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by sdiwakar 5099 days ago
Amazing, I wonder what this means for creationists and more importantly - our understanding of our universe?
7 comments

Why should it mean anything special for creationists?

God either created the Higgs or he didn't. This science illuminates God. That's all.

It's not an argument for or against creationism.

(Although if you believe God created the world, then just say it. There is nothing wrong with believing that. But don't hide behind a psudo-science like creationism.)

> Why should it mean anything special for creationists?

I guess maybe this is a misconception based on the media having come up with the stupid label of "the God particle"?

Leon Lederman, an experimental physicist, was the one who first used the term god particle as the title for his book. There are many things to vilify the science media for, but this is not one of them.
He wanted to name the book "The Goddamn Particle" initially -- as a reference to its elusiveness -- but the publisher wore him down.
Given that this is science, it doesn't mean anything to creationists.
On the contrary, some creationists make great efforts to engage science on it's own terms, with hilarious results: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/C-decay
what? This actually exists as a theory? Now I'm a believer. This got me laughing "in order to be useful for validating an age of the universe less than 10,000 years rather than more than 10 billion years".
A teacher tried to teach me that particular hypothesis in high school. It subsequently became much harder for me to be a scientifically inclined person in a religious school. Bad memories.
Nothing at this stage.

From what I've gathered this is so expected result that nothing really changes, right now atleast. It'll take a while until something new will come out of this.

As an example this could be summarized like someone showing that P!=NP, it would be totally expected and nothing would really change.

p.s P!=NP would be a bigger result though, the comparison was just for something that is overwhelmingly expected.

I don't mean any offense, since the question itself is valid, so I'll offer one of my own: Why does it matter what creationists make of it?
In high school I had a fellow student that was ortodox. So, he believed that the Bible should be taken as a literal story.

So, when I asked him if he believed in Dinosaurs, he said that some fossils were from before the Great Flood, and that those animals where the beasts that died a few thousand years ago.

When I asked him about Carbon-14, and that those fossils were dated millions of years ago, his answer was simple: Two options, those experiments are wrong, or is God testing our faith.

This could be God testing our faith again for them, so... nothing will change.

> ortodox

Did you mean fundamentalist? Orthodox is something totally different.

Is this question a result of the name "God particle" confusing people again? In that case, it is just a stupid name that science journalist, not scientist, decided to go with. It doesn't mean anything at all, and Higg's boson has nothing to do with god.
As I noted above, the media did not come up with the god particle reference.
The anti-creationists have become a religion unto themselves, complete with persecutions and indulgences.

"I'm about fifty-fifty on believing in God" - Steve Jobs

This is true only if creationists' bullshit is as valid as our reality.

So, no.

Hawking bet $100 that the Higgs Boson didn't exist. Does that make him a quack? If one or more creationists believes the earth was created in 6000 years, does that make all creationists quacks? Where's the scientific method in that?