God does not exist, huh? You're just as bad as the fundies who are certain that he does. Not very smart! You're forgetting that you're less than a speck of dust in the universe. You and your little brain are nothing, yet you proclaim to have the answer. What an uppity little hominid monkey, you are!

The 'god particle' name originated as the 'god damn particle' and got cleaned up for the media.

Charles, I love you, but I think you had some plagiarizing going on in your personal commentary. I've seen the same comment written elsewhere.

Thank you, Charles! This is genuinely the most important news item of the day. Please scold the intern for not making it the top story in the morning news!

@1 Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Despite being analyzed and discussed for over thousands of years, God is still an uproven theory at best.

@3, doubt it's plagiarism. You have to figure that if it's true great minds think alike, so must minds like Charles's.

I'm going to continue calling it the Snuffleupagus particle.

@5 I considered the same thing. But the first time I read it elsewhere, it really struck me as original. It was a bit of a cliche, so Charles probably didn't plagiarize. Now I know why my journalism professors told me to AVOID cliches. Because they can smack of plagiarism. Duly noted.

@7, there is a good chance i did plagiarize: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archive…

I plagiarized myself it seems...
"The Higgs is in the Standard Model, which Frank Wilczek—a physicist who is reintroducing the ether through another door, instead of the one Einstein shut at the beginning of the previous century—believes should be called the Grand Model, as it is the pyramid of scientific thought. The Standard Model represents our deepest understanding of reality. The Higgs particle, a hypothetical particle, has to exist as it is an important part of this deepest of understandings. If it does not exist, this one understanding crumbles."

I for one am very conCERNed at this news.

Dear @1:

As of today, we have far more empirical evidence for the existence of the Higgs Boson, than we do for the existence of God, so if you want us to consider the theory of divine creation as being equally as valid as the Standard Model, then bring on the evidence.

Or, as they say in science, "shit or get off the pot".

For those keeping track...

Science: 1.32e^23 Religion: 0

Uppity monkey? Seriously, @1? You're an even bigger dick than I already thought you to be. Wow.

WOOOOOOOO!

Man, I don't think anything has ever had such a contrast between name and nature as the Standard Model. It sounds so incredibly drab, and yet it is a breathtakingly powerful summation of our (admittedly vastly incomplete) understanding of the fundamental nature of the universe at levels we can't even conceive of intuitively.

@1: The God Hypothesis has a big pile of no good evidence, propped up by a bunch of facile sophistry. You really don't understand how science works, do you? Or were you just looking for an excuse to be not-very-subtly racist? I mean, for real, you can't even get racism right, you dumb sack of shit. Humans are apes.

I wish I understood this better. Any physicists in the house?

PS, I must be pretty "uppity" too I guess.

"Also, please stop calling it the "God particle"; the Higgs exists, God does not." On this I agree with you completely.

Also @10 High Five!

I'm a physicist, but weak in this area. This is pretty damned exciting, glad that there is an EU that pools its resources to keep physics going, unlike the US, that needs to fund fake Rumsfeld/Feith wars, and defunded FermiLab.

The Higgs boson explained by PhD Comics -- from a few years ago

@15:

This should be the last word on the subject...

@17. That was perfect. Thank you.

@16 While the US's decreasing funding funding of Fermilab and the cancellation of the SSC are unfortunate, American research money does contribute toward LHC projects at least.

I guess we can't discover *all* the subatomic articles(*).

(*) Actually, the Tevatron did find evidence of the Higgs before the LHC, but not with the 5 sigma statistical standard demanded.

So I'm gueesing the practicle use is a bigger bomb. Always is.

You clowns never fail to crack me up. Keep it up, you're a fucking riot.

Confluence @1 for the very clear win.

In related news, according to the most recent Gallup poll on the subject: 46% of Americans believe God created humans in their present form; 32% believe humans evolved with God guiding the process; and only 15% believe that humans evolved but that God had no part in the process. On the plus side, that's 47% who believe in some form of evolution (divinely directed or otherwise) versus 46% who don't. On the minus side, 78% still think God calls the shots and pure creationism is supposedly up 6%, from 40% in 2010. Or, put another way, 78% of Americans believe in something for which there is no evidence, and 46% are immune to overwhelming evidence that refutes their beliefs. Enjoy your 4th of July.

Or maybe there is evidence, and you're just too fucking stoopid to see it. Ever think of that?

@24

Cool! You just made the "you're stupid" argument! Always a sure-fire winner!

@ 19: You're welcome. Glad you enjoyed it!

Everybody chill. Perhaps Charles does not see "God" and "forces of the universe" as one in the same. Hope you didn't just get your mind blown, or I'd be disappointed.

@21. The practical use would be more for something like "gravity plating" (tongue-in-cheek).

Religion and science are not mutually exclusive many people believe in both

5280, if you keep acting like this, you can just go ahead and change your name to Will in Denver and get it over with.

@30:

Perhaps Denverblues?

Ape, dammit. Hominid APE. "Hominid monkey" makes no sense, it's like "feline frog". One of the marks of an asshole is that he can't even make a sensible insult.

@24 Then tell us what evidence you're talking about. As COMTE explained, either shit or get off the pot. We're asking. Why be an asshole and keep the knowledge of proof of a creator to yourself?

Do you guys ever stop to think that maybe atheists/rationalists have a different but equally as valid way of interpreting, experiencing, and describing the world around them as theists/spiritualists? I'd describe myself as someone who falls roughly in the middle, maybe just a little more towards a spiritualist because I'm more interested in the results of science than the process. From that perspective, I can both agree that we're nothing more than a blip in the universe, and yet it's still something like miraculous how good we're getting at explaining it. It's particularly impressive given what tiny little blips we are! But the rationalists keep us humble by reminding us how little we actually know.

So given the supposition that the broad categories of rationalists v. spiritualists encompass a little too much of all of human experience to really say one is better than the other, couldn't we stop being assholes to each other? I hate the way atheists are treated in this country, but the self-righteousness and unwillingness to find a common language with people who essentially agree with you on everything else that I read on these threads is something I'd expect more from a "Christian."

And as atheists, wouldn't it serve you better to try to find a way to talk with theists, rather than being patronizing and sullen? I mean, you have most of human history and sheer numbers actively working against you. This "shit or get off the pot" b.s. presupposes that people actually want to try to translate their experience of God or the divine into the scientific method, that the argument with you is that important to them. But if you experience the world intuitively, why would you want to do all of the work of making the conversation comprehensible to the other party?

I've experienced things I would call miracles. Not water-into-wine, but small things that a spiritualist view of the world explains in a more satisfying and conclusive way than a rationalist view. Those things are so essential to how I experience the world, how can I possibly make an atheist understand their importance by trying to frame a spiritual experience rationally?