John Cuthber

First off, I made three valid criticisms of the OP. The existence of the universe is not really evidence of a God. It is consistent with the existence of a God- but that's another matter. The fact that it snows from time to time could be because there's an abominable snow man who plays with himself. Are you going to start worshipping him? Or perhaps it's Thor's dandruff? Or any other "cause" I can dream up. In particular, as has been pointed out, it cannot be evidence supporting the "Christian" God since it is equally evidence for the Islamic or Jewish versions (and others). The second critical problem is that, even if He exists, then it doesn't actually solve the "prime mover" problem- the OP just pretends it' doesn't matter any more because "God did it". Thirdly, this thread really was in the wrong place. In return, rather than an explanation of why there are gaps in my logic, I get told I'm a propagandist. There are a couple of problems with that approach First- it might be the classic reply of any atheist to the "un-caused caused" problem but that doesn't invalidate it: it isn't propaganda. Secondly the point about the word "propaganda", at least as commonly used, is that it implies deliberately dishonesty. Would you like to justify that particular ad hom? In essence, why are you questioning my integrity? And, for the record, the only important aspect of my understanding of Christianity is that they seem to think that "God did it" or " the question doesn't apply to God" is an answer to the question of "who made God?". Feel free to show that I'm mistaken.

Fair point, but the scientists also keep playing with things just to see what happens which is fairly childish. (obligatory XKCD cartoon) http://xkcd.com/242/

"So its not right to devalue other schools of philosophical thought either and you cannot reject those schools of philosophical thought easily without giving a valid reason," OK Immortal, How about if I do give a valid reason for a couple of "old schools" of philosophy? Assertion: The power or prayer doesn't work. Evidence. Practically everyone in the way of a natural disaster prays- but they get hurt anyway. Assertion: Homoeopathy doesn't work. Evidence take your pick http://www.ebm-first.com/homeopathy/research-papers.html Now I could, in principle, try looking in depth at each and every case I hear of some new "cure" or whatever that the imaginative people put forward. Or I could make the observation that, in every single case I have heard of, unscientific "fads" (and that's being polite about them) simply don't work. Now, after a few decades of making that observation, I feel it's reasonable to, at least tentatively, generalise it as follows: "If it doesn't agree with science then it's probably bollocks." Is that unreasonable? If not, can you give me a concrete example of why I'm wrong?

Incidentally, (at the risk of getting this wrong and being eaten by the geologists here) I'm pretty sure that those lovely quartz crystals you see in rock shops were formed from solution, rather than a melt. Quartz can't crystallise from a melt because there's a high temperature solid form (or two) that forms first. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tridymite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristobalite

The ions exist, undoubtedly. It's the compound that I have yet to hear any evidence for.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barium_hydroxide does better but it's rather toxic and much more difficult to get hold of.

I was very puzzled by the title of this thread. I always thought that we scientists were the childish ones. We never stopped asking " Yes Mummy, but why?". On the other hand, children are relatively easilly misled into believing that there are tooth fairies and bogeymen so perhaps , if not religious per se, they might be particularly susceptible to its pernicious influence.

And not just in Africa. Children get killed and tortured in the name of religion here in the UK too. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-17255470 Isn't faith awesome.

There are two obvious problems (or 3 if you count the fact that this should be in the religion forum). There is no evidence that God exists. If He does exist, what caused him to exist?

Thanks for that.

I think this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_enumeration is the right branch of maths. Unfortunately I don't understand a word of it. So, yes, it's a genuine question.

I suspect that another reason is that the salts are easier to purify by recrystallisation and also are more stable wrt oxidation. Why ask the question, and why put it in terms of "impurity"?

A single crystal of silicon, as made by the electronics industry, is a single molecule and has an awful lot of atoms. The same goes for diamonds and at least some other crystals. It's not just a matter of how many atoms are present in a molecule, but how much variety. There's only 1 isomer for propane, but there are two different chloropropanes and rather a lot of bromochloropropanes. Does anyone know of a general expression for the number of alkane isomers as a function of number of carbons?

Glass does slowly crystallise and fused quartz will (even more slowly) revert to quartz. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devitrification Carbon dioxide (which is not, of course, chemically identical to SiO2) won't readily make the same sorts of structures. On the other hand, aluminium phosphate forms different structures that mimic SiO2

Does connector actually exist?

As far as I can tell that makes no sense at all.

Actually, I had just got back from a quick drink or two. I guess you could reasonably describe the video as political though, as far as I can tell, the good folks of America seem to have elevated the game of rounders to a religion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rounders

Ammonia is a base- it's the lone pair that does it. What's to explain? A solution marketed as, say 50% ammonium hydroxide is about a thousand times less concentrated than the claim. That's wrong enough to count as practically non existent. Also, ammonium ions are present and hydroxide ions are present (albeit damnably few of them) but there's no compound present that you could sensibly call ammonium hydroxide.

In exactly the way which I stated earlier. "Ammonium hydroxide still doesn't exist. Measure the elctrical conductivity of the stuff and you find it's a bit short on ions. If you look at the raman spectrum you find there's nothing new covalent there either." Did you not see it, or did you not understand it?

This is not politics.

Places like the UK are generally pretty wet. But when the weather is cold the water in the air condenses out. The absolute humidity is then quite low. If you take that air and bring it indoors and warm it up but don't add water it's fairly easy to end up with a relative humidity less than 20% which is- I assure you- rather uncomfortable. It's usually less of a problem in domestic premises because cooking, washing etc add water to the ari but in buildings it's a real issue. I know because they forgot to provide humidifiers for the place where I work. It has led to people becoming ill: it's a real problem.

Captain, you might want to think about how "organic" chemistry got it's name before telling us to look at plants. Everyon else If you didn't find, for example, uranium and gold in that sample, it's just because you didn't look hard enough. I'm prepared to accept that the "practically non existent" elements like At and Pm might be absent

At least part of the answer is that uranium is cheap and reprocessing is difficult.

I'm not so sure about that. http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/atomo.html The issue is that making just one molecule of something isn't going to achieve much.

Late on a Friday night anything's possible. Having said that, I rather like absinthe, and that's meant to make you see fairies rather than angels.