person isn't breeding.

gilly54

I totally agree,Oolon. I think that anyone who is clinging onto the belief that God provided that "lifespark", with a little bit more rational thinking and alalysis, is only a small step away from rejecting religion. And in my case, what an "Epiphony" that was!

lpetrich

Are you sure that that's not a typo for "45 keV"? Incidentally, that is the amount of energy an electron will get as it falls through 45,000 volts of electric potential.

Here are some familiar phenomena, with energies per particle:

Visible light: 1.8 (red) to 3.1 (violet) eV per photon

Formation of a water molecule from H2 and O2: 2.5 eV
Solid -> liquid water; energy per molecule: 0.062 eV
Liquid water from 0 C to 100 C; energy per molecule: 0.078 eV
Liquid -> gaseous water; energy per molecule: 0.42 eV

Room temperature (20 C, 68 F) in energy units: 0.025 eV

Energy per molecule of water moving as follows:
From dropping 1 m at the Earth's surface: 1.8e-6 eV
Moving 60 mph / 100 kph (car cruising speed): 6.7e-5 eV
Moving 500 mph / 800 kph (airliner cruising speed); 4.7e-3 eV
Low orbit around the Earth (7.6 km/s): 5.4 eV

I agree. It is one thing to be interested in ancient mythologies; it is another thing to regard them as literal truth. And yet another thing to regard some subset of them as truth superior to everything else.

And of the two creation stories in Genesis, I think that the second one, the Adam-and-Eve one is pure fairy tale. The six-day one is somewhat more reasonable, but that one also has some curious discrepancies.

Also, gilly, you might want to try counting the ribs in chest-X-ray pictures -- and invite anyone who thinks otherwise to do so.

And yes, there are still lots of creationists on the loose. It's curious that the non-Fundie churches have been so cowardly on the evolution-creationism issue; they have been very unwilling to publicly criticize creationists.

gilly54

I must have worded my last post unclearly, Ipetrich. I was being facetious about the rib thing.

I didn't make a typo regarding the MeV. I use to operate a 45Mev betatron at Dartmouth/Hanover Medical Center during my internship. We used 25 MeV photons for deep cancers and the various ranges of the electrons, for more superficial lesions. The 45 MeV electrons were used in research. Now I'm working with radiation energies in the KeV range, 380 KeV to be exact. We use Ir-192 in High Dose Rate Brachytherapyand are getting excellent results with prostate, gynecologic, breast and head and neck cancers. What all-loving God would inflict his children with these types of diseases!

Back to the rib thing, I have seen more than 12 pairs in some people. They have what we call 'lumbar ribs'. The normal ribs extend from the 12 thoracic vertebrae, but in some people, the lateral processes are elongated on the first one or two of the 5 lumbar vertebrae.

seebs

A friend of mine has an extra rib on one side; her spine makes a weird u-shape to accomodate it. According to many chiropractors, it is physically impossible for her to be alive. In practice, she gets backaches easily.

lpetrich

Sorry about that. It seems almost too absurd to take seriously -- one of the ribs being unpaired when all the other ribs are paired.

Sorry, 45 MeV seemed a bit high for medical X-rays. But that does seem like interesting research. I remember from long ago an article about antiprotons being used for very precise homing in on tumors -- they will travel a certain distance, being dragged by their interactions with the particles they passed by before they stop and meet a nucleon and annihilate.

But that might be rather expensive -- one has to aim a few-GeV proton accelerator at some target, then select out the antiprotons, cool them off, and then accelerate them.

And as to that superstring question, I'll try to give a really simple, bumper-sticker answer. Basically, as one pounds particles together with higher and higher energies, they act more and more as if they were different versions of the same particle, with superstrings being the ultimate in that -- everything is a superstring vibration mode.

I agree. One wonders why theologians insist on tying themselves up in knots about the Problem of Evil, when they could forget about the doctrine of a beneficient Providence. Maybe Karl Marx was right in a certain way and the religion business is a kind of addiction.

And my favorite example of a grisly disease is rabies, which spreads by making its hosts vicious and aggressive and wanting to bite. The thought of spending the last days of one's life in dangerous insanity seems rather horrible to me.

Which is not quite the same thing as one of a pair missing.

Also, I wonder if extra rib pairs are more common in men then in women, since on the average, men do a bit more growing than women -- men being taller, more hairy, etc.

gilly54

Proton beam therapy is being used today. The particle is accelerated in a cyclotron until it reaches an energy that is enough to penetrate the bodies tissues until it reaches the tumour. It travels through the patient the specified distance,then gives off its energy in a Bragg Peak spread, which hopefully is broad enough to encompass the tumour.

I am still a little skeptical of the total efficacy of this treatment. I'm sure there have been successes, but I know there have also been failures, as several men who chose proton beam treatment for their (prostate) cancer, had the cancer recur and sought salvage treatment at our clinic using HDR.

Hayden

Fair enough, although you have to admit that religion (at least the Christian religion) hasn't made many major discoveries recently.

Sorry, I'm being facetious. But I think that your statement explains some of the possible origins of religion (from an atheist's point of view) - where science and philosophy fail to provide meaningful and accessible answers to life's mysteries, humans have a tendency to turn towards the supernatural. Anyway, that's a bit off-topic.