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Driventowin

Well I expect this is as good a place as any for this topic. It seems that we are closer than ever before (or not?) to understanding the beginning of life as we know it based on the potential of this upcoming experiment. How is the findings of this study going to effect the world in terms of religion? Will it? Could the findings of this study begin the 'end' as we have heard it? I feel it will be very contentious to say the least..



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Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon

By Robert EvansMon Apr 7, 12:27 PM ET


British physicist Peter Higgs said on Monday it should soon be possible to prove the existence of a force which gives mass to the universe and makes life possible -- as he first argued 40 years ago.
Higgs said he believes a particle named the "Higgs boson," which originates from the force, will be found when a vast particle collider at the CERN research centre on the Franco-Swiss border begins operating fully early next year.
"The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly ... I'm more than 90 percent certain that it will," Higgs told journalists.
The 78-year-old's original efforts in the early 1960s to explain why the force, dubbed the Higgs field, must exist were dismissed at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Today, the existence of the invisible field is widely accepted by scientists, who believe it came into being milliseconds after the Big Bang created the universe some 15 billion years ago.
Finding the Higgs boson would prove this theory right.
CERN's new Large Hadron Collider (LHC) aims to simulate conditions at the time of that primeval inferno by smashing particles together at near light-speed and so unlock many secrets of the universe.
Higgs was in Geneva to visit CERN for the first time in 13 years in advance of the launch.
Scientists at the centre hope the process will produce clear signs of the boson, dubbed the "God particle" by some, to the displeasure of Higgs, an atheist.
He came up with his theory to explain why mass disappears as matter is broken down to its smallest constituent parts -- molecules, atoms and quarks.
BIG BANG
The normally media-shy physicist, who has spent most of his career at Scotland's Edinburgh University, postulated that matter was weightless at the exact moment of the Big Bang and then much of it promptly gained mass.
This, he argued, must be due to a field which stuck to particles as they passed through it and made them heavy. If this had not happened, matter would have floated free in space and stars and planets would never have formed.
Higgs said he hoped the elusive boson -- which an earlier but less powerful collider at CERN and another at the U.S. Fermilab had failed to detect -- would be identified before his 80th birthday in 2009.
"If it doesn't," he said, "I shall be very, very puzzled."
But there may be no immediate visible proof -- despite some fanciful portrayals of what it might look like -- of the boson's appearance on the ultra-sophisticated computers used by CERN scientists to track the billions of collisions in the LHC.
"It all happens so fast that the appearance of the boson may be hidden in the data collected, and it could take a long time for the analysis to find it," said Higgs.

"I may have to keep the champagne on ice for a while yet." (Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Chloe Fussell)

Print Story: Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon on Yahoo! News

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Bugs

I doubt it will affect religion much at all. Science and the discovery of the god particle move us closer to understanding the how - but most of the time people now turn to religion to anwer "Why?".

Most people simply cannot be content with the idea that there is no master plan or that there is no purpose to the human existance. Many folks are so pretnetious that they feel there simply must be a reason for a being as advanced as the human race to exist.

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"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you'd have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion" - Steven Weinberg

Begbie

This type of physics seems more like a religion than science. Hypothesis are based on maths so complicated that the average person has to take the results on faith. Some similarities with Buddhism are apparent.

Driventowin

I tend to disagree, Look at how people currently react to differing opinions and points of view on religion. If the scientific community comes out and says that science has now proven the birth of all existing solar systems in the universe and beyond and it's based on particle collision and it's not the Supreme being everyone has believed in since the dawn of civilized man, that's not likely to set very well with a world of extremists in every religion..

The fact that it's still not explained how that all came to fruition in the first place is going to be lost on those believers because they are mostly blinded strictly by faith anyway and have a tendency to reject any science to the contrary due to their own ignorance in many cases..

What I think is most eye opening here is that Nostradamus and other soothsayers have all been prophesizing that a contentious occurrence would happen that would be the final reason for the world war that does us all in.. But yet no one has been able to accurately decipher the cause of that predicted conflict and have only assumed it was due to some current world conflict and not something as seemingly benign as this sitting in the background, makes me pause and ponder..

Lets examine this from another angle for a moment. Say for the moment that we did confirm this theory and God was supposed to come back and the rapture was to occur. It seems that at the point of our complete rejection of the faith that he created the heavens and earth, that seems to be the time in which God would most likely choose to exert his influence and destroy the evil non believers and skeptics alike wouldn't it?? At the height of the devils influence as it were...Just another perspective....

Marmite the Dog

I agree.

People need to see a bloke with a beard spouting nonsense to be swayed into thinking about the meaning of it all.

Norton

No matter what science discovers, religions as they have in the past will adapt their myths to integrate scientifically accepted fact.

This ones easy. The force was created by god. So be a good person and do what we tell you or he will zap you with the force.

Driventowin

Well like I said, your statement is true if the masses (which by the way are more fearful of the truth than seeking it and the largest percentage are not well educated) can comprehend and digest that thought process.. I think that's where in lies the caveat.

It only takes one well known and followed religious zealot from any one or each religion to see this as a sign of the devil at work and look you have another Osama bin Laden, etc..

Look what just happened again in Texas the last few days with this sect of polygamists that has been kept isolated from the real world to the point of 16 year old girls not knowing what a crayon was? There's been Jones town, The Branch Dravidian's.. How many others?? And those sadly are in modern day, enlightened and for the most part educated cultures not third or fourth world country's...

Hootad Binky

Agreed. The Vatican quickly endorsed the Big Bang theory when it was first proposed, as well. More from this thread:

http://teakdoor.com/the-teakdoor-lou...tml#post534672

What's even stranger is the Holographic Principle

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kingwilly

I totally disagree, a weird ass scientific experiment will totally prove it once and for all, and if it does all muslims, christians and jews will suddenly abandon their religion overnight!



they always say that since they have to justify the expense of the experiment

The Gentleman Scamp

What was there before the big bang? Just white infinity?

Nice, I like it.

Jet Gorgon

That's the problem. Most men can only see three dimensions at best.

Whiteshiva

Very true, especially the concept of cause and effect, how everything interacts. One example would be the difficulty in measuring something accurately without changing it in the process. For instance, how would you measure the temperature of a glass of water without causing some interaction, and thus changing the initial state of the very thing you wanted to measure? The mindblowing fact that everything you observe has already happened, and that everything surrounding us consists mostly of empty space (between the atom core and the surrounding electrons)? The idea that all mass is basically concentrated energy (a heck of a lot of it!). The concept of time.......

Time for a drink.....

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Norton

This is inevitable. Historically, religions no matter how popular have been cast aside to make way for new more appealing religions. In the distant future our current mainstream religions will be looked upon as quaint rites performed by uninformed savages. The basic appeal of our religions can be reduced to the promise of everlasting life without suffering. In the future, faith in science and technology to provide blissful immortality will supplant religions based on all knowing all powerful supreme beings. Actually it is already taking place as we look more and more to science to fix all our problems and extend our lives.

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Driventowin

Sure, but you know these concepts are going to be a bitter pill to swallow for the masses, especially the uneducated ones who currently believe that things like education are evil..And one doesn't follow without the other I'm afraid..

So tell me how will it get down to numbers who can conceive this concept without a mass cleansing as it were?

good2bhappy

Belief in God(s) is based on fear. The more we know the more there is to fear and the more we believe in God. Catch 22

Driventowin

Until panic sets in..

stroller

How's this work then, and fear of what?
Eh? Knowledge creates fear, or what ye saying???


The "devil" is not part of many religions. And how would this scientific research bring about another Osama, is a Hindu or Buddhist going to declare Jihad on CERN or what are you envisioning???


Maybe I am looking for sense where there is none, these religious topics tend to attract some weird comments....

Driventowin