It’s very exciting that recent experiments at CERN have revealed the existence of a particle roughly consistent with the properties of the long-sought Higgs Boson.
But I am confused by this weird tendency for some non-physicists to call it the “God particle”. I know the term dates to Leon Lederman’s popular physics book with that phrase in the title, yet Lederman himself has said that he really wanted to call it the “Goddamn particle” because of all the trouble the elusive particle has caused, but the publisher objected.
Peter Higgs, who by the way does not believe in the existence any gods, says he doesn’t like the term because it “might offend people who are religious”. But isn’t he worrying about offending the wrong people? Aren’t non-religious people the ones who are being offended here?
There is a word in English — “blasphemy” — to describe the act of offending the sensibilities of religious people.
Perhaps there should be a word to describe the act of offending the sensibilities of non-religious people.
With more tolerance, people wouldn’t wouldn’t feel offended so much, I guess. 😉
I’m in favor of tolerance! Yay!
Still, there is something legitimate about feeling one’s sensibilities have been offended when things get put in inappropriate places. I very much like Daffy Duck, but if somebody were to sneak into the Louvre and carve his face into the Mona Lisa, it might still offend my sensibilities.
What is it that offends you? Is it bringing the concept of God into science?
Thousands of people spend the decades of their lives hard at work painstakingly asking the question “what can we know of our Universe based only on careful observation, and logical reasoning built strictly from that observation?”
Then people outside that community come along and lazily conflate that process with faith — when in fact it is the exact antithesis of a faith-based view the Universe.
Imagine, by analogy, a young black person inventing something or writing a beautiful piece of music. Somebody comes along and says “Wow, that’s really good. You did that as well as a white person!”
In the above scenario, most of us understand that it was inappropriate to invoke whiteness as a norm. Similarly, when a community has built an evidence-based understanding of the majesty and beauty of the Universe, it is inappropriate to invoke religion as a norm.
Wow, I completely didn’t see that point of view in the use of the phrase “God particle”. I haven’t read the book so I don’t know where it went with it. To me it sounded like a somewhat ironic way of talking about a particle that is supposed to be involved in the creation of the universe. It didn’t seem like a comment on the process of science but just on the role of the particle (which I don’t understand since I haven’t been following the details)—presumably any analogy to the concept of God doesn’t really hold up with the scientific explanation of the Higgs Boson anywat. “God particle” sounds like a marketing term designed to grab the attention of laymen. As an atheist there are so many more invocations of God in politics, education and other aspects of life that I can find to offend me but this one didn’t register.
I am offended by so many things, like for example, people wearing clothes (swimsuits, etc.) in the sauna, or people eating with one hand under the table (I have heard that both things are pretty normal in the US;-)) I just decided not to show it and keep tolerance in mind.
When it comes to religion, I think everyone should believe in whatever he or she wants, but it is private and there is no need to be offended, when someone doesn’t believe in god.
Invoking religion as a norm or even teaching religious views instead of science, scares me. It scares me because it is a way of keeping people dumb and not free.
I took me some time to realise Ken, why you are so picky about this wording and why you felt so much more offended by this, then I. I live in a much more secular society then you do. If it would be the other way around, I would stand up and fight against invoking religion as norm in the same way you do.
“Perhaps there should be a word to describe the act of offending the sensibilities of non-religious people.”
Not to be overly provocative, but his was the first word that came to my mind:
From Wikipedia: “BIGOTRY is the state of mind of a “bigot”, a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one who exhibits intolerance or animosity toward members of a group.”