Believing where we cannot prove

[Andrew, Jr.]

Dearest AJ,

I am lost now. Totally. I have reread everything so many times, and I am still lost.

I can tell you this from my pov, there is nothing wrong with inter-racial or inter-faith marriages/civil unions. I don't believe in oppression. I think we all need to focus on living in peace, and to educate ourselves for peace. We need to act justly, behaving with civility, and to revere ALL that God has made. If we plant peace in our hearts and souls, then the world would be a much better place.

Andrew

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Andrew, Jr.

Dearest AJ,

I am lost now. Totally. I have reread everything so many times, and I am still lost.

I can tell you this from my pov, there is nothing wrong with inter-racial or inter-faith marriages/civil unions. I don't believe in oppression. I think we all need to focus on living in peace, and to educate ourselves for peace. We need to act justly, behaving with civility, and to revere ALL that God has made. If we plant peace in our hearts and souls, then the world would be a much better place.

Andrew

Andrew:

If I gave the impression that I thought YOU believed that interracial or interfaith marriages were wrong I apologize. I was not talking about *your* beliefs. I was talking about beliefs that non-trivial numbers of people hold.

Cheers
Aj

[dreadgeek]

So in Britain a group of skeptics are trying to get one of big chain pharmacies, Boots', to stop carrying homeopathic remedies because, well, not to put too fine a point on it but homeopathy is a load of hokum.

This from the organization's web site:

Following on from his 'law of similars', Hahnemann proposed he could improve the effect of his 'like-cures-like treatments' by repeatedly diluting them in water. The more dilute the remedy, Hahnemann decided, the stronger it will become. Thus was born his 'Law of Infinitesimals'.

Taking a single drop of caffeine and diluting in ninety-nine drops of water creates what is known to homeopaths as one 'centesimal'. One drop of this centesimal added to another ninety-nine drops of water produces a two-centesimal, written as 2C. This 2C caffeine potion is 99.99% water and just 0.01% caffeine. At 3C the dilution is 0.0001% caffeine, at 4C it's 0.000001% caffeine, and so on. Homeopathic remedies are commonly sold at 6C (0.000 000 000 1%) and even 30C (0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 1%) dilutions, which homeopaths will often drip onto little balls of sugar to sell.

When these numbers are written out, it's easy to see how absurd they are. At 12C you pass what is known as the Avogadro Limit*, the point at which there is likely nothing of your original substance left.

By the time you reach 30C, you have more chance of winning the lottery five weeks running than you have of finding a single caffeine molecule in your homeopathic sleeping draft. It's just ordinary water, dripped onto ordinary sugar.

*Avagadro's number is 6.022137 × 10^23. It’s the number of atoms or molecules of a substance in a number of grams of that substance equal to its atomic mass. So 1 gram of elemental hydrogen or 12 grams of carbon12 will have Avagadro’s number of atoms. This amount is also called a mole – so a mole of anything has Avagadro’s number of elementary particles – a mole of water has Avagadro’s number of water molecules.

http://www.1023.org.uk/what-is-homeopathy.php
http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1536

Cheers
Aj