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God particle

…Let’s just take a moment’s break from speaking about spirituality, especially spirituality and science. So, it looks like the God Particle has been shown to exist.

The Higgs Boson, yes. Nothing to do with God, of course – don’t take that literally. [Nobel Prize-winning physicist] Leon Lederman called it the God particle. It talks to all the other particles in some fundamental way. And don’t take “talk” literally, of course.

Oh?

And not quite a particle, of course, in the sense of a very very very small marble. Don’t take that literally. A photon would be a well-known example – a light “particle” that acts like a “wave”. The major significance of the wave particle duality is that all behavior of light and matter can be explained through the use of a differential equation which represents a wave function, generally in the form of the Schrodinger equation. This ability to describe reality in the form of waves is at the heart of quantum mechanics.

So this is part of the theory of everything?

Well not, of course, in the sense of explaining everything. The “Theory of everything” isn’t literally the theory of everything. A lot of scientists would say there isn’t a theory of everything – others would go back to the spirituality discussion that this interrupted.

So the theory of everything is just a theory – like the theory of evolution?

Well it’s not just a theory, in the sense that most people use the word theory. So don’t take theory literally in that sense.

Ummm… OK. I think I get it. So let’s talk more about spirituality, especially science and spirituality. And about not taking everything literally…

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So a Higgs Boson particle goes to church and the priest says “Sorry but you can’t come in here, church is for people only”.

And the Higgs Boson says “but how can you have Mass without me?”

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H/T Thanks to @jronc who pointed out the video to me.

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2 thoughts on “God particle”

  1. Brother David

    Of course, the theory of evolution is no longer just a theory. Yes, there are still holes in the story that need to be filled in, but much of it is established fact.

    1. To make more explicit, Brother David, part of what I was trying to do in this post was to show how scientists use words but understand that their usage is different to street/lay/literal usage of such words. This is then misunderstood by some/many. “Theory” is a good example. The same happens when we use religious language (eg. “person” for God) – religious language is taken literally by some/many – to the point of ending up with a man in the sky… Blessings.

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