Posted on 10/13/2013 11:40:21 AM PDT by CHRISTIAN DIARIST
The atheist community hailed last year’s scientific confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson, for which the British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs was co-recipient this past week of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Higgs had theorized, all the way back in 1964, that there must be something that gives subatomic particles their mass, which enables them to form atoms, which, in turn, form molecules, all of which is integral to creation as we know it.
That something turned out to be the Higgs boson.
And its discovery, declared Dan Barker, co-president of the so-called Freedom From Religion Foundation, an atheist hate group, based in Madison, Wisconsin, “gives God one less place to hide.”
Barker and his fellow unbelievers would like to worship Higgs like, say, they worship Charles Darwin, who wrote the book of evolution. Not the least because Higgs, the 84-year-old physicist, has publicly stated that he does not believe in God.
Yet, Higgs has nothing but contempt for in-your-face atheists like Barker, as fellow atheist Richard Dawkins, the British evolutionary biologist found out last year when the physicist ripped him in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
The Dawkins approach to promoting his atheist views, which are emulated by Barker on this side of the Atlantic, are “embarrassing,” said Higgs. He noted that Dawkins concentrates his attacks on those he deems religious “fundamentalists.” But, said Higgs, “Dawkins, in a way, is almost fundamentalist himself, of a different kind.”
And while Barker sneeringly suggested that confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson undermines the idea of a “hypothesized intelligent designer holding the universe together,” that’s not how Higgs sees it.
“The growth of our understanding of the world through science weakens some of the motivation which makes people believers,” said Higgs. “But that’s not the same thing as saying they’re incompatible.”
Indeed, he said, “Anybody who is a convinced, but not a dogmatic believer, can continue to hold his belief. It means, I think, you have to be rather more careful about the whole debate between science and religion than some people have been in the past.”
Higgs noted that a lot of scientists in his field actually are religious believers. And while he doesn't happen to be one of them, as Dawkins and Barker and their fellow atheists have pointed out, repeatedly, the physicist himself said “that’s just more a matter of my family background than that there’s any fundamental difficulty about reconciling the two.”
The irony in the discovery of the Higgs boson, long regarded as “the most sought after particle in modern physics,” is that it is more famously known as “The God Particle,” which it was dubbed in a 1993 book authored by Leon Lederman, a Nobel-winning physicist in his own right.
Lederman title wasn’t meant to pay homage to the Almighty, but to suggest that creation as we know it just happened on its own.
That the name Lederman facetiously created for the Higgs boson has actually brought more glory to the Lord – without Whom neither Higgs nor his boson would exist – only goes to prove that, truly, “God has chosen the foolish things of the world,” like snarky book titles, “to put to shame the wise.”
Yet they can't explain where the Higgs bosons come from.
>>Higgs refuses to become the demigod of atheists, like Dawkins and Barker, who hate on Christians.<<
And they do. In fact, I have walked away from Darwin Central b/c their atheists have become so extreme.
But let us remember that understanding TToE and other scientific realities is not tantamount to atheism.
The question just gets pushed back a little further - where did the Higgs boson come from? Did it create itself? John 1:1-3, Colossians 1:16, Hebrews 1:1-2.
God hides in plain sight.
>> God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise ...
Hey, is this fun or what?
Higgs is a rare secular atheist. Most are fundamentalist.
The question was not “where does mass come from”, but “how do particles gain mass” - a subtle, but important distinction. You may think that religion will give you all the answers, but those answers are all in the form of “God did it”. Science never asks “who gives particles mass”, because “who” is irrelevant. It is the “how” that matters, because knowing how something is made to happen allows us to make it happen when we choose. Religion tells you that God is the source of everything and if you want something to happen, you must ask God to do it. Science tells you how things actually work, so that if you want something to happen, you can make it happen through your own actions. It is this spirit of self-reliance that forms the primary difference between science and religion.
The Judeo-Christian concept of a faithful creator is what made modern science possible.
Of course He did. And people who are fascinated by His Creation ask "how?" and seek to find out. That's far from verboten in Christianity.
It seems that asking "Who?" in atheist circles very much is, though. You claim the question is irrelevant, but they go hand-in-hand.
“If you want something to happen, you must ask God to do it,” is an arrogant remark. You beg the question: Who, or even, what is YOU? In fact religious people do not even think this way. Maybe Aristotelans think this way, but “Religious”people, or at least Christians mean by “God” as the Creator, which is something more than a “first cause.” Nor is God just that which upon which all things are contingent, but the One who chooses to allow all things to exist. With which we agree with the Muslims.But Jews and Christians go beyond this to say that he chooses somethings to love, which we call persons.
Now in such a bloody world, the term “love”may seem sentimental. It is unsuited to a “Supreme Being,” or a primal “force.” But for us, who think of ourselves as the image of God, and who think we can be physically and spiritually intimate with others, we believe that if we are like the creator, He also like us. So the question of man cannot be separated from the question of God.
Having worked at a National Laboratory, and having been in academia for longer than I’d care to admit, the general rule I came up with was the smarter somebody was, the more they believed in God. Theoretical physicists, mathematicians, you name it, the more they knew about their fields, the more they realized that they only discovered a magnificent system, as opposed to creating a system. Math is the perfect example, of the more that is known about Math, the more is realized that no human is capable of creating such a perfect, and wonderous system. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, scientists believe.
Well, an honest atheist.
I’ve met a few and they’re nice people. No agenda and no contempt for others who think differently.
And conservative to boot.
There was precious little under my control in my atheist days. There wasn't much I could make happen through my own actions. That's a fallacy that we can control events.
My life would have been way different if I had anything to say about how it went.
Thank God it didn't because I would not be where I am today if God weren't in control.
Such simple statements - ones that you believe are so profound. All those particles you are toying with are god particles - not just the higgs boson.
God created the Earth and Universe ex nihilo - out of nothing. We’ll wait while your science figures out how to create anything ex nihilo. Go!
You seem to think it’s all either science or religion. Science, esp. the modern day scientific movement, has its’ roots primarily in Christianity. See Newton [greatest scientist of all time], Galileo, Kepler, Mendel, Kelvin, etc. You claimed:
“It is this spirit of self-reliance that forms the primary difference between science and religion.”
Well one Albert Einstein had something much more poignant to say about that:
‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’
Or
“As a blind man has no idea of colors, so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.” (Isaac Newton)
More Newton quotes:
Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.
Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.
I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.
What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.
Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.
Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent”
No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.
Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation
This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.
Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.
He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.
To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age
How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts?
Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?...and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent...?
To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me
To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.
Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?
Thanks for the ping!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.