Does the discovery of the Higgs boson mean anything?

An excellent reflection, from Dennis Prager.

Excerpt:

The ‘God Particle’ and God
Without God, major scientific discoveries have no meaning.

By Dennis Prager

...  Both the time and money invested [in this research] were necessary because satiating our curiosity about the natural world is one of the noblest ambitions of the human race.

But scientific discovery and meaning are not necessarily related. As one of the leading physicists of our time, Steven Weinberg, has written, “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also it also seems pointless.”

And pointlessness is the point. The discovery of the Higgs boson brings us no closer to understanding why there is a universe, not to mention whether life has meaning. In fact, no scientific discovery ever made will ever explain why there is existence. Nor will it render good and evil anything more than subjective opinion, or explain why human beings have consciousness or anything else that truly matters.

The only thing that can explain existence and answer these other questions is God or some other similar metaphysical belief. This angers those scientists and others who are emotionally as well as intellectually committed to atheism. But many honest atheists recognize that a godless world means a meaningless one, and they admit that science can explain only what, not why.

In a recent interview in the Wall Street Journal, Woody Allen, an honest atheist, made this point in his inimitable way. Allen told the interviewer that, being a big sports fan, and especially a New York Knicks fan, he is often asked whether it’s important if the Knicks beat the Celtics. His answer is, “Well, it’s just as important as human existence.” If there is no God, Mr. Allen is right.

One must have a great deal of respect for the atheist who recognizes the consequences of atheism: no meaning, no purpose, no good and evil beyond subjective opinion, and no recognition of the limits of what science can explain.

But the atheist — scientist, philosophy professor, or your brother-in-law who sells insurance — who denies the consequences of atheism is as worthy of the same intellectual respect atheists have for those who believe in a 6,000-year-old universe.

Not only is science incapable of discovering why there is existence; scientists also confront the equally frustrating fact that the more they discover about the universe, the more they realize they do not know.

I happen to think that this was God’s built-in way of limiting man’s hubris and compelling humans to acknowledge His existence. Admittedly, this doesn’t always have these effects on scientists and especially on those who believe that science will explain everything.

So, sincere congratulations to the physicists and other scientists who discovered the Higgs boson. We now think we have uncovered the force or the matter that gives us the 4 percent of the universe that we can observe (96 percent of the universe consists of “dark matter,” about which scientists know almost nothing).

However, ironic as it may seem to many of these physicists, only if there is a God does their discovery matter. Otherwise, it is no more important than whether the Knicks beat the Celtics.

Prager nails it. Atheism is untimately nihilistic. It is inherently nihilistic-- atheism is the belief that there is no ultimate meaning to existence. If there is no God, there is no meaning to anything. The Higgs is found and the Celtics won and my nose itches and kids get cancer. So what?

And the boilerplate atheist retort-- 'we give life its meaning'--is bullshit. If we are not endowed with meaning, we cannot create meaning. We are a part of the universe. If it has no meaning, we have no meaning. We meat robots may be able to fake it, to coax a few of our neurons to deceive other neurons into believing (or whatever soulless neurons do) that meaning is real. But in the end meaning is a lie.

If there is no Source of meaning that transcends us, then our sense of meaning is a cruel illusion. But it's not even cruel. It means nothing. It just is. 

Such is honest atheism. If you celebrate the Higgs discovery, you are really celebrating an accomplishment that means something. Whether you admit it or not, you are acknowledging God. Kind of an implicit Tebow.

Meaning isn't a lie. Things do matter. Even the hairs on your head are numbered. The discovery of the Higgs boson is magnificent science. Kudos to the scientists for their amazing work.

Soli deo gloria.