God and the “God particle”

The Telegraph has an interesting short piece from Alistair McGrath today. He looks at the parallels between the faith in the Higgs boson and faith in God, both based on explanatory power rather than direct experiemental observation. He concludes:

“Some tell us that science is about what can be proved. The wise tell us it is really about offering the best explanations of what we see, realising that these explanations often cannot be proved, and may sometimes lie beyond proof. Science often proposes the existence of invisible (and often undetectable) entities – such as dark matter – to explain what can be seen. The reason why the Higgs boson is taken so seriously in science is not because its existence has been proved, but because it makes so much sense of observations that its existence seems assured. In other words, its power to explain is seen as an indicator of its truth.

“There’s an obvious and important parallel with the way religious believers think about God. While some demand proof that God exists, most see this as unrealistic. Believers argue that the existence of God gives the best framework for making sense of the world…

“There’s more to God than making sense of things. But for religious believers, it’s a great start.“

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Read the rest of the article here:

Higgs boson: the particle of faith

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Happy Birthday, KJV

This year marks the 400th anniversary of a momentous event in the English-speaking world: the first publication of the Authorised Version of The Bible, commonly known as the King James Version.

The translation project was instigated by King James I as a way of reconciling some of the theological disagreements between high-church Anglicans and Puritans. The transition from Latin Vulgate texts to early English bibles had not been a smooth one, and in 1604 James called for a completely new translation, “as consonant as can be to the original Hebrew and Greek.” Published in 1611 after 7 years of diligent work by 47 different scholars, the Authorised Version was not just the most influential version of the Bible, it was one of the most influential works in the history of the English language.

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