protective enchantments / an atheist / creation / wooden houses

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Carol wondered in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39405>:

<< about all those magical protective enchantments that Snape
mentioned in OoP and why they so dramatically failed in DH >>

Dumbledore undid them all while hurrying to his death, and Snape as Headmaster did not put them back.

MD wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39413>:

<< That's not a slight on Christians, they won't convince me there is a god and I won't convince them there's not, one of us is right and only in death will we know who. >>

If the debate is about whether there is life after death, only if there IS life after death, will the people who believed it see that they were right and the people who disbelieved it see that there were wrong. If there is nothing after death, the people with that belief will never find out that they were right and the other side will never find out that they were wrong. Actually, if there is life after death in terms of another incarnation with no memory of the previous incarnation, people still won't find out if they were right or wrong...

If the debate is about whether God exists, then having life after death doesn't prove that God exists, only that the physical universe has yet another wonder not yet discovered by (live) scientists, but capable of being explained by quantum relatively and dark energy if they did discover it. So the theist and the atheist can continue arguing after they're both dead. Even if, after death, they both see God, they can argue whether what they saw is some kind of illusion, or a powerful but not God being who lies when claiming to have created the universe or even just one complex life-form.

No Limberger wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39414>:

<< all life is based upon organic compounds comprised of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen. At the time of the Big Bang, the only known elements to exist at that time were the two simplest: hydrogen and helium with many a trace amount of lithium. Where, then, did all of the heavier elements come from? From the hearts of stars where these elements are fused through atomic reactions, and in the violent & explosive deaths of stars. Or, is life the natural consequence when all of the right materials and conditions are present for it to begin on its own? >>

As you know, but just in case someone doesn't, the molecules are made of atoms and ions, which are made of electrons and nuclei, and the nuclei are made of protons and neutrons. The electrons and nuclei relate to each other by electromagnetism and some weird quantum effect called orbitals (is that because of conservation of spin? I don't remember), which is just so beautiful and elegant that I can't express it. Electromagnetism is supposed to be made of photons, which is what light is made of.

The protons and neutrons relate to each other through some forces I don't understand called the nuclear weak force (combined with the above into a theory called electroweak), and the nuclear strong force, which has something to do with the protons and neutrons themselvew being made of quarks that are held together by gluons which is called quantum chromodynamics...

And the fact that these elementary particles, photons and electrons and quarks and gluons all just appeared, with their characteristics that cause them to interact with each other to form bigger and more complex things, which in turn form bigger and more complex things, strikes me as just AMAZING. 

The universe could have been made of elementary particles that barely interact with each other, or which interact only by gravitation heaping them into giant undifferentiated globs of crud, or which interact only up to a certain level, such as the equivalents of protons and neutrons that don't interace with each other nor with electrons... AMAZING.

Zanooda wrote in <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPFGU-OTChatter/message/39425>:

<< Here, they build wooden houses and then add a layer of bricks
on the outside :-). It just seems so unreasonable to use lumber(or is it timber?) for construction, especially here in the South, when it burns so easily (I didn't see so many fires in my entire pre-american life) and needs constant protection against termites. And it rots and gets covered with mold if a house gets flooded. I don't like wooden houses. >>

Here in California, brick and cinderblock buildings are not such a good idea. They are called 'unreinforced masonry' and collapse almost explosively in earthquakes. Even poured concrete buildings need steel reinforcement elements to survive common-size earthquakes. I can't imagine how the few surviving historic adobe houses have survived.

Built of wood with a layer of bricks on the outside? Ornamental brick facing is often cute and can be magnificent, but I kind of thought that 'old' houses were framed in wood and walled with lath-and-plaster, while less-old hours are framed in wood and walled with drywall panels.

Granted, I've heard the argument that we can't afford to chop so many forests down and should use light-weight steel to frame houses and other cheap structures instead of wood, as well as using heavy-weight steel to frame skyscrapers.