NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/sci/physics/19379

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From: [e-mail] (Cameron Randale Bass)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: Religion & Physics Don't Mix
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 22 Nov 92 02:28:08 GMT
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Organization: University of Virginia
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
>>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>>>>     Madness is also in the eye of the beholder.
>>>
>>>A disingenuous and logically bereft statement, at best.
>>
>>     Apparently you believe it is true since you do not seem to
>>     have taken my bet that the majority of the first ten psychaiatrists
>>     I asked would not share your definition of psychosis.
>
>How rigidly do you want to define my definition, which ten
>psychiatrists (I need somewhere to send the bribes) and do
>you imagine that in the face of your obviously delicate
>condition they will antagonize you by even admitting that
>psychosis exists?

     The nature of any psychoses that I may have does not seem to have
     any bearing on your obvious lack of conviction in your
     ersatz and self-serving definition of psychosis.

>>>20 years, 2 million blocks, and it was a public-works
>>>project that provided a damping of economic variation
>>>during the periodic lulls in the continuous rotation of
>>>the dozens of crops grown in the Nile floodplains.
>>>
>>>Imhotep invented workfare.
>>
>>     Hogwash.   Show me documentary evidence that a) it took 20 years
>
>Show me documentary evidence that there is a God.

     The epic of Gilgamesh, the Torah, the Haftarah, the New Testament,
     the Koran, the Vedas, the Iliad and the Odyessey.  All available
     at bookstores near you.  Gotta be careful with what you ask for.

     Now back to the real question.  Show me evidence that it took
     20 years...  that is, other than the fact that current estimates
     put a lower bound of 20 years on Khufu's rule.

>>     b) it was a 'public works' project of the nature of 'workfare'.
>>     I'd even be satisfied with good numbers on the number of
>>     people required to construct it.  You have them cutting, moving and
>>     placing nearly 300 blocks a day, every day for 20 years.
>
>Check out any good, recent resource on Egyptology.

     Wrongo, camel-breath.  As usual, you are promoting speculation as
     fact.

     "In terms of hardcore evidence, we honestly know nothing about
     the times in which Khufu reigned, nor do we really know anything
     about the king himself!" (W. Chandler, "Of Gods and Men: Egyptian
     Old Kingdom" in Egypt Revisited(1989)).

     "... with the paucity of our knowledge, speculations on the exact
     methods of pyramid construction must remain idle ..."  K. Mendelssohn,
     The Riddle of the Pyramids.

     "In the face of so many unknown or unconfirmed factors, speculations
     regarding the number of men required for building one of the larger
     pyramids and the time needed for the work may perhaps appear vain."
     I.E.S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt.

     Edwards goes on to vainly speculate, however,
     in addition you might wish to read the speculations of M. Lauer
     on various ways to construct said pyramid (Observations sur
     les Pyramides).  He, however, presents them as the speculation
     they are.

     Your estimates basically came from W.M. Petrie from the late
     1800's.  Recent egyptology indeed.

     It is also required that 2.5 tonne blocks are placed at an average
     of one every two minutes or so during every working hour of every
     day of every year.  If you wish to make it faster during the
     beginning years, this must become correspondingly faster.  And all this
     with part-time labor.  Good luck.

[speculation deleted]

>>     That there hole is quite a ways from that there rock pile by
>>     foot.  A
>
>That there hole is about half a mile from the pyramid.  95%
>of the volume is raw limestones quarried halfway down the
>hill from the pyramid to the river.  The rest is high-quality
>white limestone from several miles up-river.  The outer
>stones were carefully shaped before they were placed, then
>smoothed.  At the time the Great Pyramid was complete, it
>would have been near-perfectly smooth (chisel ridges, no
>waves or rough spots) and shimmering white.  Now most of
>the outer stones have crumbled off, and the rest (most that
>remain are near the top) have grown brown with oxidation.

     Actually, the only casing blocks that remain at the Khufu's
     pyramid are at the base.  Further, there has been a great deal of
     speculation that main quarries were *across* the river, at the
     quarries that happen to be across the river.  The 50 ton granite
     slabs from the 'King's Chamber' probably had to be negotiated
     through the cataracts at Aswan.  To mention another barely
     possible piece of speculation, there has
     also been recent speculation that the stones themselves
     are not rock but a form of concrete.  A researcher was purported
     to have found a hair inside one of the blocks.  What became
     of this research, I do not know.

     Anyway, we really don't know how they quarried them either.

     Good sources are hard to come by in the pyramid speculating trade.

>On hard surfaces they used rollers.  On soft surfaces they
>used dusty dirt paths studded with transverse timbers, by
>wetting the clay dust on the timbers, you produce a slick
>surface on which a wooden sled slides very easily.  All it
>takes is some rope, a water-skin, and 5-10 people per stone
>to pull it along at walking speeds.  As the inner stones are
>placed they need some rough fitting, which produces a large
>quantity of large limestone chips.  When these are mixed
>with mud and layered, they form a good material for
>building the ramps, which carried the wood-tied paths,
>and spiraled up around the pyramid.  It takes 10-20 people
>to pull a stone up a 5-10% grade, but at this point the
>rate of placement of stones is decreasing.

     There is absolutely no  evidence that this was done in
     construction of a pyramid that is about 7.5 million tons of
     stone.  This is right out of M.E. Monckton Jones (1924)
     and Herodotus (c. 450 BCE).  Unfortunately, it is still
     baseless speculation.

     I seem to vaguely remember some japanese group failing
     miserably at hiring large numbers of Arabs to work building
     a pyramid near Giza using both the old and modern methods.

>Call it 20,000 heads at the peak of activity, and you can
>get the job done.  Not a lot for a region with a population
>of nearly a million.  They'd have come from the entire
>length of the nile and a hundred miles either side of
>it--pretty much the entire civilized world at the time.

     If you're going to misinterpret current egyptology, at
     least get the basis right.   They have it at 20 years
     by 100,000 men during the three months of flooding season
     only.   However that is based on the fact that the lower
     bound of Khufu's rule is 20 years, and more than 100,000 men
     seems to be about the maximum one could on a population basis
     take out of the nile basin (it is also the number suggested
     by Herodotus).  If you really want to go whole hog, a casing
     block on the lower north-east corner of the Northern Pyramid
     at Dahsur has been dated to the twenty-first year of the reign of
     Snofru.  Another, half way up the face, has been dated
     in the following year. This would indicate that this pyramid,
     with only 1/3 less volume than the Great Pyramid, was
     completed in *three* years.

     Good numbers are hard to come by in the pyramid-speculating
     trade.

>Now, it only takes a thousand people six years to build
>something as intricate as the World Trade Center, which
>won't last a tenth of the 7000 years the Great Pyramid's
>owned the planet.

     It also takes steel to build a World Trade Center tower.
     We are talking about a huge rockpile, so this is a non sequiteur.

     Also, aren't we being a bit generous on the date?  Even I would put
     it under 5000.

>>     Apparently you have not heard of the rather common practice of
>>     appropriating the work of previous rulers as one's own.
>
>The previous rulers had over the previous 200 years
>constructed 5 other major Egyptian pyramids and dozens of
>minor ones, most in the same 10 sq. mi. area of the Nile
>valley.  The Great Pyramid was begun and completed during
>20 years of the life of the guy they buried in it.

     Actually, the other two big ones were supposedly constructed
     by Khufu's successors and most of the large pyramid building was
     supposed to have occurred in about 100 years.

     There is also no evidence that anyone was actually buried
     in it, nor in any of the other pyramids.   Snofru supposedly
     had three (one of which he may have acquired from Huni).
     Why would one man need three burial places?  A funny
     thing seems to happen in egyptian 'burial places'.  In at
     least three cases,  sealed 'sarcophagi' have been opened
     to reveal ... nothing.

     Good data is hard to come by in the pyramid speculating trade.

>I'm surprised you didn't bring up slavery.
>
>There appears to have been none, since we've found no
>evidence of any shackles or whips or chains; but I'm
>surprised you didn't invoke it.  You were probably waiting
>to spring your Civil Engineers From Outer Space theory on
>me...

     National strawman day?  I'm game...

     ...I'm surprised *you* didn't bring up the coptic tradition
     (Al Madsudi) that has stones being quarried and then
     laid on sheets of metal and *floated* along roads inscribed
     with symbols.

>>     By the way, by my definition, such work programs are insanty.  And yet...
>
>The only insanity around here is my continued subornation
>of this joke you call an argument.
>
>>     Madness is in the eye of the beholder.  Parts of their society
>>     remain today while the competing societies have vanished.
>
>They probably died happy, though.

     This long-winded argument started with you saying
     that religion was madness.  I was simply responding with the fact
     that madness is in the eye of the beholder.  If they died 'happy',
     that supports my argument.

>>>>     It is inappropriate to judge theology by the rules of science.
>>>Only to a twit.
>>     More of that vaunted logic?  I'm impressed.
>>     "... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of
>>     a personal God is a childlike one.  You may call me an agnostic,
>>     but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional
>>     atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation
>>     from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.
>>     I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness
>>     of our intellectual understanding of nature and our own
>>     being."
>>                              Albert Einstein (1949)
>
>In other words, Einstein rejects God.  I'm not quite a
>professional athiest, either, just an itinerant one,

     No, in Einstein's words "I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding
     to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and
     our own being."  He certainly does not believe in a 'personal God',
     but clearly points out that that is an 'opinion' (which, like
     a$$holes, we all have).  Nowhere does he state, that 'science
     says that belief in a personal God is childlike'.

>practicing my pirouettes and parry-thrusts on your
>ever-flatter cranium.

     Try using something other than vermicelli.

>>     Apparently there are many of us twits who have the wisdom to realize
>
>I'd hardly call misinterpreting Einstein's passage "wisdom."

     I quoted it verbatim.  Interpret at will.  However, I don't think
     you'll find in it support for your argument that 'science disproves
     religion'.

>>     that there are things outside of science, and that outside, we have
>>     only opinions.
>
>That's hardly what Einstein said, but you'll come to
>realize that, in time.

     That's exactly what he said.  However, I doubt you'll ever
     see such things.  Zealots rarely do.

                              dale bass
--
C. R. Bass                                          [e-mail]
Department of Mechanical,
     Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering
University of Virginia                              [phone]