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Higgs Boson: So What?

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Logo of CERN. Have they found the Higgs boson? And what if they have?

Two days ago the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced some data they actually gathered in December of last year. They found a new subatomic particle, and they think they might at last have the Higgs boson. The news has excited most laypeople and many scientists. But no one seems able to say what the Higgs boson is, or what finding it really means.

Higgs boson according to CERN

The staff of CERN announced their find at CERN’s offices in Geneva, Switzerland. They did not say that they had the Higgs boson, but only that they had something like it. Whatever they have is more than a blip on  a tracing:

We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV.

“Five sigma,” in statistics, is almost an ironclad guarantee. Scientists describe subatomic particles, not by their weight, but by their energy; hence “126 GeV.” That makes it 126 times as heavy as a proton, and the heaviest subatomic particle anyone has found so far.

The data come from two sets of experiments on the Large Hadron Collider, the largest atom-smasher in the world. The names of those experiments are ATLAS and CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid).

The Standard Model

Large Hadron Collider. Has it found the Higgs boson?

A section of the Large Hadron Collider. Photo: User “solarnu” (Flickr.com); Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Derivative 2.0 Generic License.

Why does the Higgs boson matter? Theoretical physicists try to explain all of physics in terms of certain fundamental particles of matter. They have a theory, the Standard Model of Particle Physics, to explain how all the particles they have seen, work together and combine. Protons, neutrons, and electrons can explain chemistry and electricity. But much smaller particles make up each of these three. Bosons are a special case. They each carry one of the elementary forces of physics. Specifically, W and Z bosons carry the “weak force.” Photons carry electromagnetism. “Gluons” carry the “strong force.” (The Standard Model has no boson to carry gravity. A particle like that would have no mass, and would travel at the speed of light.)

The problem: one type of particle is missing. That particle is the Higgs boson. The W and Z bosons cannot exist without it. For that matter, neither can anything else. The Higgs boson, according to this theory, is the source of mass.

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Higgs boson hype

The newspapers, magazines, and TV channels have played up the Higgs boson for all it’s worth. More stunningly, several scientists, in and out of CERN, seem almost giddy with their excitement. The National Post (Canada) quotes two scientists at CERN talking about understanding “dark matter” and even traveling at the speed of light. (If one could somehow “switch off” the Higgs, then an object would weigh nothing and could easily reach the speed of light and stay there.)

Just one catch: the Standard Model says nothing about dark matter, or about canceling out the mass of the Higgs boson, or what that would do to the larger object.

The Wall Street Journal broke from its usual level-headed policy. It carried this piece that called the Higgs boson “the spark that caused the Big Bang.”

The Los Angeles Times talked about US scientists being jealous of CERN. Why? Because CERN has the LHC, and Congress refused to build the Texas Superconducting Super-Collider.

The Daily Telegraph (London) interviewed Peter Higgs, who said forty years ago that such a particle must exist. Now that CERN has found it (maybe), even he admits: he has no idea what it’s for, or how to use it. At least he’s honest.

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So What?

In fact, nothing in particle physics says, or implies, that without the Higgs boson, the Big Bang could not happen. Then again, nothing says that it could happen. This is another heavy particle, nothing more. And no matter what anyone says, the Higgs boson cannot prove anything about how the universe came about. No one can prove anything in science. One can only disprove something. CERN has shown one thing only: the Standard Model still holds. So far.

Thomas Fleming, in The Daily Mail (London), finally gave the proper perspective. He scathingly accused the “press lords who tell us what to think” of having a hidden goal. That goal: to make God unnecessary. (He has a point. Lawrence Krauss, at the University of Arizona, now calls the Higgs boson the “Godless particle.”) Nor does this stop with the quest for the Higgs boson:

The US government is actually spending billions upon billions of dollars looking for extraterrestrial life forms, and why?  Because they think that the discovery of a virus on Mars will prove that man is not special and there is no God.  There must be a cheaper way, some deity-destroying pill we could all take.  I feel sure there is government money for such a program.

My biologist friends use to tell me that there is no mystery about how life originated on earth.  After all, given infinite time and an infinite variety of circumstances,anything can happen.  This is an insincere argument, since it is precisely the scientists who have limited both the time and the circumstances in which life might have originated.  Nobel laureate Francis Crick was honest enough to see the thing was impossible, which is why he  put forward the hypothesis that life is alien on earth, having arrived by way of spores from outer space.  This conveniently gets us back to infinite time and circumstances, but it is really a confession of failure.

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Right again, though Fleming oversimplified the case. Francis Crick did give up on abiogenesis (life from non-life). He knew that DNA had far too much information for that. So he and Leslie H. Orgel came up with directed panspermia. According to them, aliens, either in this Galaxy or in another, fired a brace of missiles, each laden with bacteria and blue-green algae, in all directions from their dying home world. One crashed on Earth, and we are the by-product. That concept found its way into two popular science-fiction franchises on television:

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  • Star Trek: The Next Generation (“The Progenitors”)
  • Babylon Five (“The Old Ones”)

Fleming ends by quoting William Blake, who threw back in their faces the mockery of François Arouet de Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau, and of even earlier philosophers:

The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s tents do shine so bright

To which, no doubt, Blake would add the Higgs boson.

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.

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[…] Reprinted from Conservative News and Views This entry was posted in News by Terry Hurlbut. Bookmark the permalink. […]

Paul Burnett

“So what?” is so typical of the creationist response to actual science. If some scientific finding doesn’t prove creation happened 6,000 years ago or Noah’s Worldwide Flood really happened or the sun really does go around the earth, “so what?”

Every time science learns something else about how things work, the creationists’ god gets less and less necessary. Volcanic eruptions and earthquakes aren’t caused by gods or demons, diseases and storms aren’t caused by gods or demons, solar eclipses happen and spring comes every year without gods or demons needed as an explanation – and the creationists don’t like that one bit.

The “god of the gaps” in scientific knowledge keeps getting smaller and less necessary, so the creationists carp “so what?”. Their ultimate goal is to destroy science and the Enlightenment, and go back to the Dark Ages of ignorance and scientific illiteracy, when their gods and demons were much more important.

Bob Jones

I wouldn’t say that mesons are among the “building blocks” to which the Standard Model refers. A meson is a particle consisting of a quark and an antiquark which decays in a tiny fraction of a microsecond. In particular, they are not elementary particles.

Bob Jones

Hi Terry,

You write,

“That makes it 126 times as heavy as a proton, and the heaviest subatomic particle anyone has found so far.”

I’m not sure where you got this information. If you had bothered to check your facts, you would have found that a 126 GeV Higgs has around 134 times the mass of a proton. The statement about the Higgs being the heaviest subatomic particle is also incorrect as stated. What you meant to say was that it’s the heaviest elementary particle. For example, a Uranium nucleus is a composite “subatomic particle” whose mass is almost twice the mass of a 126 GeV Higgs boson.

You call the LHC an “atom-smasher” but these experiments have nothing to do with smashing atoms. To make a Higgs boson, you collide beams of protons at very high energies.

In the section entitled “The Standard Model”, you say

“Protons, neutrons, and electrons can explain chemistry and electricity. But much smaller particles make up each of these three.”

Once again, you misunderstand the science and write something that isn’t true. According to the Standard Model, protons and neutrons are made up of quarks and gluons, but the electron is believed to be an elementary particle. All attempts to date to look for components or substructure of the electron have failed.

You go on to say

“The W and Z bosons cannot exist without it. For that matter, neither can anything else.”

Actually, the Higgs boson does not cause the W and Z bosons to exist. It is simply part of the mechanism that gives them mass. If you formulate the theory of the weak force, you find that these particles do not naturally have mass and so there must be some other particle or particles to give them mass. The hypothesis of the Higgs boson is the simplest way of achieving this, but there are lots of other models of electroweak symmetry breaking which postulate others kinds of Higgs fields. Your second statement, that nothing can exist without the Higgs boson, is completely meaningless for these same reasons.

Now you may argue that all of my points are rather technical, but actually, I think the broader point you’re trying to make here is even more problematic. You think that liberals are hyping the discovery of the Higgs merely in order to make God unnecessary. Anyone with half a brain can see that this discovery has nothing to do with religion, and if you actually understood what the CERN scientists have discovered, you would agree that this an incredibly significant milestone in the history of science, worth every bit of hype that it’s getting. The Higgs plays an absolutely fundamental role in the Standard Model. If scientists are able to confirm that the new particle has all of the predicted properties, it will be the first example of an elementary scalar particle, and it will be unlike any other particle that we know. If it does not have these properties, then the discovery is even more profound.

Fergus Mason

“But you cannot show that liberals aren’t trying to make exactly that of this discovery”

Can you show that they are?

Personally I think anyone who thinks the Higgs boson argues one way or another for the existence of gods is a moron. It’s a particle. It adds to the Standard Model. Its theological implications are exactly nil.

“assuming that CERN can follow-up and show that it is valid”

Fermilab already announced an almost identical result. It’s valid.

Fergus Mason

“Gotcha.”

Nope. Krauss didn’t say anything about the Higgs boson disproving the existence of a god. He just said it should be called the “Godless particle,” which is what we secularists call a “joke,” and pointed out that it fits in with a model of a naturalistic universe. Which it does.

Bob Jones

I don’t claim to know what liberals are trying to do. It’s possible that someone is using this Higgs discovery to try and disprove God. If they are, then I think it’s just as silly as creationists who think the Higgs is evidence for God. The problem with your statement is that you have not presented any evidence to support it. If liberals are using this discovery to disprove God, why don’t you give an example of a liberal doing it?

You included in your post the snarky comment “assuming that CERN can follow-up and show that it is valid”. It’s great that you’re skeptical, but when you say this, I can’t help but think that you’ve misunderstood the news from CERN. The present story is already a follow-up of a previous announcement from all the way back in December. Back then, both of the collaborations at the LHC were reporting evidence of a Higgs boson at around 126 GeV. At the time, each group was seeing an excess of about 3 sigma, which means they were already 99% sure that the signal was real. We now have evidence from the two independent collaborations, each with thousands of member scientists, using completely different methods, and each reporting excesses of around 5 sigma. In addition, two different collaborations at Fermilab recently reported a Higgs signal with a statistical significance of 2.9 sigma.

So the existence of a new particle with the decay properties of the Higgs boson has been established beyond any reasonable doubt. At this point, we’re not trying to check that the discovery is “valid”. We’re just trying to measure the properties of the new particle, determine its spin, and so on. Whenever I hear creationists saying that the results of these experiments have yet to be confirmed, I sense a lot of suspicion and resentment of science. There’s really no need for these feelings. The discovery of a new particle is something we can all celebrate.

Bob Jones

Okay, so Lawrence Krauss thinks the Higgs boson eliminates the need for God. Fair enough. I think he’s an idiot. This discovery is a huge breakthrough in particle physics, and I think that you and Krauss ought to engage with the actual science instead of debating its theological implications…

Fergus Mason

“so Lawrence Krauss thinks the Higgs boson eliminates the need for God.”

Lawrence Krauss has been saying there’s no need for a god for years. I don’t see that he’s changed his tune any in the last week.

Bob Jones

“Lawrence Krauss has been saying there’s no need for a god for years.”

Sure he has. Any idiot can see that the notion of God is not necessary, and the discovery of the Higgs changes nothing.

Fergus Mason

“Any idiot can see that the notion of God is not necessary, and the discovery of the Higgs changes nothing.”

Absolutely. It just makes the Standard Model that bit more complete. Anyway, as I already said (until Terry disappeared the comment for some reason) I’ll be seeing Krauss on Friday and hopefully I’ll have a chance to chat to him about it.

Fergus Mason

“That comment disappeared because I thought you were “having me on,” and dropping a name you knew by reputation only.”

Fair one, Terry; I understand how it could have looked that way and it was good of you to be so open about your reasoning. Krauss isn’t a friend of mine or anything like that, but I will be at an event with him at the weekend. James Randi and Eugenie Scott will be there too. I move in exalted circles :-)

AquilesElHeleno

I’ll leave the commentary on particles themselves to others, but your incorporation of Fleming is profoundly anti-intellectual on your part. Why include him in this article in the way you have? Or at all?

Firstly, the suggestion that the US government – in reality, scientists working hard to convince ignorant politicians to care about scientific progress – want to find microbes or bacteria on Mars to disprove God is plain conspiracy theory lunatic nonsense. Not everyone who has an interest in biology is doing so to prove anything regarding *your* world view, which they may very well wish to ignore.

But my absolute favorite part of the post is the ending. The Fleming quote is meaningless here, because Voltaire and Rousseau were monotheist creationists. They were deists. The disagreement is over scripture with them, not God.

Also, it’s beyond absurd to mislabel Voltaire as you have. His real name was François-Marie Arouet – or d’Arouet if you like. He gave himself the pen name Voltaire both to avoid persecution from the Church and Royalty, whom, unlike God, he critiqued, and to cut himself off from his past. To merge the two would be insulting to Voltaire and miss the point 180 degrees.

AquilesElHeleno

You seem to ascribe simplistic beliefs to me whilst justifying it by using the words, “…*seem* to believe…”

If you want to read a real economist, more atheistic than Rand herself but far more educated, I’d recommend Hayek to get the point at which I’m aiming. There are “unintended consequences” behind all endeavours, and this is what makes science so unpredictable yet so potent. If you wish to say that refraining from the belief that one can see all potential outcomes of human discovery equals “pure science,” you’ll need to explain that to me.

You *seem* to desire to damage the division of labor, in a very anti-liberty and anti-capitalist way, by presuming that scientists don’t know what’s best for scientists, only people who arbitrarily declare they understand the “practical” use of science. In other words, if you can’t see how it would be useful in the short term, you contemptuously dismiss it as not useful at all. That’s not a philosophical position. That’s just being opposed to curiosity.

Do you think all the inventions of the world were made by individuals or individuals employed by people who knew exactly what would happen were the discovery/invention etc. to happen? You are so consumed by the beauty of design, that wonderful anthropomorphic projection, that you ignore the spontaneous order in which you live. You can arbitrarily declare that language, ecology, the economy, etc. are “designed” but that’s a lazy judgment. Those who are not lazy search for the particulars and seek to understand the world more precisely than it is understood now.

If you meant to speak of Fleming’s commentary on intelligent ET life, then you should have restricted yourself to that. Look at the part about the “virus.” That’s an extrapolation of searching for a tiny life-form, that many would argue is not really *alive* but that’s not important. The extrapolation that searching for a virus on Mars is but a harbinger of a future belief-in-God-killing-project that is what *they* *really* want. Fine, you can fine a few atheistic scientists who want that, but anecdotes don’t matter to the broad mass of biologists who are, I can only repeat from my previous post, not consumed by your theological worldview because they do not hold or perhaps do not even care to take more than a cursory note of it.

I like how you refrained from commenting on the critique of your understanding of those philosophes. You either know your limits or you don’t want to admit this has less to do with God as a being in which many believe but the very particular God of your very particular Christian interpretation of Scripture. Perhaps you should be more open that you’re talking about revelation when you merely toss the word God around.

Also, this is not a rhetorical question, but true curiosity:

How is an amphetamine an anti-God pill? How’s it more anti-God than anti-psychotics, mood stabilizers, benzodiazepines, anti-depressants, etc.? Do you mean that it has corrupted social mores and morals? So have many things, depending on ones’ view of what corruption and purity is.

Honestly, I respect the time and thought you’ve put into this and would be happy to speak to you, in as civil a manner as possible. Please remember, however, that because we obviously do not come from the same perspective, you may need to explain your metaphors to me, lest I lose the “inside joke” aspect of it. I mean no insult by it, I just don’t think that throwing around idioms from ones’ own very particular subculture is a helpful way to communicate with those outside of your subculture.

Many thanks,

Pepe

AquilesElHeleno

I still don’t know what you mean by “pure” science. Also, capitalism has functioned with the aid of government since its inception. That may sound odd to say, for it violates a notion of a private-public distinction that is popular today. Yet, England, the Dutch Republic, and even later, when the industrial revolution came into full swing, the US, France, Germany, etc. by government assistance of private enterprise.

Also, to make a note of how the private sector or general public benefits from government projects, one need not look further than NASA. We all know about how Tang and modern adult diapers were a spin-off of space exploration efforts, but the “unforeseen” – I use “unintended” as a reference to the Scottish Enlightenment, ie. Adam Ferguson or Smith – consequences of that big government program have been quite beneficial to the public sector.

I cannot help but note the irony of your statement that you can foresee the dark uses of technology by citing…a past event, such as the development of Zyklon-B. It’s less known that the same chemicals and development that lead to a biological weapon was also used for fertilizer that increased crop output around the world.

When you talk about how out of sync the Bible is with the thoughts of men like Carl Sagan, you are illustrating the point that there are multiple “factions” here with multiple manners of thinking. Scientists use empirical, well…scientific reasoning and hypothesis testing and falsification to arrive at their findings. Religious texts are a complete aside. A biologist cares as much about the relevance of the OT and NT as much as the Koran or the Hindu Gita. The Bible is not scientific and yes, I have read it. When you take faith out of the equation and expect that the natural world will replicate everything that the Bible states, you might as well be saying that God needn’t have written Scripture.

Science doesn’t address the same questions nor proffer the same answers as Holy Scripture. To try and remove the supernatural element of God or divinity in general, you’re walking dangerously close to pantheism and it’s ironic partner, nature-loving atheism.

I know what Star Trek is. I was just curious about what you meant by the anti-God pill. The drugs I cited are also overprescribed in many cases, and all psychotropic medications in some way or another modulate human behavior. Yes, I know that Ritalin and Adderall are quite overprescribed. But prescription drugs, whether for discipline or whatever, often do help people function such that they can achieve higher levels of functioning afterwards, or are more susceptible to discipline. But this goes into an enormous issue: would you suggest that when people with psychotic or mood disorders are hospitalized and forcefully given Halperidol or Seroquel that this constitutes also a violation of rights? It is different from the matter of giving kids Ritalin, but it is a difference of degrees. Additionally, I am aware of the insistence or suggestion you speak of, but I am little aware of there being a wide-spread pandemic of mandatory Ritalin use lest the student be barred from school. Again, to conflate it all into the government exercising mind-control implies far more power than the government has.

Sadly, much of the truth is that parents either give in or decide without being forced, to give amphetamines to their kids. I too think they’re disgusting and burn brains out over time. But so do many legal drugs, when used to excess and some, sadly again, even when used as instructed. Is the government so omnipotent that we should interpret all parental behavior that accords with your model of government-control to be nothing more than an emanation of wills entirely outside the family. Many parents let themselves get on that train. Do you truly see no failure of personal responsibility at play here, whatever role school coercion may play?

Warm regards,

Pepe

AquilesElHeleno

You are caught in the metaphors. There is no loaded gun involved here, nor even the power to “force” but perhaps merely “suggest,” which occurs at teacher-parent conferences as the norm.

I don’t understand “brief for…” is that like “beef with” or you mean you are against the pharmaceutical industry. There is much to be said on that, but would you deny that not all humans are clones and, in fact, some people have minds that operate differently enough that, left to their unmodified biological state, they’d be just fine? Does schizophrenia or bipolar not exist simply because one does not see a broken leg, a crutch, or visible deformity?

“And if the natural world does not substantiate the Biblical narrative, then that narrative is false. What does that make God?

It makes God God: an omnipotent, omniscient being who can design and control nature but not be confined by it merely due to what a biologist finds or an Aristotelian syllogism says.

Nietzsche could not kill God better than that quote. So God is not above nature? He is not supernatural? He is confined by its limitations?

“Origins” and “Operational Sciences” are the invented terms of your particular creationist subculture, no?

I recommend you read Isaac Newton’s Principia, but, most especially, *Coates* preface of the Principia. Newton and he coordinated, were highly religious, and Newton wrote more on God and Scripture than he ever did on physics. A Newtonian, creationist, worldview would view your distinction as sacrilegious and downright atheistic. If you presume to read the mind of God, to explain the “why” when you only know the “how” in the natural world *beyond an admission of faith* – theologians do not claim to be astrophysicists – then atheism has already won. If you can know the “why” as well as God, you have claimed to be him or rendered him a natural being, bound by laws rather than being their creator. The creature is neither above nor on the same level as the creator. Human reasoning is just that, the reasoning of humans. Do you believe God made man in his image or outright *cloned* himself fully? Everything is perfect when it leaves the hands of the Creator, everything degenerates in the hands of the created.

Best,

Pepe

Fergus Mason

“I don’t recall that Sir Isaac Newton ever disputed the accounts of ancient Earth history in Genesis chapters 1-11.”

Then again he was completely ignorant of modern geology and lived at a time when science hadn’t even started to explore the issue.

“And I know, just as you do, that Sir Isaac was a consistent creation advocate.”

He was also an alchemist. Anyway, so what? Newton was a creationist because there was no alternative at the time. You might as well say he preferred riding a horse to driving a car.

Fergus Mason

“But he interpreted them a lot differently from how Charles Lyell did.”

He did indeed. Modern geology indicates that Lyell was correct, though. We have to look at old science in the context of its own time; it’s often not very relevant now. For example no sane person would use Ptolemy’s model of the solar system, would they?

Bob Jones

“Now about the natural world, and whether it supports or opposes the Biblical narrative: if the Biblical narrative cannot explain the natural world, or explains it incorrectly, then it is false. He who writes a falsehood, knowing that what he wrote is false, is a liar.”

Your God is revealed in the Bible. You say that if the natural world does not substantiate the Biblical narrative, then the narrative is false. In that case, your justification for the existence of God is called into question. It makes no sense to call God a “liar” if he doesn’t exist, now does it?

Bob Jones

“Except that the natural world does substantiate the Biblical narrative”

It might appear that way if you ignore everything we’ve learned over the past 150 years.

“however that might disappoint you.”

I don’t think it makes sense to feel disappointed by the way nature works. Nature is what it is, and it’s not my place to say how things ought to be.

tomtom1981

very good article terry. i think a lot of people dont understand your point (or the generalities of science!) the fact is scientist say they discovered a particle that is of which is God. ok so is it also jesus? they are one in the same!! ok so God is all around us as which is particle is so that part makes sense. but this particle is mass and God is infinite so therefore He has infinite mass. but if there was infinite mass there would be infinite God particles meaning those so called scientists should have found it long ago. heck youd have to plow it away from your driveway there would be so much of it! but that is not terrys mane point. his top point is that the Lord reveals Himself to us everyday. scientists may think they discover things but it is truly He who hath reveal it to us. can He put microbes on mars. if wants to maybe even to test our faith He can. now terry is also correct in which it is not the governments right to pay for research. the government is to ONLY protect her soverign lands from attack foreign or domestic. but obama and his henchman have used research to control to keep him in office. terry is right that ridalin is used for control of all the kids these days. there are even reports that teachers will give (poison?) students with it during lunch for control. does this sound like germany during the great world war anyone?! obama will continue this. a great article on here proved that obama is doing the devils work. but people in america are either to stupid enough or blind to see his way by gun or by nife (or pen in this case!!). so this particle is NOT God. scientists have become more religous in the past 25 years. most now believe in some part of the Great Flood or His Genesis. so this particle is that which hath taken a scientists greed with the world to now be his love with the Lord. as a Christian, i am quite happy at this transition. terry – the Lord haith revealed Himself to us and He will continue to be there for other IF they will open there eyes to see in do time, in do time.

Fergus Mason

“the fact is scientist say they discovered a particle that is of which is God. ok so is it also jesus?”

Please, do try to keep up.

“does this sound like germany during the great world war anyone?!”

No.

“scientists have become more religous in the past 25 years. most now believe in some part of the Great Flood or His Genesis.”

Again, no.

tomtom1981

see you have no argument as to which one incorrpoates Jesus as well into the “God particle” without violation of the mass conservation and limiting principle. and i have read a GREAT deal about the great world war and obamas america looks more and more like natzi germany so not sure how you can argue that one!! and proof for the Global Flood is backed by The Gospel and your loved science. might want to read what ACTUAL scientists are saying link to earthage.org

Fergus Mason

“see you have no argument as to which one incorrpoates Jesus as well into the “God particle” without violation of the mass conservation and limiting principle.”

Are you insane? Jesus, whether he ever existed or not, ha NOTHING to do with the Higgs Boson.

“and i have read a GREAT deal about the great world war and obamas america looks more and more like natzi germany”

That’s just ridiculous. You need to start reading different books. And by the way, Hitler was a creationist who banned Darwin’s books.

“proof for the Global Flood is backed by The Gospel and your loved science.”

Nope. It’s asserted by the bible and >i>contradicted by science.

Fergus Mason

“The views expressed by this commenter are demonstrably false”

Which ones, Terry? Surely not the ones about the Higgs boson having nothing to do with Jesus; that’s a no-brainer. I doubt you mean the ones about Hitler being a creationist who banned Darwin’s books either; I’m sure I’ve mentioned Section 6 of the 1935 law on prohibited books to you before. And if you mean that science contradicts a global flood, well, almost all scientists seem to agree.

Fergus Mason

“Oh, yes, I do mean the one about Hitler having anything to do with anything that was good. Hitler would never have designed his Lebensborn program, had he been a creationist. Nor his Final Solution, either.”

Hitler repeatedly talked about creation, and that he banned Darwin’s books is an indisputable historical fact. Why ban any book referring to “the false science of Darwinism” if you’re not a creationist?

“Origins science is totally given over to cheap politics. We know that. The jig is up, and has been up for a long time.”

Words, Terry. Meanwhile the evidence for evolution just keeps stacking up while ID flounders in impotence and the “Question Evolution!” campaign remains wedged in the starting gates.

Fergus Mason

“Why build a program of selective breeding if you are not an evolutionist?”

Evolution, as I shouldn’t have to point out, has nothing to do with selective breeding. Creationism has quite a lot to do with banning books on evolution.

MatthewJ

Humans were engaged in selective breeding programs for a _long_ time before Darwin published his theory (or his philosophical predecessors, for that matter). Even Jacob practiced selective breeding, as attested by Genesis.

Fergus Mason

“In selective breeding, you replace natural selection with artificial selection.”

And the theory of evolution, of course, is all about natural selection.

Artificial selection is nothing to do with evolutionary theory. In fact it’s also accepted by creationists and has been practiced for thousands of years. Unless you’re arguing that all our crops and livestock are actually wild species?

MatthewJ

“Not with fellow human beings, they didn’t.”

The idea of breeding ‘superior’ individual humans to each other goes back as least as far as Plato, who proposed it in his _Republic_, in the guise of a marriage lottery that would be rigged to match up only the ‘best’ candidates. The Greeks and Romans practiced infanticide of ‘defective’ children, as have many other societies. Many human subpopulations (ethnic, religious, class-based, etc) have chosen or been forced to reproduce only within their own group either to keep themselves ‘pure’ or to keep them from ‘contaminating’ the larger population. The Hapsburg Lip is a classic result of selective breeding in humans – in this case, among one of the royal houses of Europe, where the selection was for consolidation of political power rather than any particular biological function.
Don’t make the mistake of equating selective breeding (even of humans) with the 19th/20th century eugenics movement. Selective breeding was one of many techniques
promoted by eugenicists, but selective breeding can equally be used for purposes contrary to the goals of eugenicists. It’s a process, not a philosophy. One clearly doesn’t need to be an evolutionist to propose selective breeding of humans, since that’s been done (or at the very least repeatedly proposed) since before long before Darwin or his contemporaries.

MatthewJ

“They are certainly not different species.”

So? I mean, ignoring the fact that most food crops and livestock _are_ classified as different species from their wild-type cohorts? The late, lamented aurochs was a different species from both Bos taurus and Bos indicus. Teosinte is a different species than maize. Wheat taxonomy is crazy complex, but there are four wild wheat species; all the domesticated wheats are different species. Triticale, after 100 or so years of development, now seems to be a stable self-fertile hybrid of wheat and rye; that’s a cross across genera! Alpacas have been bred for their coats; they are no longer the same species as the vicuna from which they arose (or shared an ancestor with).

So, again; other than the fact that you are wrong, so what?

MatthewJ

“And of course those Greeks and Romans were not Christians.”

Nor were they members of the GOP, since neither existed yet. I thought we were talking about whether they were evolutionists or not (they weren’t), and whether one had to be an evolutionist to ‘buy into’ selective breeding, whether of humans, plants, or livestock (no, no, and no).

And of course there were many Christians who were promoters of eugenics, just as there were Christian promoters of slavery, genocide, etc. Of course, other Christians opposed them. Non-Christians supported those things, too, and other non-Christians opposed them as well.

MatthewJ

“Who did the classifying, and why?”

I’m afraid I can’t tell you the individual researchers who first proposed the specifics for even one species, other than Linnaeus himself or some very modern examples. But in case this isn’t just a rhetorical flourish meant to imply that binomail nomenclature is just another conspiracy meant to keep the Christian down: there are a number of international committees that oversee classification of organisms. The International Committee on Systematics of Prokaryotes, the International Botanical Congress, and the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature would be good places to start your investigation. Probably plenty of Christians involved in these organizations, too.

Perhaps there are creationist organizations which maintain their own classification schemes along the line of ‘kinds’, etc., but you will have to let me know what those are. Since it was your claim above that crop and livestock species are _not_ different species from wild-types, presumably you had just such an alternative classification system in mind, yes?

MatthewJ

“You can probably look up “baraminology” as easily as anyone can.”

Yes, I can, and I did so before my last posts, but I did not find any online references from baraminologists that laid out an alternate classification in which domesticated livestock and crops are the same _species_ as wild types. Baraminology seems to be in its early days yet, with no Linnaeus yet willing or able to initiate a major cataloging. That is why I said that you would have to point me to the specific sources.

MatthewJ

Some yes, other no.

AquilesElHeleno

Terry,

I see no reply button so I have made a new message, but in continuation of the previous conversation.

Our ideas of government are incompatible enough that it’s not worth going over.

I agree with the mixed sentiment on the pharmaceutical industry.

On Newton and creationism, I’m sorry, but you’re simply historically uninformed, imposing twentieth and twenty-first century cultural and political paradigms onto people of the past…I guess because they’re too boring to read or study on their own terms.

Your entire argument about falsehood and liars relies upon language, whether English or any other, to perfectly encapsulate reality as man can understand it expressed by God. This is not merely an argument for interpreting the Bible metaphorically, which is done by literally everyone I’ve met who claims to interpret it literally anyway, ironically enough.

The Royal Society in England, a scientific organization that became very Newtonian, had a latin motto that translated “no words,” meaning that, for them, the world, creation, can only be understood either quantitatively by some means other than laborious argumentation. The laborious argumentation was still recommended for theology of course, which Newton attempted to write, but he switched modes when describing the natural world.

The argument over how to explain the laws of attraction – gravity today – was a huge controversy in its time, so this is not information that is difficult to find. Newton hated Descartes for his ontological argument, and all attempts to restrict God to verbal reasoning. Have you heard of the old controversy of nominalism and antinominalism that picked up steam after William of Ockham presented the notion of God with which I have presented you?

I know what Newton’s beliefs about creation were. You do not. I read that website. I recommend actually reading the works of Sir Isaac Newton himself. He did not share your belief about the precise matching up of language, whether of revelation or elsewhere, with nature. That is not to say he believed the Bible was false. He, like many who are not members of the melding of cultural and political conservatism with a religious token placed on top, thought one could understand more precisely how the world operates by investigating outside of it. That is to say, he believed the Bible was incomplete, purposefully, in what it said about the world, which is in no way controversial to many Christians or most Christians throughout history who were indeed creationists.

Also, no offence, but biblicism and the study of foreign tongues to understand the historicity of the language of the Bible was a popular phenomenon in Protestant lands for centuries. This is not because they believed the Bible was itself inerrant. They believed human language, through which the Bible has been passed, was. You can dismiss the translation argument on a whim if you’d like, but obsession with parts of speech, verbal forms, and, most importantly, *idioms* abounded. To deny that there is any idiomatic content in the Bible is to be simply wrong. Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic/Syrian dialects, etc. plus Latin for the Catholics, were studied for a reason. If you read the King James Bible alone, which is not the original edition in circulation today by the way, but an updated version to better fit English as it developed later, you must keep in mind that it is not as simple as asking if what happened in one passage happened exactly as described.

Even the notation system of Bible passages didn’t exist forever, but was invented by linguists and historians who were called humanists in their own time. Like it or not, the ones called humanists, with all their preoccupation over the imprecision of language and believing that they didn’t know just exactly what the Bible said, were the engine that led to the mass vulgarization of Scripture and its landing in the hands of the masses. Gutenberg, Calvin, Luther, etc…they all studied the humanist curriculum. To approach the Bible as a text that dropped out of the sky is to put faith in man. To probe it and question if oneself the reader really understands or is even right about whether X happened in Y manner was the action that allows you now to go and do the opposite. I don’t know your denomination, but your argument about the *liars* is the kind of simplistic Aristotelian reasoning that is in no way universally Christian. It’s word logic based on limited denotations and dismissal of the concept of connotations, and has nothing to do with revelation.

Take Newton’s word for it and take the Bible as sublime. You are reading it like a vulgar history.

AquilesElHeleno

Why can one not make the leap you suggest is folly? In the beginning there was “logos,” which was different from the original Greek, both of which are different from the word “word” in English.

Again, due to the developing understanding of the natural world through science and your attempt to push the Bible into a scientific category rather than let it stand on its own means you have rendered it not worthy of being read as revelation. What is there to reveal if you replicate it all with a microscope or telescope? Salvation and the operation of the world are distinct things. They are not each matters of science. There is absolutely no need to justify the Bible or faith by jumping on a “science” bandwagon and labeling ones’ religious beliefs as science, which creates a warning to everyone outside the subculture that those within it are intellectually dishonest.

Also, you’re not reading my posts so this will be the last. If you’re going to say “nature-loving atheism” or some such thing requires the world spring from nothing, then admit you are uninterested in learning what atheists since the beginning of time have thought, often diversely.

At no point did I call anyone an idiot and I will not be roped into endorsing your tribalist behavior that optimizes identity politics and cultural solipsism over the study of the Bible, science, and history. You’re in pure projection mode at this point.

tomtom1981

Aquiles i think you are missing Terrys points. religion must fit into this equation because it drives the equation. this cannot be denied!! even the early scientist lenardo davinci to name one, thought this. how do you explain this?! what i believe and why i read terrys articles is a world that should be of less goventment. a world dictated by the teachings of ann rand. i’m guessing you are not familiar with her work?! well in her life view the government does not take care of you! YOU take care of you. sorry but but that means no handouts even for scientists! and your relationship with the Lord organizes this. how do we interact with nature you ask? well the Lord IS nature. ann rand knew that it was all connected. this idea is moving like a steam train through america so i suggest you jump on! now i dont agree with terry about calling out people who are progressively being creationist. terry they will see the Lords light in do time even if by the foot steps of a child. as for the Global Flood this is a fact! science can only confirm this. it has confirmed this but scientist like to make up the facts to say otherwise!! occupier obama pays many of these scientist thru the national foundation for science (look up how much money they wasted on trillions of dollar of wasted “science” link to heritage.org). these liers are paid with my tax money!! if you avoid the world around YOU are intellectualy dishonest! if you turn your eye to the Lord who is everywhere (remember your so named God particle says just this!!) you are the dishonest man. i see the world thru my eyes and the eyes of the Lord. i consult him daily. he has placed viosionaries like ann rand to spread his gospel and tell us how to live our life as good Christians. to tell us how to be productive and fair (you probably know the golden rule!!????). scientists care not at all for this. for it is he who is dishonest. it is he who haith closed his eyes. who haith the ignorant man. it took me a while to see but now i do so with that which the eyes of an eagle. both thru my eyes, and thru my mind.

Vladimir_Leonov

Speculation around the Higgs boson must be stopped. Higgs boson does not exist in nature. It’s impossible to find.

I explain the reasons for this paradox for those who still believe in the Higgs boson:

1. Higgs contradicts the theory of Einstein gravitation. If the Higgs boson is responsible for the formation of particle masses, he is responsible for creating the gravitational field. But the gravitational field arises from the curvature of space-time as Einstein taught us. Why it was necessary to introduce the Higgs field, when for the formation of gravity and mass of the particles is responsible the Einstein field?

2. Higgs boson does not have the electromagnetic properties. He cannot unite gravity and electromagnetism. This is contrary to Einstein’s concept of unification of fundamental interactions.

3. Higgs boson is not a particle of time, and it does not have wave properties. He is not fit into the theory of quantum gravity.

4. Higgs boson is not the particle of space and space-time. He is not responsible for the creation of gravity and mass.

Thus, the Higgs boson is a hypothetical particle and it does not really exist because it contradicts Einstein’s theory.

I understand it is very difficult to admit mistakes. But scientific truth is a top priority for scientist. You must be able to recognize their mistakes and not led by the nose the scientific community.

Standard Model cannot explain the nature of gravity. Higgs boson as the basis of gravity is not confirmed experimentally because contrary to Einstein’s theory. The criteria for assessing the correctness of the theory of gravitation are an experiment to create artificial gravity. The LHC is not suitable for this role in a methodical plan.

Why ignore the achievements of other scientists who already have huge results in the creation of artificial gravity? It turns out that the corporate interests of managers the LHC and their employee is more important than scientific truth.

Necessary once again remind that I have created the theory of Superunification which is published in two editions:
1. Leonov V. S. Quantum Energetics. Volume 1. Theory of Superunification. Cambridge International Science Publishing, 2010, 745 pages.

2. V.S. Leonov. Quantum Energetics: Theory of Superunification. Viva Books, India, 2011, 732 pages.

The basis of the theory of Superunification is quantum of a space-time (quanton) opened in 1996. Quanton is an alternative to the Higgs boson, but in contrast to the Higgs boson quanton does not contradict Einstein’s theory.

The nature of gravity and all problems of the LHC have been solved in the theory of Superunification. Search for Higgs boson should be stopped immediately. Research program at the LHC should be revised in accordance with the theory of Superunification. This will save the LHC from bankruptcy.

Why I made such a confident statement?
Because I am doing experiments to create artificial gravity forces that exceed the Earth’s gravity in a few times:
link to theoryofsuperunification-leonov.blogspot.com
Results of the tests of a quantum engine for generating thrust without the ejection of reactive mass.
link to theoryofsuperunification-leonov.blogspot.com
Video: The tests 2009 of a quantum pulsed engine for generating thrust without the ejection of reactive mass.
link to leonov-leonovstheories.blogspot.com
Theory of Superunification.

My Comments:
link to nature.com
link to blogs.nature.com
link to nature.com
link to symmetrymagazine.org
link to symmetrymagazine.org
link to thescienceforum.com

Dr. Vladimir Leonov
link to blogger.com

Fergus Mason

“it sounds as though you have developed a simpler explanation, and therefore a more attractive one”

But tehre’s only one tiny little problem with it. The Higgs Boson DOES exist. It’s been FOUND. That’s the whole point really.

Vladimir_Leonov

Is the ‘Wang particle’ the new Higgs boson?
link to guardian.co.uk
The hunt might soon be on for another fundamental building block of nature. But what will it be called?
So is the hunt for the Wang now on? Robert Bingham at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire works on the theory with Wang. “I’ve never thought of calling it that. He hasn’t either. We’d tend to call it the scalar gravitational particle.”

Higgs boson does not exist in nature.
Higgs boson – is a 100% falsification of basic research.
The Higgs boson is not found and will never be found.
This is the greatest gamble in science.
Why were deleted all my comments on link to symmetrymagazine.org?
They are afraid of the truth that the Higgs boson does not exist in nature.

Fergus Mason

“The Higgs boson is not found and will never be found.”

Tell CERN that, then. They seem to have a different opinion. Unlike you they also have a very large particle accelerator.

“They are afraid of the truth that the Higgs boson does not exist in nature.”

Perhaps. However it seems more likely they just think you’re a crank who’s ignoring the evidence.

Vladimir_Leonov

Dear Terry I am happy to support you in your difficult struggle.

Vladimir_Leonov

Dear Terry! I am happy that I have the opportunity to read your interesting articles. One year ago you wrote «Higgs Boson: So What?» I replied you to: «Speculation around the Higgs boson must be stopped. Higgs boson does not exist in nature». Our view was identical.
link to cnav.news

However, at the Nobel Committee was pressured, and Professor Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for the alleged discovery “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider”.
link to nobelprize.org?

The Nobel committee has acted hastily. They do not even have time to edit the text that is written very poorly. Higgs theory has no visitors «the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles». It is a falsification and deception.

I wrote my objections in the comments on the website “Scientific American”. No objections. link to scientificamerican.com
I showed in the Internet «Chapter 3. Unification of electromagnetism and gravitation».
link to leonov-leonovstheories.blogspot.ru
Leonov created the theory of the formation of the mass for elementary particles based on the concept of curved space-time of Einstein. The theory of Superunification has a mathematical formula (3.85) which describes the nature of the mass. Professor Higgs has no such of the formula. The theory of the Higgs cannot unite gravity and electromagnetism.
The theory of Superunification was published in two editions. Now Professor Higgs must disprove the theory Superunification and he must disprove Einstein’s concept of gravity. In science it is accepted to do so. Or it is a falsification and deception.

Read more:
Professor Higgs stole the prize from the author of the theory of Superunification
link to leonov-higgsnot.blogspot.ru
link to scientificamerican.com
link to cnav.news

Dear Terry! I want to ask you to write an article on this issue. No one has the right to deceive the people.
Best regards,
Vladimir Leonov

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