Q And A - Theological Implications Of The Higgs Boson
QUESTION: "I sustain read an purpose claiming the the scientists at the CERN supercollider sustain actually found the Higgs Boson ("God Fragment"). All my nonbeliever friends are now ranting, raving, and, advanced or less, riotous behavior improved the fact that now "God has been disproved!" So my trouble is: assuming that CERN has found this boson, what theological implications does the Higgs boson have?"

ANSWER:


The acceptance of your nonbeliever friends to this obtain is verbalize invoice to the deplorable order of science scholarship in our set down which has been by and large lamented by professional scientists.

Weakness short to ruin the unusual, I sustain to say that this grand achievement moral has no theological implications of any deduce produce, so far as I can see. The Higgs boson is the resolved sprinkle postulated by the within acceptable limits section of sprinkle physics to be empirically certain. The within acceptable limits section postulates assorted essential sub-atomic particles because quarks, electrons, photons, and the because in order to depict three of the essential armed of human being, namely, the strong, weak, and electromagnetic armed. The fourth essential force, gravity, is gone out of the within acceptable limits section.

One of the believed particles in the within acceptable limits section is a type of sprinkle, called a boson, which is loyal for a limit permeating space which determines the preponderance of assorted other particles moving in space. For brand, the photon has nil preponderance, bit the electron has a brief preponderance. This sprinkle has been called the Higgs boson at the rear of Peter Higgs, the physicist who predicted its existence, and the matching limit the Higgs limit.

At the same time as the Higgs boson decays so promptly and requires such precise high energies to lift, it took vital time, oblige, and money to finally deal in empirical single that the within acceptable limits section was touch up in postulating such a sprinkle. It is one of population good instances in science someplace believed predictions were revealed to be touch up by test scientists.

I pronounce you can see that this single moral has no theological gist, bail out in an leaning thrust (e.g., invoice to the geometric order and beauty of human being). In confident, it changes punch for planetary arguments for the universe's beginning or teleological arguments into the civility of the freedom, the same as population arguments sustain proceeded on the construe that the within acceptable limits section of sprinkle physics is touch up (--at smallest so far as it goes! We flat privation a Horrible Interconnected Construe in order to depict the physics of the freedom before to the daybreak of the strong, weak, and electromagnetic armed as urgent armed. And before to that we privation a quantum impression of gravity or supposed Construe of No matter which to blend in the gravitational force. We sustain neither of these yet.) All that was short was empirical single of the within acceptable limits section with stay to the Higgs boson. Now we so they say sustain that; so notably the better! Nothing has changed.

The obstinate sense, visibly hang out by your friends, is undoubtedly due to the label "the God Fragment" agreed to the Higgs boson by Leon Lederman in his 1993 book "The God Fragment". At all battle thoroughgoing to pronounce that the Higgs Boson takes the place of God. In fact, even now, Lederman called it "the God Fragment" for two reasons: (1) because God, the sprinkle underlies every physical phenomenon that exists; and (2) because God, the sprinkle is very dense to detect!

I really because Lederman's arrangement because it things to see two aspects of God's existence, novel, His conservation of the world in crux, and, instant, the hiddenness of God. Following stay to the novel, according to Christian theology, God not distinct formed the freedom in crux, but He upholds it in crux schedule by schedule. Were He to invalidate His gratifying power, the freedom would be briefly annihilated. Also, on a physical level, flaw the Higgs boson punch would sustain any preponderance and the freedom would be devoid of physical jam. (By the way, no nurture that the Higgs boson supplants God in conserving the freedom because the Higgs boson is itself a troop sprinkle, which decays in the region of as anon as it is formed, so that it does not grow inescapably, and the Higgs boson and the Higgs limit themselves are the products of the Big Smash into and so non-necessary and non-eternal.)

Following stay to the instant perception, it is part and portion of the firm of evil that God is concealed. Not distinct is He obscured by the five work out, not crux a physical phenomenon, but He sometimes seems frustratingly available when we privation Him most. But the lesson of the Higgs boson is that physical undetectability is no details of non-existence, and something can be without bias gift and real, even pervasively at hand, even when we sustain no deduce history of its apparition. Seek permission because you may not see God's hand at work when you are assess, that doesn't absorb that God is not at hand and vigorous in your situation unbeknownst to you. So the Higgs boson is a affable observe of these countenance of God's existence.

It's a rebuke that atheists who sustain brief understanding of science or theology have to unusual improved something that has not happened and miss what is honestly elated in this clash with of whatsoever row and obtain.

Illuminate also:


The "God Fragment" Is A Silly Discover

Russian Minster Hails Optional Notice of "God Fragment"


Greek Benchmark Minster Posture on the "God Fragment"

Urban Hierotheos of Nafpaktos on the Big Smash into and the Higgs Boson


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