John Cuthber

Writing "in God we trust" on banknotes when, in fact, quite a lot of us do not trust in God is dishonest. How people felt about the events of 9/11 or what I think about Tony Blair have no bearing on the matter.

It seems rather odd to assume 25C. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_temperature#Temperature_versus_height

Well, I'd be happy to see Blair arrested and charged over his decision to start a war for no valid reason. By the way, I'm nowhere near London.

I couldn't find data for cyclohexyl sodium, but I suspect it's nearer 50 than 40. Of course, these numbers are a bit suspect anyway. The point remains that a solution of butyl lithium in cyclohexane probably won't chew holes in your skin much faster than saturated caustic soda.

Those might be very strong acids + bases but that's not what's asked for. The question of how corrosive something is depends on what you are trying to corrode. I can get a glass beaker, fill it with hydrochloric acid and put some steel in it and watch the metal dissolve. Or I can get a copper beaker, fill it with hydrofluoric acid and put a glass marble in it and watch the glass dissolve. Which acid is more corrosive? It depends. Incidentally, if we ignore the cyclohexane/ benzene cock-up, he still has a point. Phenyllithium or phenylsodium is still a stronger base than LDA. Alkyl lithium reagents can have pKa values of 50 or more.

The simple answer is that a "feeling" is just chemicals in the brain. You could argue that it's electrical impulses, but those are produced by moving ions around.

Did it occur to you that the reason the Bible contradicts itself is because it's a book of made-up stories.

In principle it would have been paid in gold. Since we left the gold standard, it's a bit less clear, but that's nothing new. The money doesn't actually have any intrinsic value and not does gold. "I would guess that British citizens would like-wise protect their Queen and Prime Minister, regardless of party affiliation, or personal opinion. Guess again.

The fact that the temperature changes complicates things too. Imagine what would happen if the pressure drop was constant, for example, if it continued to drop at the same rate as it does in the first 1000m 0 metres 1000 mB 1000 metres 700 mB 2000 metres 400 mB 3000 metres 100 mB 4000 metres -200 mB That's clearly impossible.

Some of the stories in the Bible are moral, some are not. How can you tell the difference? The answer is that you need a sense of morality. Obviously you can't get that from religion because religion thinks that all the Bible stories are "good". The fact that religion relies on a Bible that tells you you should kill your children for being rude to their parents is, as far as I can tell, proof that religion is not a way to generate moral people. While religion continues to preach intolerance and murder, it is not a guide to moral behaviour.

It is not true to say that we trust in God when some of us don't. In that sense (ie not being true) it's a lie.

Logically, it should say "In the value of this bit of paper we trust". Since a reasonably large fraction of the people who use the dollar don't believe in God, putting "in God we trust" on it is a lie. Surely a blank space is more trustworthy than a lie.

You just cited some page that says "One is the reaction that produces ethylene oxide (the basic building block for flexible plastics)," and yet you still expect to be taken seriously?

Just a thought, how often does anyone think this conversation happens. "Why did you and your spouse split up?" "Because we had sex before we got married". That would be at least some sort of support for the idea and my guess is that it never happens.

What? Even if they just thought " Nice hair!" and then noted the the person thy were thinking about was the same sex that they were.? It seems likely that, given that definition, the incidence of homosexuality will be near 100%

Few, if any, of the so called "facts" could, even in principle, be shown to be facts, So, it figures that they are not actually "facts". So any conclusions drawn from them are , to be polite, "guesswork". Inow, for example,said "To establish this, you must first determine the total percentage of successful versus unsuccessful partnerships, and then out of that group which had sex and which did not. Once you have done that, you would see if there is a strong correlation between sex and breakups." That's not enough. It would establish correlation, but not causation.

OK, that's a testable prediction. If we are still here at Christmas will you accept that religion gets things wrong and science gets things right? If not then you are admitting that your actions have nothing much to do with science and you earlier assertion that you are a "science person" is nonsense.

Religion is a source of many stories: some of them are grossly immoral.

"Is religion an effective way of creating moral human inhabitants of a society" I can't see how it could be. Imagine I'm a dictator of some small country somewhere and I believe that the assertion is true. How do I use religion to improve the people's morals? In particular, how do I make them believe in something they don't believe? More bluntly, sex is generally the only way of creating humans, whether or not they are moral inhabitants of a society.

There was a young couple named Kelly, forced now, to walk belly to belly, because, in their haste , they used wallpaper paste instead of petroleum jelly. On a more serious note, I can't see how it would be possible (or, at least reasonable) to test some of those "facts" For example, what evidence could be used to prove or disprove "Premarital sex tends to break up couples."? As far as I can tell, it's untestable so it's not science.

You are quite clearly not a science person. You -ignore science a lot in your posting, for example the recent one about the Coriolis effect. Religion is not a science. Religion tries to stay the same, science tries to learn and change. All sorts of things are taught at universities, but that doesn't make them science. There simply isn't really any science behind religion with the possible exception of things like sociology or psychology. If the second coming happened when it was predicted then it might lend religion some sort of credibility. However the second coming has been prophesied a lot: but it never turned up when religion said it would. the fact that religion keeps getting the date of the second coming wrong shows that religion has no real idea what it is talking about. If it were a science, then it would be a failed one. Theories fail when they make false predictions. Religion makes false predictions (as shown by any number of failed "end of the world" scenarios") so religion fails. If you were a science person, I'd not need to point that out to you.

Even wiki knows it's not the reason for baths draining clockwise/ counter clockwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect#Draining_in_bathtubs_and_toilets If it were then it would require that the equator ran through the bathroom of the house I used to live in. The sink and bath drained in opposite directions. So, in the world according to Semjase, the equator runs through a bathroom in the North West of England. Even if it were true, it still wouldn't be a breach of the conservation of momentum, but an example of it.

I'm fairly sure that the poles are the only two places that you won't get a Coriolis effect. Do you not understand that it's nothing "unexpected"? If you put your hand in the water and stir it, the water spins. Do you think that is a breach of the conservation of momentum? Did you not understand this comment " Secondly, you're not looking at a isolated system. Conserved quantities (linear momentum, angular momentum, and energy) aren't necessarily conserved in non-inertial frames, or in non-isolated systems." from DH?