I love Dennis; great piece. I think he just summarized Ecclesiastes.
I’ve been doing a little personal research on the implications of the Higgs Boson just for curiosity’s sake.
I found this site that gives a pretty decent explanation of the standard model of particle physics. It’s a pretty good presentation for non-physicists, although it takes awhile to get through:
http://www.particleadventure.org/eternal-questions.html
Not sure how significant the Higgs Boson will be in terms of practical use, but if they ever find evidence of the existance of a graviton, that might be interesting.
There’s an episode of “The Universe” where they talk about God and the universe. Happily they included clergymen but what I liked most was one of the astrophysicists who says the universe is too mathematically perfect to be chance event.
She says that not one sub atomic particle could have been out of place for the creation of our universe to happen they way they believe it did. Add the fact that every other sub atomic particle also had to be exactly where they were and doing exactly what they were doing and the odds become so astronomically vast that it defies reason.
Sad to see Prager buy into the myth of the atheist scientist.
We NOW KNOW that the discovery of DNA rates a 10 on the impact on human lives scale, but for many decades after the discovery it was of little importance - while the Higgs boson may NOW rate a 2 (or less) - who knows what it might rate in a hundred years?
Is it the end of discovery? Hardly.
Determining how it functions and properties can tell us a lot. We could learn how certain cancers work, and how to attack them, or remake a severed limb, or new materials that are lighter, stronger than what we have now.
And here's the kicker. They have circumstantial evidence it exists, nothing definitive.
"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."
It may very well be a step on the path to understanding why there is existence. Time will tell. Whether life has meaning is a subjective question, but scientific discoveries can enlighten certain ways people mean that term. And who says consciousness is unexplainable? Just because he can't explain it doesn't mean it can't be done. There are very good explanations of consciousness.
bflr
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!