This has nothing to do with christianity or atheism.  It's called a hadron collider because hadrons are what it will be colliding.  And sorry, but if we waited until everyone had 3 square meals to perform an expensive experiment we wouldn't progress at all in our knowledge of the universe, because it isn't a perfect world.  The US spends around a thousand billion dollars a year on it's military (more than everyone else in the world combined).  Why don't you complain about that?

"So this crazy looking $10 billion machine sends a beam of particles racing around the 27 kilometer ring at the speed of light using 1,800 superconducting magnet systems where protons will reach an energy level of 7 trillion electon volts while scientists will detect and record collisions using a network of state of the art advanced computers all designed to try to mimic the conditions at the beginning of the universe a la Big Bang theory that supposedly happened 15 billion years ago."

ZOMG I think my brain just melted.

Anyway, LOL Truck Bot. Transformers would be so lame in that was what they called Optimus Prime. Also, why in the world are we spending this kind of money when our nations' children can't even pass basic math?

@agnophilo@xanga - No one complains because the military gets stuff done. If it wasn't for the military, you wouldn't be on the internet. Why? Because the military invented the internet. They still fund it, too. Not to mention that the military is there to protect you. I would rather the government pour all kinds of money into an institution that would jump to defend me in a case of attack.

@KechiNeko244@xanga - The military invented the internet?  How do you figure?  And that's no kind of argument, the rocket technology nasa uses was largely developed by the nazis.  So genocide is good, right?

Yes, a lot of military spending yields technologies that are useful in the private sector - it also yields technologies used to kill tens of millions of people and rapidly militarize the world.  The only reason Iraqis had military technology to begin with, for instance, was because we manufactured and sold it to them.

@wewong@xanga - The point being that we spend obscenely more than what is neccessary for defense, and "national defense" usually turns quickly into "national offense".  Not to mention all of the defense contracting millionaires and billionaires.

@agnophilo@xanga - that is true also, but it's more "obscene" to have that machine than a 500,000 dollar humvee maybe?

@agnophilo@xanga - Well, I looked it up in my book, Computer Concepts by June Jamrick Parsons, 11th Endition. "The Internet is a global computer network originally developed as a military project, then handed over to the National Science Foundation for research and acedemic use."

"A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "set up a straw man" or "set up a straw man argument" is to describe a position that superficially resembles an opponent's actual view but is easier to refute, then attribute that position to the opponent (for example, deliberately overstating the opponent's position)." (As defined by wikipedia) You took my claim that the internet was developed by the military to state that I approved of nazi doctrines because nasa uses technology developed by nazis. Sounds like a strawman to me.

This experiment won't prove the existence of God, nor disprove it. I don't know why Christians get so worked up about it. And so what if a black hole devours the planet? It's a pretty good way to go.

what i find incredibly interesting is that many of the most intelligent and wise astrophysicists tend to be religious. they understand that they will never know everything, and given the depth of their ignorance, they have faith in a higher being.

i also think it's interesting how some of the most self-centered and arrogant christians are the most aggressive and vicious promoters of intelligent design and creationism. i understand that they believe their faith is strong, but i will never understand why they feel theirs is the only opinion worth hearing.

i would finally like to point out that when the first nuclear pile went critical at the University of Chicago, there were concerns that the chain reaction might run away and destroy the world, and when the first atomic bomb was tested, there were physicists who feared that the bomb might ignite the atmosphere and incinerate the planet. neither times did anything along those fears happen, but those were still relatively reasonable fears, given the amount of uncertainty. it's still a possibility that the world may end on wednesday. scientists don't know everything. but there's no reason to live scared. what happens will happen.

Nothing is going to happen and all the money spent into the project will be wasted. It's like spending $10 millions to find out why monarch butterflies are orange and black.

@synaesthetics@xanga - " but i will never understand why they feel theirs is the only opinion worth hearing."--But you evolutionists feel that way, and you have the government backing you.

@jmsnooks@xanga - actually, true science is based not on the transmission of facts and figures, but the propagation of open discussion of all possible hypotheses, and the presentation of evidence for and against given hypotheses.

evolution is the essence of what modern scientists believe to be a plausible explanation of how the Earth is populated by the present fauna and flora. evolution is not simply what darwin wrote. there are parts of his initial thesis "On the Origin of Species" that have proven wrong. however, there are many parts that have, in fact, been shown to be accurate.

this is different from intelligent design, which is simply a christian fundamentalist feint to cast doubt over the entire scientific process that is currently in favor of evolution, and from creationism, which is an attempt at trying to figure out how God put the world together from roughly 300 ancient words, neither of which resembles science, and therefore should be excluded from a school's class designated as such. I have no problem with their incorporation into a theological course.

@jmsnooks@xanga - actually, if you were actually knowledgeable of the material, you would know that the laws of thermodynamics do not necessarily apply in quantum mechanics. the laws of thermodynamics are principles that govern large populations of matter.

given that this is not your field of expertise, i don't know why you would make such conjectures.