Posted on 07/10/2012 7:06:30 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
They found the “God particle.”
That was the headline splashed all over America’s news media. It turns out that the name actually derives from substituting “God particle” for “goddamn particle,” the original name some scientists had given the elusive particle. But the media adopted the former nomenclature.
Why?
Because otherwise the bulk of humanity would not pay attention.
Physicists went nuts. And no one can blame them. For decades, they have searched for the particle that may explain why there is any mass in the universe. And 10 billion dollars was spent on the machine that probably proved its existence.
Without any disrespect to the enormous intellectual achievement of these scientists, let me state that I identify with the mass of humanity that doesn’t really care about the existence of the Higgs boson.
Those scientists and science writers who have likened this discovery to the discovery of DNA are wrong. If significance means relevance to the human condition, the discovery of DNA merited a ten out of ten and the Higgs boson might merit a two.
This does not mean that the search was either a waste of time or money. Both the time and money invested were necessary because satiating our curiosity about the natural world is one of the noblest ambitions of the human race.
But scientific discovery and meaning are not necessarily related. As one of the leading physicists of our time, Steven Weinberg, has written, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also it also seems pointless.”
And pointlessness is the point. The discovery of the Higgs boson brings us no closer to understanding why there is a universe, not to mention whether life has meaning. In fact, no scientific discovery ever made will ever explain why there is existence. Nor will it render good and evil anything more than subjective opinion, or explain why human beings have consciousness or anything else that truly matters.
The only thing that can explain existence and answer these other questions is God or some other similar metaphysical belief. This angers those scientists and others who are emotionally as well as intellectually committed to atheism. But many honest atheists recognize that a godless world means a meaningless one, and they admit that science can explain only what, not why.
In a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Woody Allen, an honest atheist, made this point in his inimitable way. Allen told the interviewer that, being a big sports fan, and especially a New York Knicks fan, he is often asked whether it’s important if the Knicks beat the Celtics. His answer is, “Well, it’s just as important as human existence.” If there is no God, Mr. Allen is right.
One must have a great deal of respect for the atheist who recognizes the consequences of atheism: no meaning, no purpose, no good and evil beyond subjective opinion, and no recognition of the limits of what science can explain.
But the atheist — scientist, philosophy professor, or your brother-in-law who sells insurance — who denies the consequences of atheism is as worthy of the same intellectual respect atheists have for those who believe in a 6,000-year-old universe.
Not only is science incapable of discovering why there is existence; scientists also confront the equally frustrating fact that the more they discover about the universe, the more they realize they do not know.
I happen to think that this was God’s built-in way of limiting man’s hubris and compelling humans to acknowledge His existence. Admittedly, this doesn’t always have these effects on scientists and especially on those who believe that science will explain everything.
So, sincere congratulations to the physicists and other scientists who discovered the Higgs boson. We now think we have uncovered the force or the matter that gives us the 4 percent of the universe that we can observe (96 percent of the universe consists of “dark matter,” about which scientists know almost nothing).
However, ironic as it may seem to many of these physicists, only if there is a God does their discovery matter. Otherwise, it is no more important than whether the Knicks beat the Celtics.
— Dennis Prager, a nationally syndicated columnist and radio talk-show host, is author of Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph
FYI, Templeton Report and Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think …
Thus according to the Rice study the majority of American scientists are people of faith in God - just as I said.
Just because MSN cited the Rice study doesn't make the Rice study circumspect - it was just the first citation I found when looking; blame Google.
Care to address the obvious selection bias in picking politically active scientists from a particular group and and claiming they speak for or are representative of all scientists?
bflr
Again, there is a difference between “faith in God” and; belief in God, a belief in a higher power, or being spiritual.
“She published her initial findings in a 2010 book: Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think,
which documented a surprising openness to religious faith and experience among an intellectual class wrongly thought to be implacably and uniformly hostile to religion.”
So according to the two sources you cited it is “wrongly thought” that science is hostile to religion.
A particular segment of the population likes to push that idea - but it is not supported by the evidence collected by Dr. Ecklund.
She found that the majority of American scientists she spoke to believed in God.
She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious.
The mathematics of M-Theory are very beautiful and, I suspect its pursuers are on the right track. But the energy levels necessary to test it are probably unobtainable.
Though, God knows....
May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you’re dead. Thanks for posting!
As it is the Higgs Bosun is a part of what makes up everything.
What we have seen and the data supports it to a degree is the possibility that we have seen the traces of a Higgs particle.
I don't apply any scripture into science, I know there are some that do.
What I believe will happen, not necessarily in our lifetime, is that science will root down to the basic construction of what the universe is made of and stand in awe of how it was created, and probably impossible to duplicate.
As it is the Higgs Bosun is a part of what makes up everything.
What we have seen and the data supports it to a degree is the possibility that we have seen the traces of a Higgs particle.
I don't apply any scripture into science, I know there are some that do.
What I believe will happen, not necessarily in our lifetime, is that science will root down to the basic construction of what the universe is made of and stand in awe of how it was created, and probably impossible to duplicate.
Thanks..
Excellent and thoughtful.
Thanks! :)
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