<p>Suggestions for books to read: “The Case for the Creator”, “The Case for Faith”, “The Case for Christ” all by Lee Strobel. He’s a legally trained investigative reporter who examined the claims of Christ, reaching the hard-won verdict that Jesus is God’s unique son. He’s also a former atheist, holds a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School and was an award winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune. </p>
<p>anyway, just thought you might find these interesting. Just a kind suggestion of books to read. I thought they were really well written and fascinating.</p>
<p>It sounds like the OP is only concerned about Harvard, not larger society. And certainly there is a stereotype that ivy culture shuns religion, especially Christianity. I think it’s overstated, but there is certainly reason for a high school student to pose the question. In general, I would say that most students at ivies have a religion which they believe in, but that it’s not a large part of their life or something they think about on a regular basis. There probably is a large agnostic population as well. And these people aren’t going to mock you as long as you aren’t in their face about religion.</p>
<p>Well, from my understanding, Newton’s Law of Gravitation deviates from accurate values under the following circumstances: when dimensionless quantities increase towards greater values, when gravitational forces must travel at a distance (due to gravitational propagation effects), and high-potential, high-velocity systems. In such instances, General Relativity must be used. But Newton’s equation is sufficient for practical purposes (i.e. high school physics classes) even though there is inevitably some measure of error in the calculations once the system is under the influence of variables that induce inaccuracy. Simply put, Newton’s law assumes that gravitational attraction is diffused spontaneously and does not actively reason why this “action at a distance” phenomenon occurs. The spontaneity of gravitational attraction, however, is not true, especially at great distances when large celestial objects are involved. There is a substantial transmission delay in gravitational attraction that leads to the instability of planetary and stellar orbits. This is precisely the reason why General Relativity was developed – to obtain a macroscopic understanding of the force of gravity. But given the time period and primitive nature of seventeenth-century technology, Newton’s Law of Gravitation was a tremendous insight and a monumental early development in classical mechanics.</p>
<p>As for my second statement, you are correct. I had meant to type “similarities” rather than “discrepancies” since no experiment has found any fundamental disparities between the two types of masses (beyond a certain margin of acceptable experimental error). Yet, there remains to be a clear reason why these two are equal to each other. For purposes of General Relativity, it is simply assumed that these inertial and gravitational mass are equivalent.</p>
<p>Wow, this is definitely my first time stalking around the Ivies’ threads, but the discussions here are really impressive…especially mifune’s lol. You people’s intellectual powers make my inferior mind swim. ;)</p>
<p>But yes, I love how the talk deviated from the OP’s question after a while…not that minded lol. And btw, does anyone have any kind of statistics concerning, say, the religious diversity at different colleges? Just asking. :)</p>
<p>^I have a .pdf file with the percentages of Jewish students at many schools, but I’ve never seen any other data on religious diversity at university.</p>
<p>I think Alumother needs to join this discussion and provide a 5-day don’t-contradict-me-because-I’m-right lecture on the use of such language. :)</p>
<p>Excellent imitation! You sound just like her! :D</p>
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<p>No, her half-baked arguments were effectively derailed (to begin, she failed to even understand the meaning of “mild” in the context in which it was used) and her opinions were ridiculous. </p>
<p>For those who are befuddled regarding this present course of discussion, please ignore. We are referencing a thread from a different forum.</p>
<p>The problem was that Alumother was looking at the other colloquial definition of acquaintance, which refers to someone that one may have recently met or someone that one does not know well. It is simply the disconnect between generations: she was applying “acquaintance” to “acquainted with”. In her view, it is redundant to say mildly when an acquaintance is already someone you do not know well. Of course, these words maintain differences that prevent the implication of limited knowledge, which is inherent in the colloquial “acquaintance”, to the phrase “acquainted with”. Therefore, I must agree with mifune, but I must disagree with silverturtle and mifune’s use of the formal dictionary definition, which does not apply to this argument.</p>