The GOD Particle (or the religion of science)

How low can you go? That's limbos ultimate question. A human being can only mash himself so skinny and then wriggle under a bar on their toes. I guess if you lopped off your ears you might be able to decrease the width of the human head.

Or what happens when you divide an inch in half and then half the half. Then half that half. Then...well, you get the idea. How small can you get? Imagination would argue that you can descend into infinite regression. Men in Black gives us the universe on Orion's belt and Seuss gives us worlds on specks.

Really, then, it's no surprise that science would attempt to probe as deeply into inner space as they have into outer space. But how low can you go?

Science, the meticulous examination of the world around us, began because man believed through Scripture that a knowable God created a knowable world. They were not disappointed. Only in the last 100 years has God been banned from the study of his creation. Parade Magazine, the Sunday insert to many newspapers, made that point quite clear beginning with their title, "The Race for the Secret of the Universe" (full story here), the implication being that the purpose/secret/glue of the universe had not yet been revealed.

I took a deep breath, hoped for the best, and plowed into the article. The objective storyline is about the search for the Higgs boson, a sub-atomic particle monikered "the God particle" because "without (it)...atoms would have no integrity, so there would be no chemical bonding, no stable structures..." When you cut through the lingo, scientists want to know why things stick together at all. What holds them together?

Right now, inneratomic bonding remains mysterious. You can only get so small can't you? As scientists through massive accelerators split the parts of the atom into smaller and smaller parts, they hope to find the particle that will "contain the very essence--or at least the mechanism--of existence itself, a way to finally understand how matter becomes and remains matter."

Sounds pretty theological to me, but they won't admit it. They do understand the theological consequences, though. These scientists hope to find that for which only God has been the explanation hence the derogatory nickname of the Higgs boson. For many in the scientific community, "God" is a joke, the answer or solution of scientists who don't do science very well. The mother of one of the scientists in fact calls her son and asks, "Have you found God yet?" Should this theoretical particle be found, scientists will dismiss the Creator still further from their laboratories (if that were possible).

Some scientists do remain skeptical about such a particle. And the search has been fraught with setbacks. The 17 mile long sub-atomic accelerator in Switzerland blew out a ten-million dollar section searching for God. No one was killed. The 4 mile long Fermilab just oustide of Chicago continues smashing particles faster than a toddler smashing toys. The American lab would love to beat its more impressive but currently hobbled European cousin to the Higgs boson discovery.

What if they started with God and like scientists of old, attempted from that starting point to learn the atom's function, would they have greater success? The Bible gives a matter of fact answer, "All things were created through him (Jesus Christ) and for him...and in him all things hold together."

That sounds like the solution to their enigma. They just don't like the answer.

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(The article ends with a quote from the lab's "genius emeritus." He declares, "You know, we have a genetic disease here--called optimism." The Bible declares that man has a genetic disease, too. The Bible calls it sin.)