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March 25, 2008 at 10:07am
by thecodepounder Newsweek: In Search of the God Particle
First and foremost, no one in science refers to the hypothetical “Higgs boson” particle as the “God particle” (for more, see this). Use of this term is a blatant attempt at denigrating all of science in general, and the experiments planned at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland in particular.
Nonetheless, Newsweek has published as a “web exclusive” an interview with Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg by Ana Elena Azpurua, and aside from the title and introductory paragraph, the article consists of excerpts from the interview, in which Dr. Weinberg’s responses are excellent:
As we come closer to developing an ultimate theory of the universe, how will this impact religion?
As science explains more and more, there is less and less need for religious explanations. Originally, in the history of human beings, everything was mysterious. Fire, rain, birth, death, all seemed to require the action of some kind of divine being. As time has passed, we have explained more and more in a purely naturalistic way. This doesn’t contradict religion, but it does takes away one of the original motivations for religion.
What about possible contributions toward finding a final theory? Would that upset religious believers?
If we put together something like a final theory in which all the forces and the particles are explained and that theory also throws light on the origin of the Big Bang and gives us a consistent picture of cosmology, there will be a little less for religion to explain. But religion has evolved along with science. It is something created by human beings, and as human beings learn more and more their religion changes. Today, especially in the more established religious sects in the West, they’ve learned to stop trying to explain nature religiously and leave that to science.
You once said that even if we find that final theory, it will still be possible to ask why this one and not another.
Yes, it is true. What will be completely satisfying will be to show that there was only one kind of nature that was logically possible and derive the laws of nature in the same way that we derived the principles of arithmetic. I don’t think that will be possible, because we can already imagine logically consistent laws of nature that don’t quite describe the world we see. We will always be somewhat disappointed. But people who believe in God have the same problem. They will never be able to understand why the God that they believe in is that way and not some other way. All human beings, whether religious or not, are caught in a tragic situation of never fully being able to understand the world we are in.
I personally don’t think any scientific discoveries (of any magnitude) will abate religious belief. True believers already treat science as just another belief system (e.g., “I don’t believe in evolution.”).
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