No Higgs Just Yet

gbrumfiel writes "Last month, scientists reported a number of 'excess events' that could be caused by the appearance of the long-sought Higgs boson inside the LHC. But it looks like they'll have to put the champagne back on ice. New data presented at a conference in India shows no new signs of the Higgs. The signal was probably just a statistical fluctuation."

Comments

Probably

[Anonymous Coward]

just a higg-up.

Re:Probably

[vegiVamp]

That's what it wants you to think.

Huzzah!

[NortySpock]

Statistics and the scientific method triumph again!

Re:Huzzah!

[Rising Ape]

That's not an accurate way of looking at the statistics, but it's a common mistake (and most likely one I've made myself).

The confidence levels (such as 99%, 95%) tell you very little directly about the probability that a result is correct. What they do tell you is the probability of getting a false positive - if you were to do 100 separate searches at a 95% confidence interval, you'd get a positive result in about 5 even if there were no Higgs there.

Given the number of potential places to search and the number of experiments done, you'd expect some false positives at these confidence levels. The standard for claiming a discovery is 5 sigma, which is something like a 99.9999% confidence level.

Re:Huzzah!

[AthanasiusKircher]

The standard for claiming a discovery is 5 sigma, which is something like a 99.9999% confidence level.

Ah, if only all sciences were this rigorous. Meanwhile, much of psychology, sociology, and even medicine is out there looking at 95% confidence levels (often even juggling enough variables that a number of correlations will shake out of random data)...

I know it's impossible to hold all sciences to such a standard, given the cost of subjects for many human science experiments, but I do wish we could put something like your post in bold at the beginning of most articles.

Re:Huzzah!

[martas]

The confidence levels ... tell you very little directly about the probability that a result is correct.

More than that -- in frequentist statistics, there's no such concept as the "probability that a result is correct" once it's been observed; it is either correct or not. The probability only applies when observations haven't been made yet. Your explanation is probably the best way to think about p values and such, in that it is both correct and intuitive -- a 95% confidence means that before you did the experiment, that is the probability that the result you'd get after doing it would be correct.

Furthermore, the point you made about repeated experiments is extremely important and, unfortunately, often ignored in science of smaller profile. God only knows how many "high confidence" results in all manner of scientific or semi-scientific fields are simply the result of researchers using their data "too many times," so to speak, i.e. performing too many tests at once.

Re:Huzzah!

[walshy007]

It's an artifact of the fact that they operate on a higher layer of abstraction of the problem.

When working at larger scales with many more individual events (think biology as opposed to chemistry) going through and monitoring every single event occurring at the same level of detail as pure physics just can't be done.

So we abstract it away adding error to the results while still typically coming up with hypothesis that are right enough to be useful.

The Higgs Deception

[ScooterComputer]

"probably just a statistical fluctuation"...or is that exactly what the Higgs Boson WANTS us to think???

That sneaky particle...

Re:The Higgs Deception

[mevets]

There is an 87.7% certainty that HB is a statistical fluctuation.

such is the life of a bump hunter

[Anonymous Coward]

I did bump hunting for my PhD in particles a decade and a half ago. This is the way life goes -- you get a signal that almost has enough significance to really believe -- then it collapses when you pile in more data. If a journal is filled with papers each having a single p=0.05 result, then one out of 20 of them is reasonably expected to be wrong!

Re:such is the life of a bump hunter

[Daniel Dvorkin]

"What did you get your PhD in?"

"Bump hunting."

Makes it sound like you had much more fun in grad school than most people do, somehow ...

Re:such is the life of a bump hunter

[Rising Ape]

May well be worse than that in practice thanks to publication bias.

Of course, in particle physics p=0.05 (a mere 2 sigma) is nowhere near enough to claim a discovery.

Re:such is the life of a bump hunter

[Kjella]

I guess you missed the other kind of bumps you might pursue in grad school, at least you missed the joke...

Re:such is the life of a bump hunter

[Paradigma11]

I did bump hunting for my PhD in particles a decade and a half ago. This is the way life goes -- you get a signal that almost has enough significance to really believe -- then it collapses when you pile in more data. If a journal is filled with papers each having a single p=0.05 result, then one out of 20 of them is reasonably expected to be wrong!

No. alpha is the probability of getting a significant result under H0. P(significant|H0). it does not give you P(right|significant).

Why put the champagne back?

[drobety]

They could just as well have celebrated the statistical fluctuation. Gee, these physicists really don't know how to party.

Re:Why put the champagne back?

[mug funky]

respectable physicists never get invited to those kind of parties.

Keyword is "probably"

[imyy4u3]

So they don't know if it was a "statistical fluctuation" - it may have been in fact the Higgs boson. Basically, they don't know. Point is, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the massive W and Z bosons, which mediate the weak force. For those of you who don't know what that means, it's very important - it would help us better understand radioactive decay and just the universe in general - the Higgs boson has also been called "the God particle." Its existence would in theory allow time travel - it would also allow us to jump in and out of dimensions - so whether or not it exists is indeed very important - but they need to stop reporting on "oops" and "maybe's" until they have a definitive answer. No use in getting our hopes up just to dash them away...

Re:Keyword is "probably"

[Pikoro]

Also, it's only called the "God" particle because the original phrase "God damned particle" wasn't very PC to publish. Joking I am not:

"The Higgs boson is the particle that is thought to give everything else in the universe mass, but that bit of theoretical physics is unlikely to be the reason most people have heard of it. Its theistic nickname was coined by Nobel-prize winning physicist Leon Lederman, but Higgs himself is no fan of the label. "I find it embarrassing because, though I'm not a believer myself, I think it is the kind of misuse of terminology which I think might offend some people."

It wasn't even Lederman's choice. "He wanted to refer to it as that 'goddamn particle' and his editor wouldn't let him," says Higgs."

God Particle

[Archangel Michael]

Aptly named the God Particle. Lots of people believe it exists, without any substantial proof that it exists at all. Faith in Science ...

Re:God Particle

[Chris Burke]

What kind of "faith" exposes itself to falsification through experimentation? What kind of "faith" in an entity has all of its greatest practitioners carving out all the places where we can be sure it doesn't exist, and prepared to face the potential truth that it simply doesn't at all? What kind of "faith" is based on making educated guesses at first, but ultimately wanting to know one way or another, of demanding evidence?

Oh right, no kind of faith. That's kinda what "faith" means.

But go ahead and keep on projecting.

Re:God Particle

[PapaSmurphy]

And lots of people believe it doesn't exist, just like lots believe God don't exist. Skepticism in Science ...

What was your point again?

Re:God Particle

[Baloroth]

In this case, it looks like he really is projecting. Projecting a giant "WHOOOOOOSH!" right past you.

Re:God Particle

[Anonymous Coward]

And still, what exactly was your point?
Nobody here was denying anything, you are just shitstirring for no reason.

Mark all these troll / flamebait / off-topic mods, we don't need these crap-posts here too.

Re:God Particle

[coolsnowmen]

shitstrirring

word is hilarious!

Re:God Particle

[mark-t]

While there is no proof it exists, there is an objectively rational basis to presume that it does.

However, it presumes that our current understanding of the physical universe is actually right.

This has worked before for discovering new particles... so there is some precedent, but it's still hardly irrefutable.

Cite a single objectively rational basis for believing in God.

Re:God Particle

[MightyMartian]

Scientists who see a theory that in many other respects explaining observations also predicting a particle that is more difficult to find. Yes, the Standard Model may end up having to be heavily modified if Higgs cannot be found, but throwing out an entire theory prematurely seems pretty bizarre to me.

Re:God Particle

[Chris Burke]

Science is "looking" for the Higgs Boson particle. They THINK (believe) it exists, but have no "Proof" it exists. They are falsifying NOTHING by looking for it.

Nonsense. The Higgs Boson is a predicted particle of the Standard Model, and the same theory which predicts it also constrains the energies over which it could exist. Many parts of this range have already been excluded. If all of this range is excluded, then they have falsified the prediction made by the Standard Model.

If something like the Higgs nevertheless exists, it isn't the one predicted by the Standard Model. That prediction will have been falsified.

But the point I was making was that people BELIEVE it exists, and are looking for it, without any proof that it DOES exist. In fact, we're spending BILLIONS of looking for it, so I actually hope they DO find it. But as of this moment, it makes a perfect example of where FAITH gets applied by those that deny it has any real value.

You're playing a semantic trick by going from "think" to "believe" to "faith", changing definitions at each step so you can use them as synonyms while the meaning you arrive at has no relationship to where we started.

Scientists think the Higgs Boson exists based on the many extensively verified predictions of the Standard Model. It is not faith, it is a guess educated by the very best knowledge available to humanity at this point in time. But because scientists do NOT have "faith" in the existence of the Higgs, they must test it because that is the only way to acquire the evidence they require. Scientists want to change think into know -- even if it's knowing that what they thought before was wrong.

That is not faith.

The only faith a scientist needs, if it can yet be called that, is the faith that the universe operates under rules that can be tested, and that human minds could eventually unravel the mysteries.

Re:God Particle

[Mab_Mass]

It is definitely true that people are looking for the Higgs Boson based upon faith, but the trouble is that faith is an overloaded word.

The faith in science asks you to take nothing for granted. You can ask, "Why do we think the Higgs Boson exists?" and, eventually, this line of questioning will drill down to a point that references repeatable, reliable observations in the physical world. Now, it is true that most people (myself included) aren't going to go through that line of questioning and drill down into that level of detail, but a fundamental concept of science is that any statement is subject to questioning, testing, and review. What religious folks point to as "faith" in science ultimately boils down to faith in the peer-review process and its ability to (eventually) converge on the truth.

Contrast that to religion. Ultimately, religion makes claims that cannot be verified in the physical world and that ultimately come down to lines of reasoning like, "It is true because I feel it is true" or reference to the authority of tradition, often in the form of some kind of holy book. The final leap of faith is much larger, and for some, more extreme, religious claims, involves deliberately ignoring those repeatable facts of the physical world.

Ultimately, I agree with you that both science and religion rely upon a certain amount of faith, but do not think for a moment that this makes them the same.

Re:God Particle

[Chris Burke]

Read their other replies; they aren't joking.

Re:God Particle

[stms]

What kind of "faith" exposes itself to falsification through experimentation? What kind of "faith" in an entity has all of its greatest practitioners carving out all the places where we can be sure it doesn't exist, and prepared to face the potential truth that it simply doesn't at all? What kind of "faith" is based on making educated guesses at first, but ultimately wanting to know one way or another, of demanding evidence?

One that has no problem changing its beliefs? If you take someone else's word for something its faith so unless you understand why they are saying this is not the Boson they're looking for and how they got the evidence to come to that conclusion its faith for you.

Re:God Particle

[Beelzebud]

That's science... If the theory predicts the Higgs should be found at a certain range, and it isn't, then the theory was wrong, and it's back to the drawing board. This really isn't that hard of a concept to grasp if you want to. I have a feeling though that you just like the game you're playing.

Re:God Particle

[Beelzebud]

That's not a faith, and taking your logic to it's outcome, then nothing can be learned 2nd hand, and science doesn't exist...

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

Principle of causation, that for every effect (my existance), there is a cause, combined with the fact that we know that we exist (our very postulating it proves it, as a non-entity can not have rational thought), and the fact that the universe can manifestly not create itself (to do so would be to invoke nonsense).

Throw in a dose of entropy (how can chaos organize itself into a stable state for the big bang?), and the question of why a stable state such as the "big bang ball" would proceed without some causative agent into a non-stable state (rapidly expanding universe)?

And a further dose of "if there is neither a causative agent, nor an initial ball, why has the eternity that must therefore have already passed not violated the laws of thermodynamics through cyclical crunch-bangs?"

I would also point out that, unless I am massively missing something, Stephen Hawking's latest statement about "gravity...[causing] the universe to create itself" is manifestly irrational-- it defies reason. How can something create itself, when an act of creation requires that said target not already exist?

Incidentally, I am not trolling. I would love if someone could provide answers to these, I have never had the chance to ask why rationally arriving at the belief that there MUST have been a prime mover is less credible than the multiple-worlds theorems out there or the infinite crunch-bang cycles, or else spontaneous generation. No matter what angle I look at it from, it seems to me that there must be at least SOMETHING that is self-existent and eternal in order for us to exist now.

Re:God Particle

[Chris Burke]

One that has no problem changing its beliefs? If you take someone else's word for something its faith so unless you understand why they are saying this is not the Boson they're looking for and how they got the evidence to come to that conclusion its faith for you.

Even if I was fully versed in all the physics, the engineering of the LHC and the detectors involved, and all statistical analysis, I'd still be taking their word that what they were saying actually happened. Without actually reproducing their experiment from the digging of the subterranean chamber on up, I would have to take their word for it.

So sure, it's trivially true to say that anything which you have not personally experienced* you are taking on "faith", but in saying so you have trivialized the meaning of "faith". "Thinking something to probably be true, pending anything contrary showing up" is not what most people mean when they say "faith". It is not what the OP meant.

* And of course even then, perception can be deceiving.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

There are indeed rational reasons for anyone who cares to look, and there have been for thousands of years. If you cared to hear such arguments (and honestly, it would look rather bad if after such statements you refused to let yourself hear them), I would be happy you to point you in the right direction.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

Who says theists never change their beliefs? I have corrected them many times when I have been shown to be incorrect.

I would hazard that anyone who is unwilling to be corrected is unable to even read the Bible correctly.

Re:God Particle

[wisnoskij]

You don't know much about the higgs if you think that their is no evidence that it exists.
No experimental viewing of the higgs does not equal no evidence.
Their is lots and lots of experimental and theoretical evidence that it exists, still since we have yet to find it after searching for so long the evidence against it is also adding up.

Re:God Particle

[Beelzebud]

So start pointing...

Re:God Particle

[Chris Burke]

I'll probably get down-modded for pointing out your ignorance, and I know that faith is the atheist's F word around here, but you are sadly confused that there is only one type of faith. There is a world of difference between blind faith and real faith.

First, I am not an atheist. Second I know there are many definitions of "faith", including very trivial ones where other words serve better to express the intended meaning. I was presuming we were talking about "faith" of types where the OP's original and subsequent statements were meaningful, not banal and pointless.

Assuming you mean something not banal and pointless, then I'm at a loss for what you're characterizing as "blind" vs "real" faith. What is faith in God? What is faith in the potential of humanity? What is the faith that I won't fall through my chair due to a chance alignment of 10^40 electrons in my ass? "Blind" or "Real"?

You have _faith_ that the Scientific process leads us to a better understanding of [how] the universe [works.

Indeed, as I said in another post, I have faith that the universe operates under a set of consistent rules, and that the human brain could eventually through many generations of effort understand their mysteries. This is indeed a very real kind of faith.

You have _faith_ that the Sun will come up tomorrow. Probability & Statistically speaking the odds are dam near 100%. However, this is faith, not a fact.

Er, well, while normally a perfectly serviceable simplification, in this case thinking of the "sun coming up" is the wrong way to think of it. The sun never "comes up". The earth rotates bringing different portions of the planet into view of the sun. So what I really believe is that so long as the earth is still rotating, and nobody from the day time side of the earth reports that the sun mysteriously winked out in the middle of the day, that the part of earth I occupy will be illuminated in turn.

Is there some probability -- conditional probability based on an incomplete understanding of the universe -- that Conservation of Momentum and Energy are wrong and the earth can just spontaneously stop rotating or the sun just stop radiating, and that it will do so tonight? I guess so. If that's your definition of "faith" then it's technically true but also the most trivial and meaningless definition of faith that has been used in this whole thread.

Is that what you mean by "real faith"? Anything you take to be true (so long as it still appears to remain true), no matter how unlikely it is that it be false?

What about things that are more likely to be untrue, but for which there is little investment? Is it "blind" or "real" faith I have in the pizza delivery person bringing me my pizza instead of a pizza I disliked. I even went so far as to not go to the grocery store and acquire alternative sources of food, because I believed I would receive a tasty pizza. Is that "faith"? "blind" or "real"?

And more importantly, why are we sullying something as powerful as faith by using it to describe something so banal and trivial?

Re:God Particle

[Hatta]

They are falsifying NOTHING by looking for it. Eventually, they will either find it, or not find it. IF they don't find it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it just means that they can't find it.

It does falsify SOMETHING, because the theory predicts that we will find it. If we cannot find it then the theory must be wrong.

But the point I was making was that people BELIEVE it exists, and are looking for it, without any proof that it DOES exist.

Scientists don't believe. They EXPECT based on past observations. Those past observations are evidence that it DOES exist.

In fact, we're spending BILLIONS of looking for it, so I actually hope they DO find it.

We're spending BILLIONS of dollars to find out whether it exists or not. Whether or not we find it we will know the answer to that question, so we really can't lose.

But as of this moment, it makes a perfect example of where FAITH gets applied by those that deny it has any real value.

It makes a perfect example of people making predictions from past observations and testing them through experiment. If that's what you mean by FAITH I'm all for it!

Re:God Particle

[I(rispee_I(reme]

Throw in a dose of entropy (how can chaos organize itself into a stable state for the big bang?

You ask some reasonable questions, but this is the one that I feel like replying to-

You would do better to ask how chaos can avoid organizing itself into a stable state for the big bang. By definition, anything that can happen in a chaotic system must eventually happen, no? One of the better analogies I've heard is that if an immortal were to patiently and repeatedly shuffle a deck of cards, the shuffling would eventually order the cards by suit and face value. This is improbable, but not impossible, and there's all eternity to wait for the proper conditions to arise.

It being possible also means it's obliged to happen eventually, and it only has to happen once to produce this conversation via a long and torturous route.

Darned if answering one question didn't make me feel like answering another:

"I have never had the chance to ask why rationally arriving at the belief that there MUST have been a prime mover is less credible..."

The reason is known as the law of parsimony or Occam's Razor. We can either have a prime mover that has always existed (with a universe that has a definite beginning), or a universe that has always existed (with no prime mover). It's bad enough to violate causation (each scenario does that- either the prime mover or the universe are assumed to have no antecedent), but the existence of a prime mover is an additional assumption that has no explicative power.

Re:God Particle

[blue trane]

Perhaps you aren't acquainted with Buddhism. From the Kalama Sutra (http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/an/an03/an03.065.than.html):

"So, as I said, Kalamas: 'Don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought, "This contemplative is our teacher." When you know for yourselves that, "These qualities are unskillful; these qualities are blameworthy; these qualities are criticized by the wise; these qualities, when adopted & carried out, lead to harm & to suffering" — then you should abandon them.'

Re:God Particle

[Hatta]

The only faith a scientist needs, if it can yet be called that, is the faith that the universe operates under rules that can be tested, and that human minds could eventually unravel the mysteries.

I'd argue that that is a testable prediction too.

Re:God Particle

[Kjella]

If we already had proof that it does or doesn't exist, we wouldn't need to go looking. That's what science is, to go looking for the unknown and the unexplained and you can't do that without observation. And of course if we're spending BILLIONS we spend them where we think there's something interesting, not just trying things at random. And that's the whole difference, faith is happy just to be faith. A scientist may believe in a model but he always wants to test it against reality. You are quite clearly showing your ignorance since there's some rather hard limitations on what the Higgs has to be in order to be as predicted, possibly we'll find something completely different or nothing at all but then it won't be Higgs.

Re:God Particle

[blue trane]

Was Aristarchus of Samos relying on faith when he proposed a heliocentric solar system in the 3rd century BC, deliberately ignoring the repeatable facts that the epicyclists brought up against his theory, such as that they couldn't measure parallax motion of the stars? But was he right?

Re:God Particle

[jadrian]

Actually it is exactly the other way around. The fact that they spend billions to confirm its hypothesised existence, rather than just take it for granted, is a consequence of their lack of faith.

Re:God Particle

[porl]

This is as good an argument against god as it is against the big bang.

Couldn't have said it better. The number of people i've heard say 'but it makes no sense that the universe just appeared' but are happy to just accept that some god presence can do exactly the same thing they just dismissed as nonsense astounds me.

To me it is the equivalent of answering 'but how does....' with 'magic'.

Re:God Particle

[Chris Burke]

Tell that to the investors of the LHC.

Uh okay but I'm pretty sure they already know.

Re:God Particle

[not-my-real-name]

The faith in science asks you to take nothing for granted.

This actually isn't quite true. There is one fundamental assumption that science makes. It assumes that all phenomena are the result of natural laws acting on stuff. There is also a lesser assumption that this is actually explainable.

The result is that if a god (pick any god you care to name) or some other supernatural entity came down and worked some miracles, the miracles would be studied and once enough data was gathered, appropriate modifications to the currently understood physical laws would be made. Experiments would be done, PhD thesis would be written and eventually a Nobel prize or two might be awarded. In the end, everybody (at least the scientists) would be happy that the understanding of the universe had been improved. Atheists would continue not to believe in god and believers would continue to believe.

Re:God Particle

[Veggiesama]

The difference between the presentation of the Higgs Boson and God is slight, but important.

Whenever I read about the Higgs, the reader is reminded that it has not yet been located, it is being rigorously searched for, and/or it is a best-guess theory that fits nicely into the Standard Model. It is assumed to exist, though I have a feeling nobody would be terribly upset if a better theory came around to account for its lack of existence.

Whenever I read about God, it's implicitly assumed that he exists, he's good, and he can read your mind.

There's an order of magnitude of difference between these two "faiths" and assuming they are, in any way, guilty of the same logical fallacies is preposterous.

Re:God Particle

[LordSnooty]

A scientist: the God particle may well be unfindable, but we're gonna keep on looking until we find something. A religious: don't bother looking for God, he's unfindable.

Re:God Particle

[blue trane]

Yeah, we can build holodecks where God exists or where we are gods or where the laws of physics are whatever we feel like...

Re:God Particle

[stms]

Okay now we're just debating semantics. When you say faith you mean "religious belief system" religions can change too (usually not as easily). I'm merely pointing out the silliness of people who think they're so much better because their answer requires less faith. You still believe what people tell you to believe.

Re:God Particle

[Dishevel]

I have always thought of God (If he exists) and the Big Bang as one.
An infinite amount of potential energy seething chaotically, timelessly.
Then ...

By definition, anything that can happen in a chaotic system must eventually happen, no?

It does. Out of the chaos is born a decision. A decision made with knowledge. A decision to create.
Rules applied. Potential realized.
God becomes and the universe is created at once. Both being the same thing. Both existing then and now. Both changed.

I don't know. I think it is a beautiful merge of Science and God.
And God created Science and Science was good.

Re:God Particle

[Nemyst]

Looking for the aether (and failing to do so with the Michelson-Morley experiment) is a hallmark of science and ended up with the acceptance of the theory of relativity.

Just not finding the Higgs boson where we expect it to be could already lead to many discoveries or changes. This is not useless science, it WILL have impacts one way or another. There is also a relatively high probability that a definitive result will arise, either by finding it or concluding it does not exist (always within reasonable doubt).

Unlike religion, science isn't about absolutes; never has there been "proof" in science, merely elements leading to believe one theory is more true than the other... Until contradictory evidence appears to shatter it or force us to improve it.

Re:God Particle

[Brannoncyll]

Your definition of 'real faith' sounds more like 'expectation' to me. Personally I expect the sun to come up tomorrow, if it doesn't I would be very surprised. It would however be very interesting.

With regards to your comment that scientists have *faith* that the Scientific process leads us to a better understanding of the universe - the very fact that you are using a computer to send this message is clearly evidence that it does. Unless you think that computers just magically appear in factories?

Re:God Particle

[I(rispee_I(reme]

we know that the universe hasn't always existed?

No such thing is known- consensus is that the big bang occurred at a given time, and before that, our current model breaks down as all the universe's mass converges on a point particle and we get errors from plugging values of zero in for certain variables. That's my understanding, anyway. What happened before that is by no means certain, but saying "A prime mover (who always existed) caused the big bang" only moves the mystery further away without clarifying it a bit.

Believers in God don't need any favors, large or small, as they will believe whatever load of bull suits them regardless of the evidence.

Re:God Particle

[khallow]

So what does that mean, exactly, when we know that the universe hasn't always existed?

By definition of "universe", that statement is always false. There is no sense of physical existence outside of the universe. That the more restricted component, the observable universe has an apparent start date is peculiar, but it doesn't imply a cause.

Re:God Particle

[khallow]

And God created Science and Science was good.

It's worth noting here that science is a human creation by any of its definitions, whether it be a formal, methodical study of an arbitrary field of knowledge, or the empirical sense of one of our best attempts to understand reality. It is our attempt to understand something.

Re:God Particle

[I(rispee_I(reme]

I have always thought of God (If he exists) and the Big Bang as one.
An infinite amount of potential energy seething chaotically, timelessly.

Whatever works for you, but the dictionary does not list "An infinite amount of potential energy seething chaotically, timelessly." among its definitions for "god". If you're willing to alter the definition until it fits the phenomenon, then why not cut to the chase and define god as "An imaginary friend used by fanatics to lend a sense of substance and meaning to their lives, without expending the effort to create a legitimate basis for that sense"?

I think it is a beautiful merge of Science and God.

Does calling a chaotic universe "god" have any explicative power? If not, let's not sully the name of science by labeling it such. Science has enough mystics and shucks trying to ride its coattails already.

You raise the average human life expectancy by a measly 3.5 decades and every guru on the block wants a piece of the action...

Re:God Particle

[Anonymous Coward]

First problem with Pascal's Wager: which god(s) do you believe in? what if you get it wrong?

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

Introducing a new cause (god) does not solve this problem. This is not an argument for the existence of god.

By the context, I assume you meant to write "a new effect". But the law of causation does not say that every THING has a cause, merely that every effect has a cause. That is, anything in a state of change must have a cause. God is understood to be unchanging-- outside of "time" if you will (understanding "time" as "state of change").

The second law of thermodynamics captures the evolution of the universe. It really doesn't say anything about the initial conditions. Again, you are asking questions about what caused the big bang. Quite frankly, the energy scale immediately following the big bang is so huge that we will probably never be able to understand the behavior of physics immediately following the big bang, much less before.

I do not think it is unreasonable for one to ask "what caused the 'initial state' to enter a state of change", nor to try to reason out whether it is logically possible for such a state to have come into being unaided. I understand that these are difficult questions, and I do not mean to say "if you cant answer now, then you must be wrong" (for there are a good many questions you could likely ask me about my faith that I am simply unprepared to answer; that doesnt mean I will never have an answer); but when people like Stephen Hawking make statements regarding the universe spontaneously generating itself, or unfalsifiable theories about multiple worlds being posited, I think it is fair to ask if Occams razor does not demand a simple, eternal, cause.

The second law of thermo is kind of weird, but only from a theoretical perspective. Look into the ergodic theorem. In particular, we actually expect cyclic behavior from a mathematical perspective (Did I just blow your mind? This mathematical fact blows mine every time I hear it).

That is interesting, and I will look into it-- thanks for the tip. But surely you do see the immediate objections that spring to mind? I will be quite interested to see why it is not necessary that objects in a state of change eventually reach a state of equilibrium-- have there been observations of systems that run indefinitely? I had understood that perpetual motion machines were commonly discredited in scientific communities.

This is as good an argument against god as it is against the big bang.

God is described as self existent; he has no creator and knows no change. This solves the issues of "how can something be perpetually in a state of change, and why would it not eventually find an equilibrium?"

The classical argument I outlined above is not necessarially sufficient to account for God, but is used to arrive at the premise "there must be SOME unchanging, eternal, 'prime mover'". I merely added some of my own questions regarding entropy.

The arguments for the big bang are that it DOES explain phenomena. Whereas a god or FSM does not.

I would argue that in the absence of proof or data, it would be equally rational to consider, in turn, an FSM, infinite bigbang cycles, a God, and possibly other scenarios. Assuming as you say it will never be possible to gather information of "pre-big-bang" (which I agree with, due to definition of "universe"), one would have to approach it deductively and ask "which scenario best describes what we see".

I do not think, with those criteria, God as the cause is unreasonable, especially when some of our most reliable historical documents give eyewitness accounts of events that must otherwise be discarded as "legend".

Thank you for your well thought out reply, however, it is nice to have someone actually give a reasoned reply, and I will look into ergodic theory.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

a God that never changes (and therefore is permitted to "exist" without "causation") is a God that cannot make a decision, and therefore may never act (and therefore cannot create the universe)

Unless of course such a God does not make decisions in the temporal way we do, and is simultaneously omnipotent, omniscient, AND self-existent. I am not aware of any class of reformed thought which thinks that God is suprised by new events and must then make a decision; he is described as having had a plan from the beginning.

And tbqh, I cannot see how that statement is less reasonable than many of the alternative theories (spontaneous generation, self creation, etc).

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

No, the general thought is not that God ever just came into existence; the entire argument is that he is eternal.

The reason that same argument cannot be applied to the universe, according to my above argument, is that the universe is in a state of change, and systems in a state of change always (so far as we have ever been able to tell) seek an equilibrium; if they do not, you simply need to widen your scope to capture more of the universe, and you will see that principle in action.

As the universe is now in a state of change, it must eventually reach a state of equilibrium; and if it has been around "forever", it should have already done so, since an immeasurable ("infinite") amount of time would have already passed.

This problem seems to require one of 4 conclusions:
1) reality is an illusion, and nothing exists (ruled out by Decartes' famous "I think, therefore I am")
2) The universe is self creating (which makes no sense in any language you formulate the thought in; a non-existent thing cannot act or create)
3) the universe is eternal (same problem I mentioned above)
4) something within or without the universe is eternal; and is necessarily self-existent, and unchanging (if not, it is not eternal)

And I obviously fall to number 4 as a conclusion.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

You would do better to ask how chaos can avoid organizing itself into a stable state for the big bang. By definition, anything that can happen in a chaotic system must eventually happen, no?

That is a good reply; but it seems to create a new problem-- perfectly organized stable states dont "big bang", and if they do they are not stable states. This is the bigger problem I would like to hear an answer to-- what caused the "bang"?

he reason is known as the law of parsimony or Occam's Razor [wikipedia.org]. We can either have a prime mover that has always existed (with a universe that has a definite beginning), or a universe that has always existed (with no prime mover). It's bad enough to violate causation (each scenario does that- either the prime mover or the universe are assumed to have no antecedent), but the existence of a prime mover is an additional assumption that has no explicative power.

Im aware of Occam's Razor, and it is a part of my argument ;) The issue I have with a self-existent universe, is that eternal things tend to not change; if they did, they would not be eternal. At the very least, every observation of the universe I am aware of is plagued by the law of thermodynamics which implicitly denies the possiblity of something that is BOTH eternal AND changing (ie, perpetual motion machines). I have heard other, better, more classically trained arguments for why it makes no sense, but not being a philosopher (and not wanting to bore you with a much much lengthier argument) I will stick with that.

I do appreciate the thoughtful answer, and look forward to your reply.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

This isnt about doing anyone favors or sticking it to the other guy. I, and I assume the others in this discussion, are concerned with truth, not wielding words like a bludgeon. If you are concerned with "doing the religious guys a favor", perhaps you have exactly the wrong view of reason, science, and philosophy.

Why do you suppose the greek ending "sophia" is in "philosophy", I might ask?

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

It depends on how you define universe. The two most common I have heard (paraphrased) are "all that is", in which case God would be included, and the "natural universe', which as I understand is sort of a "domain" of information; the boundary outside of which no information can cross by means within the universe.

I am probably paraphrasing it badly, but in either definition it would seem that gathering information about its formation or what is outside it is impossible from human perspective.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

An infinite amount of potential energy seething chaotically, timelessly.

I would ask why such a writhing mass does not eventually expend all of its potential energy by entering a state of equilibrium.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

There's a really simple answer to the "first cause" question, and that's that there was no first time. There is no time zero. There is no minimum time. In math-speak, it's an open set. Every instant was preceded by another instant--note that this does NOT require an infinite number of seconds, just an infinite resolution. That avoids the problem with first cause.

Seconds are irrelevant; time is a state of change, and you are postulating an infinite (or immeasurable, to be precise) amount of change from whenever until now; but if that is the case, then uncountable uncountables have occured, and I would ask why this perpetual motion machine has not reached equilibrium yet.

As another poster points out, even if you do postulate a god as a creator, you have the question what created the creator

If I postulated that God was both a cause and an event, you are right, the entire model would crumble. But what I am postulating is that God is the prime cause, and not an effect at all-- that he is unchanging and eternal.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

If you are looking for more classical arguments, Thomas Aquinas is rather famous for his Summa Theoligica-- this appears to be what you are looking for (in english, too).

There is also the quite old argument that Paul made, that the existence of a conscience in the human heart (or mind, or however you wish to term it) is proof of some higher moral standard to which we all find ourselves accountable to. CS Lewis sums this up quite nicely in Mere Christianity-- the first 20 or so pages sum the argument up quite nicely, and regardless of your religious views Lewis makes a very pleasant read. The first chapter can be found here, and the complete book as well as audio here.

If random musings by a brilliant mathematician are more your thing, I highly recommend Pascal's Pensees. There are a number of things that I could probably take issue with in his writings, but on the whole he gives some rather good arguments for both the existence for God, and for belief in him. Full work

Also of note would be Anselm of Canterbury, who is probably most famous for his ontological argument. I am not sure I grasp the full weight of his argument, as I have never found it compelling, but nevertheless it is significant; he also argues in Monologion and Proslogion (according to wikipedia) apparently along the same lines as Lewis (or perhaps it is the reverse)-- that our qualitative assesments of "good" and "right" and "evil" imply some higher standard to which we must be appealing, of which we are all innately aware.

RC Sproul has a wonderful series that walks through a "classical", rational approach to the question of "why is belief in God logically defensible". It is, unfortunately, not free, but I mention it because he covers most of the relevant material from the others (excepting Lewis), and well beyond.

If you can only pick one, and dont wish to spend money, I would probably go with either lewis or Aquinas; I have not really looked into Aquinas much, but some of Lewis's stuff is not quite so airtight as it could be (not that the arguments are wrong, but I think he leaves some avenues unexplored before arriving at a conclusion).

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

Now, accepting your "the universe was created exactly how it is," premise, can we please do some work? Oh, that's right. You're back to needing science to do anything useful. It's almost like you refuse to hear the argument:

Who said I was pitting the two against each other? Most of my arguments rely on logical deduction and rational thought, which are prerequisites to science. I see no need to separate the two, since both are concerned with universal truth and both are concerned with the cause of all things.

I would argue, only partly in jest, that if my beliefs are correct, you are back to needing God in order to accomplish anything useful ;) After all, science doesnt "do" anything; it is a systematic approach to gaining knowledge. It is God, if I am correct, that perpetuates all things.

Re:God Particle

[sFurbo]

Indeed, it would be more rational, if they didn't insist on using their god to decide how everyone else should live. They do insist on doing so, so it is rational to counter them, as I for one don't want to give up my cotton/polyester blend, or whatever they have decided their god hates today.

Re:God Particle

[porl]

the logic falls down, however, when you note that something that cannot change cannot create. to create implies action and action implies changing of state.

if 'god' cannot change (by your logic) then he/she/it cannot have created the universe, which brings the same problems as 2 and 3.

Re:God Particle

[phantomfive]

That's a simplistic view of faith......the idea that you must only believe and will never have any evidence at all.

In practice, faith in God is much like faith in the Higgs boson.....scientists believe (faith is just the noun form of believe), or have faith, that a Higgs boson exists, so they are performing experiments to see if they can find it. Similarly, if you have faith in religion, you will follow that religion, and eventually you either will or won't see the results the religion promised if you follow it.

Every major religion makes promises that can be experimented on and tested.

(posting to remove a bad moderation)

Re:God Particle

[sFurbo]

In general, Aquinas finds something which he thinks he can prove exists, and calls that god. Of course, you can do that, but it doesn't really speak well of god if you have to do that. As for his individual arguments:
1: The unmoved mover kind of went out the window with quantum mechanics. Also, it assumes a finite amount of time has gone by.
2: First Cause: If god caused the universe, what caused god? If god needs no cause, then why does the universe need a cause? And, again, it assumes a universe that has a finite past.
3. Contingency: Virtual particles blow that out of the water.
4. The Argument from Degree: It assumes that you can talk about "the most $property$". If there is one thing math has taught is, it is that that is not always the case. For example, what is the greatest whole number (and if the answer to that is \Aleph_0, what is the greatest cardinal number?).
5. The Teleological Argument: "We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end" No, we don't. We see them act according to universal laws, and project intent into them.

Pascal's wager? Really? You have got to be kidding me.

Anselms Island is just a more formal version of the argument from degree, and suffers from the same flaw, in addition to the problem of whether being red or green is better (by the way, it was formalised by Gödel, but one of his axioms is that either green is better than red, or vice versa).

I'll stop here by concluding that those of your good arguments for the existence of god which I have analysed fall into one of three categories: Those that are not good arguments, those that are not arguments for the existence of god, and those that are neither good arguments not arguments for the existence of god.

Re:God Particle

[inasity_rules]

The problem with this sort of argument is atheists in general consider these arguments as falsified. Regarding for example the qualitative assessments of "good" and "evil", they come up with two answers, namely there is no "good" or "evil" and these terms can be defined in the context of evolution - what is good for the survival of the group and what is "evil" or detrimental to its survival.

They have similar issues with the other arguments. While I agree with you that belief in a deity(or deities) is logically defensible, I am not convinced you will convince anyone of that. Often they simply can not or will not see another point of view, and analyses it for its own merits rather than through the mantra "religion bad, science good."

Re:God Particle

[khallow]

I am probably paraphrasing it badly, but in either definition it would seem that gathering information about its formation or what is outside it is impossible from human perspective.

There are deeper problems here than paraphrasing, No information means it is not part of our universe. Period. "All that is" has no meaning when you have no knowledge about what is "all", "is", or even if there is an "all" or "is" to speak of outside of what you can observe. Similarly, formation of the universe or the concept of "outside" has no meaning beyond what we can observe.

In other words, empirically we have hard limited on what we can know or deduce philosophically. This goes back to the original statement that I replied to. That sort of speculation hits a sharp wall of ignorance. We simply can't peer past it. As a result, there are certain questions which are pointless to ask or answer.

In addition, we have significant limits on what we can learn and perceive. For example, we couldn't perceive whether some being has some of the "infinite" attributes that God is supposed to have by any sort of observation we could make. As long as the being can baffle our perception well enough, it's useless for us to try.

Going back to the original question that started this round of philosophizing, it's worth noting that the original question ranged from strictly false to unknown. There's no condition in which we can currently know that it's true, according to our understanding of the universe and limitations of our universe and our bodies.

Re:God Particle

[jadrian]

I can't do much more to educate you than repeat what I just said. They don't "believe" it exists. It is an hypothesis based on models that have been shown to have predictive value. Now they are trying to confirm that hypothesis. If the hypothesis is confirmed great. If not new hypothesis will come. There is no faith here. If there were faith they wouldn't bother looking for it and try to look for data to confirm or disprove their models. They'd just assume it to be true.

Re:God Particle

[Dishevel]

Chaotic and Potential.
Without rule.
No physical laws.
My thought was to introduce God as the intelligence that came from that chaos.
The intelligence forced rule upon the chaotic potential that was. That potential becomes and expands. God is the thought.

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

People consider these arguments falsified because they have been falsified! sFurbo pointed out many ways in which they have been falsified. No one will be convinced when your argument boils down to "Just ignore logic for a second and you'll see what I'm saying". It is not a mantra to believe in reason. If you can't provide unfalsified reasoning then you aren't going to convince anyone in your belief. Especially after an assertion like "There are indeed rational reasons for anyone who cares to look". A lot of people have looked and are happy to look but I've never heard of one that survives even the most basic of scrutiny.

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

The fallacy in your reasoning, as unbalanced parentheses above you pointed out, is your definition of the "beginning of the universe". The Big Bang was the beginning of physics as we know them and we label this the universe. Defining existence and anything that applies to the physical rules of our existence becomes problematic before the big bang. Time as you define it existed before the big bang; time as science defines it did not.

Re:God Particle

[Raenex]

But what I am postulating is that God is the prime cause, and not an effect at all-- that he is unchanging and eternal.

You've just wrapped up a bunch of incomprehensible quantities and called it "God" (itself an incredibly overloaded term) and then pretend this answer is more satisfactory than a universe that starts from a mathematical singularity. Your hypothesis provides no value, no predictions, no anything. It's strictly "God of the Gaps".

I'll fully admit that a universe without cause is incomprehensible to me, but then so is a universe of infinite causes, and even more so a supernatural God without a cause. However, at least science has pushed back the question to shortly after the big bang, which is much more than "God of the Gaps" religion has ever done.

Re:God Particle

[inasity_rules]

Or, more accurately, from the point of view of a certain group of people they are considered falsified. Not everyone shares that point of view.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

Time is a state of change. Anything that experiences change cannot be eternal, unless it is in a perpetual cycle (which is commonly rejected as "perpetual motion machine).

Therefore, assuming reality is not an illusion, and spontaneous generation is not feasible, and self-creation is agreed to be nonsense, something "outside of time" is necessary.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

I should have edited this in:
I AM making a claim, that God exists, and is responsible for all things. I do not intend to get more specific than THAT in this discussion because how we arrived at today is not what the discussion was about; the starter comment was that there is no "rational" argument for God, and I have provided several well known, old, and a few of my own arguments, and a good many people remark that they think they carry some weight.

I do not intend to claim that I am the best apologist, philosopher, or scientist, or that my grasp of quantum mechanics is any better than my grasp of some of Kant and Nietzsche's ideas; but I certainly think I have satisfied the demand of the OP.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

In general, Aquinas finds something which he thinks he can prove exists, and calls that god

Im not sure that does justice to his argument, or really gets where he is going. The question as I read it was that "Why must there be an initial cause that you call God", and Aquinas sets out to show that you must have had an "unmoved mover". If you wish not to call that God, that does not change the thrust of his argument, that you still need an eternal, uncaused cause that is separate and apart from all things, and superior to all things in nature.

If god caused the universe, what caused god? If god needs no cause, then why does the universe need a cause? And, again, it assumes a universe that has a finite past.

Once again I think you are completely missing what Aquinas is saying. He very clearly is referring to an uncaused God in his first argument. As to why the universe needs a cause, that is, again, in his first point; I can sum it up as "systems in a state of change must have had a beginning", and "systems cannot remain in a state of change forever". That is, that nothing that experiences change can be eternal, so must in turn have had a beginning, and therefore a cause.

Virtual particles blow that out of the water.

I am not 100% familiar with those, but some brief research seems to show they are theoretical, and not directly observable. Wikipedia seems to sum it up as this...
The concept of virtual particles arises in the perturbation theory of quantum field theory, an approximation scheme in which interactions (essentially forces) between real particles are calculated in terms of exchanges of virtual particles
If I am reading that correctly, it is in the same position as the Higgs-- necessary to explain and perform calculations in quantum mechanics, but nevertheless theoretical. That doesnt put it in a position to blow contingency out of the water.

I am not a quantum physicist, so am wary in trying to make statements about such ideas, but it also appears that they are trying to account for how some otherwise unexplainable interactions between particles occur, and have "visualized" them with virtual particles. To assume that they must have the complete picture, and what appears to us must be what really is, seems some phenomenal hubris. I rather suspect that an actual researcher would not be so cocksure as you are about our knowledge of quantum interactions.

If there is one thing math has taught is, it is that that is not always the case. For example, what is the greatest whole number (and if the answer to that is \Aleph_0, what is the greatest cardinal number?).

That is a good question, but I think that there ARE answers when it comes to qualities we observe in the world such as "good", "right", "beauty", etc. As to whether largeness and smallness can be extended to the infinity, I do not know-- it is not my argument, I have very little time reading and thinking on Aquinas, and I was merely pointing him in the direction of some classical arguments. That is not to say that there are not answers, merely that I do not have this one.

The Teleological Argument: "We see that things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end" No, we don't. We see them act according to universal laws, and project intent into them.

That is interesting; Aquinas sets forth a well reasoned argument and your response is "I disagree with your premise, will give no defense of my position, but will nevertheless declare you to be wrong".

Pascal's wager? Really? You have got to be kidding me.

Pascal is known for much more than pascal's wager, and if you express such contempt for it I assume you are only familiar with its paraphrased version. The actual "wager" is a good deal longer and more weighty than what you are probably familiar with. And the wager constitutes o

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

The problem with this sort of argument is atheists in general consider these arguments as falsified. Regarding for example the qualitative assessments of "good" and "evil", they come up with two answers, namely there is no "good" or "evil" and these terms can be defined in the context of evolution - what is good for the survival of the group and what is "evil" or detrimental to its survival.

And yet they utterly ignore why those arguments have weight-- because one of the main premises is that we all have some kind of natural law on our hearts.

I suppose you could try to deny the truth of it, but when scores of scholars throughout the ages give reference to it across scores of different cultures, one begins to wonder whether TRUE absurdity is trying to deny its existence.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

I happen to think sFurbo misunderstood 2-3 of Aquinas arguments completely, gave a fairly good reply to the 4th, and then made an arbitrary and undefended statement about the 5th. That hardly counts as falsification in my book.

"Just ignore logic for a second and you'll see what I'm saying".

And now I am convinced you have looked at none of the arguments at all, since they all require you to put on your logic cap and think.

This hardly does your credibility any good, when you will attack statements without understanding what they are, or when you will sling mud over what have been understood for thousands of years to be arguments in the field of logic.

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

What I was attacking was the "consider these arguments falsified" statement. I have looked at the arguments, put on my thinking cap, understood why they are fallacies. All of the provided "arguments" have had people explain why they are incorrect. The credible response from that would be to either explain why the refutes are incorrect or to fix the arguments. This never happens, however. Instead what happens is the same exact arguments are made again ignoring any attempts at refuting them. Then attack the people making the refute saying things like "they can't see another point of view" and "Analyze it for its own merits"(despite the merits being refuted)"rather than through the mantra 'religion bad, science good'".

The means have been provided. If you want to say the belief is rational then you have to use reason to show that.

Re:God Particle

[Wootie Woo]

All religious types are just trolling the non-believers.

If you ever went to their worship services, they come up with the most hilarious ways to elicit angry replies from people on message boards.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

All of the provided "arguments" have had people explain why they are incorrect. The credible response from that would be to either explain why the refutes are incorrect or to fix the arguments. This never happens, however.

Um, thats flat out not true. If you cared to do some research you would see refutations of theologians, and then the theologian responding, and back and forth. Off the top of my head I know Lewis had back-and-forth discussions with a large number of people, and gave public talks where he responded to such "refutations".

The means have been provided. If you want to say the belief is rational then you have to use reason to show that.

What happens when said refutations are themselves flawed, as is quite often the case?

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

I gave a number of arguments for why I do not think the universe can be self existant, and I have yet to hear anyone reconcile them except for one fellow who mentioned "Ergodic theory" as a way of trying to explain why a perpetual bang-crunch cycle is plausible. I would have to research that more, but he is the only one I would give a bye to in this discusion. Everyone else seems to completely avoid the topic of entropy and the impossiblity of a perpetually in-motion universe that has always been.

If people want to ignore my premise and my defense of my premise, and then claim that because there is no premise my conclusion is wrong, then quite frankly there is not much more I can say. Taking half of one's arguments and then claiming they lack foundation is pretty terrible debate technique.

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

I didn't see any of that here. I saw two jumps from "morality", "good" and "evil" to "therefore there must be a god". The most famous idea from pascal's pensees seems to be Pascal's Wager which is one of the worst arguments for God I have ever heard.

The wikipedia article for quinque viae reveals some pretty laugable "logic". "hot being hot and fire being the hottest of hot means that existence of good proves the existence of god because there must be a best". No where in there is there logic or even correctness. Now, and this I find hilarious, the second of two paragraphs in the "defense" section reads:

More recently Edward Feser has argued in his book Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide that Dawkins, Hume, Kant, and most modern philosophers do not have a correct understanding of Aquinas at all; that the arguments are often difficult to translate into modern terms; and that the Five Ways are just a brief summary directed towards beginners and must be understood in the context of Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Aquinas’ other writings. He argues that Aquinas’ five ways have never been adequately refuted when thus considered.

Which is exactly how I said these arguments are defended. Claiming the refuter just doesn't understand them. Just get your mindset into the beliefs of these backwards people (ignore logic). Mind you the first paragraph may actually constitute a real refutal.

These are not "understood" to be logical arguments. They haven't been since people have been able to apply logic without shoe-horning it into a model that is done by god. Of those five proofs there wasn't a single one that didn't make me chuckle. I know that is extremely pompous but the "logic" in those arguments is at about the same level as the Holy Grail's "She's a Witch" scene.

I can give reasons for why all of these so called "arguments" are flawed but so many before me have already. But from cursory glance they all break down to needing the person to go outside logic for a second (assume there is an objective scale of morality or something similar) then jump to a conclusion from there.

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

The first paragraph constitutes a refutal of the refutal (ie showing why a particular refutal is flawed). But it was not a genuine defense. Thought I should clarify that before anyone tries to misrepresent that statement.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

Again... the conclusions must be that either god has always existed, or something else has which effectively "predates" the universe to have spawned it... something that we have absolutely *NO* evidence of, and I can think of no remotely compelling reason to believe it,

No scientific evidence, that is true; to gather information from outside or from before the universe is impossible by very definition. It is nevertheless fair to look at what we have and posit several explainations of what could have caused it, look at what we have now, and try to infer the most likely cause.

Presumably, some people choose the former option because their own experiences in life convince them of the veracity of that notion, in much the same way as one's sensibilities convince them of the reality that they experience in a day-to-day basis. It's hardly scientific, but it's still a lot more to go on than the alternative.

Properly applied, it is perfectly valid. This is part of what I am saying, yes. I find a number of examples where I have found the Bible to be more in line with reality than the notion that I exist without a purpose and will die without one, that natural law does not exist, that and man is perfectable, and so on. In every observable instance I have found the second two notions to be absolutely untrue; where many secular humanists would push for perfecting man, the Bible insists that it is a fools errand, and I know of no scenario where man has actually pulled himself above his corruptible nature.

It sounds like I have communicated at least some of the rational basis for why belief in God makes sense, which is in fact what I was setting out to do. I do think Pascal's Wager at this point would indicate that people should be willing to consider such basis, and hear the claims of christianity; not to do so would to be to brush aside as irrelevant what might be the most important piece of information as "trivia"-- whether or not there really is a God, and what he has to say to you. I would be happy to continue the conversation via email at any time, email address slashdotincoming.20.ronin2040@spamgourmet.com.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

I didn't see any of that here. I saw two jumps from "morality", "good" and "evil" to "therefore there must be a god". The most famous idea from pascal's pensees seems to be Pascal's Wager which is one of the worst arguments for God I have ever heard.

Not all of Pascal's Pensees are directly "arguments for God" in and of themselves, and I dont think the Wager falls into that category; the version of the Pensees I have with commentary notes "..Yet it is not his central concern, the thing closest to his heart. It is only one step on the way, one possible means to an end." The wager is IMO (as Pascal really didnt give intros to his Pensees) an argument for why considering belief in God is rational; He doesnt say that "therefore belief in God is proven". This IS, I think, an example of you misunderstanding the Pensee-- particularly as you do not seem to be aware of the context, or even the full Wager as Pascal wrote it.

Which is exactly how I said these arguments are defended. Claiming the refuter just doesn't understand them. Just get your mindset into the beliefs of these backwards people (ignore logic)

Thats true, but doesnt take away the fact that he really doesnt understand the argument that Aquinas is making; and that if one does not understand the argument nor has offered a refutation of its specific claims, then it is fair to call that out. It seems like he (the slashdot poster, not Dawkins) read over it and in 5 minutes thinks he grasped the extent of Aquinas argument, which he clearly doesnt if he is asking "what caused God"; Aquinas specifically mentions that he is discussing an "unmoved mover".

I do NOT intend to defend Feser or refute Dawkins, as I have neither read Feser's book nor Dawkins' arguments, so I really cannot comment on that at all. It is entirely possible that Dawkins really didnt get Aquinas, and it is entirely possible that he did, and Feser was wrong. If you havent read their books, then honestly you cant comment on it either, as it would be pure speculation.

As with Pascal's wager above, I think it is common for people to hear a phrase, do a few minutes of research on the internet, and think they understand the things being said. It is often enough far more complicated than that, and requires looking much deeper to get what is being said. I would imagine that most people who read John 1 "In the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God", and dont really get what the author was saying, because they do not understand the context nor have a firm grasp of the Bible (for the curious, it is partly a reference to Gen1, and a reference to a notion in Greek philosophy, the "logos", since the gospel was directed partly at the Greeks).

All that aside, my recommendation was to read the Pensees, not the Wager-- I suspected that people would read "the Wager" into my post, but I think there are a number of other Pensees that are far more relevant to "what is the rational grounds for God" (since, again, I dont think the Wager was meant to address that).

But from cursory glance they all break down to needing the person to go outside logic for a second (assume there is an objective scale of morality or something similar) then jump to a conclusion from there.

I think that if you come to that conclusion, you are saying either that you cannot find a logical misstep in the argument, OR that you do not think that they are arguments in the field of logic at all. I can say with certainty that the second premise is not correct, the arguments give very clear premises and walk towards a conclusion.

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

I have never read the Pensees so I cannot really comment on them. I am very confident that they do not offer very good reasoning and fall into the same category as most arguments for god. The Wager however I am quite familiar with. I agree that it is not a proof for God and does not intend to be. So it is quite fair that it makes a terrible argument for god.

Aquinas I won't accept. I'll start from the bottom up because the last two are the easiest. (I won't accept the argument that I can't understand them without context either).
5 - We know today that nothing is being directed to its end. God doesn't instruct the clouds, the trees or the squirrels. They follow physical rules and simple(relative to ours) input/output systems.
4 - Makes the jump from logic to morality and nobility then back to logic. Concepts of morality are, by definition, irrational. Irrational in that they are fuzzy by nature. What one person considers moral another will not. So we have no linear scale of morality; no morally best, no morally worst.
3,2,1 - The first three make logical reasons but suffer the flaw of injecting the desired result into the reasoning. They are started from the end of God existing and worked backwards. They start with the assumption that God does what can't be defined (more appropriately: what the author doesn't understand). So start from a point and continue to a point you don't have an answer to then inject God. If I am proving that 1=2 then I cannot use that assumption in the proof such as:
1 = 2
1 = 1 + 1 (but! 1=2 so)
2 = 1 + 1
2 = 2 QED

This isn't a valid proof. All they are proving is there is a point that they don't understand. At most that contemporary science hasn't found all the answers (a point clearly known to all scientists). Nothing there has to be done by a god that couldn't be done by something else, anything else.

The logical misstep I found was jumping from logical statements to morality. You cannot do that because morality is not a logical method. It is a fuzzy method. Fuzzy methods are useful for a great many things but making logical arguments is not one of them.

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

I have never read the Pensees so I cannot really comment on them. I am very confident that they do not offer very good reasoning and fall into the same category as most arguments for god.

Why are you certain of that? It sounds like you are presupposing there can be no good argument for God, despite no rational basis for that belief.

Makes the jump from logic to morality and nobility then back to logic. Concepts of morality are, by definition, irrational.

You are giving this premise, and you clarify what you mean by it, but offer no real logical argument for it other than opinion ("[i think] they are fuzzy by nature"). Most of the arguments I have seen along the lines of morality (technically ethics, as morality is the "acted-out ethical system of a people") are based on the assumption that all men share some portion of the natural law on their hearts; this is an argument that can be tested by looking within oneself. CS Lewis gives a pretty good explaination of this in the very first page of Mere Christianity I will not post it here, as it is a fairly large paragraph (about 20 or so sentences), but I think it would be relevant to read:
http://www.truthaccordingtoscripture.com/documents/apologetics/mere-christianity/Book1/cs-lewis-mere-christianity-book1.php#a

In a nutshell, Lewis observes that most people DO seem to have some innate sense of "fair", as evidenced by their attempts to justify themselves whenever someone else claims to have been wronged. I do not think Lewis is imagining things, nor do I think an honest individual can deny that people really do do this.

The arguments generally proceed from there with the premise that the universe is understandable; if it is not, of course, there is neither an explanation for that "natural law", nor any use to attempting scientific inquiry into the universe at large..

So we have no linear scale of morality; no morally best, no morally worst.

Your words go against every inclination of every person I have ever met. Most would agree that one who murders children is worse on an ethical scale than one who shoplifts (I have met a scarce few who have argued for infanticide based on how they assign human value, but thats neither here nor there).

5 - We know today that nothing is being directed to its end.

That is a fallacy of the first order: Begging the question. The VERY ISSUE in question is, "is there a guiding purpose behind things". Noone can or has proven that with empirical evidence, and any claim to do so will always revert back to either circular reasoning or begging the question (for instance, "we know there is no God, because there is no purpose to things; and we know there is no purpose to things because random chance caused all things; and we know it was random chance because, since there is no God, it must be so").

God doesn't instruct the clouds, the trees or the squirrels.

No reformed christian I know denies free will, or God's action through means. Just because there is an observable natural cause, does not mean there are not other causes (whether natural or supernatural). For instance, water that you see boiling on the stove is assumed to be doing so because of the heat; but there may have also been an unobserved drop in pressure which was also at work; and that completely leaves out whether there were antecedent causes to the heat.

A good illustration of this is the book of Habakkuk, where Habakkuk prays to the lord to "do something" about the evil in his nation. The Lords response is that the nation WILL be punished, by the Assyrians; when Habakkuk further asks how Israel can be punished by a more wicked nation, the response is that the Assyrians, too, will be punished, as they are later invaded by

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

Morality has proven to be fuzzy. Nobody agrees on morality nor can they show a reason for one thing to be more moral than another. You said a baby murderer is worse than a shoplifter. That is your opinion (mine as well) but it is not a universal opinion. There have been cultures that practiced infanticide. Sparta being one made popular by mass media. They would probably consider a shoplifter morally worse than a baby murderer(murderer being a loaded word here).

A concept of "fair" (which could very easily be argued is taught behaviour and not inherent) does not prove the existence of a linear, objective ethical code. It just means people don't like bad things happening to them when they can't think of a cause for it. Morality has no place in a discussion of logic. You can reason out your moral choices using logic and reason but you cannot logic and reason with your moral choices.

I don't really care if you want to claim some supernatural, unobservable actions by God. But you sure as hell don't get to try to assert legitimacy using logic and reason for it.

A book I'm assuming was written well after all those events taking place? Theists love attributing what they perceive as just events to the will of their gods.

The point they all fell down is exactly where I said. They get to a point they don't know the answer to and say "See God!".

Re:God Particle

[LordLimecat]

Morality has proven to be fuzzy. Nobody agrees on morality nor can they show a reason for one thing to be more moral than another.

I could apply your reasoning to the disagreeing models of the universe (string theory and whatnot), but the fact that there are differences and disagreements doesnt mean that they are all wrong; this has been addressed, and the general response is that while there may be differences, you will never find a society that has esteemed cowards, or liars, or thieves, or murderers (though you do indeed find societies that esteem those who are good soldiers). The details are not what the point is, the fact that they all have commonalities that seem to transcend culture IS the point.

A concept of "fair" (which could very easily be argued is taught behaviour and not inherent)

Why that innate drive to justify ourselves? THAT certainly isnt taught.

A book I'm assuming was written well after all those events taking place?

You are begging the question. What if historical evidence indicated Habakkuk had been written prior to the invasions? Doubtless you would insist (because, of course, there just CANT be prophetic prediction) that it was a forgery. If I am correct (and I think if you are honest you will agree), then no evidence I ever provided in this case would ever be sufficient, because you are holding as inviolable your belief that Habakkuk could not have been prophetic, despite no rational basis for that.

Commonly scientists come across phenomena that they do not understand, and are willing to give up certain assumptions that have been proven wrong; I would argue that if you cannot do so, you are out of line in claiming others to be irrational.

The point they all fell down is exactly where I said. They get to a point they don't know the answer to and say "See God!".

Who is "They", and what points are you referring to?

Re:God Particle

[Kielistic]

Models of the universe make testable predictions. A disagreeing model can be tested. If they disagree on testable phenomena then one can be proven false. I never said morality was wrong, I was saying you can't use it in a logical argument. The fact that there are competing ethical codes none of which are testable, falsifiable or even objectifiable means that they cannot be used as logical "proof" of anything. Societies have esteemed murderers many many times in the past and still do today. Christian history included; they just called them crusaders instead of murderers. "Murder" is a loaded term showing just how fuzzy morality is. One person's murder is another's justice.

Commonalities do not suggest the existence of a god in any case. It just additional evidence that we are, believe it or not, all the same species. No more than the fact that us all (mostly) having two hands suggests the existence of a god. Although I'm aware that christians claim that's because god also has two hands.

I could easily reason that it is more taught than you give it credit for. Children want everything to be given to them (just watch them tantrum). They are taught they can't get everything they want and need a real reason to get what they want or they need to earn it. They don't want bad things to happen to them but they get punished for misbehaving. Sounds to me like they are cultured from the very beginning that everything is justified.

You want to know what my rational basis for rejecting prophecies is? There is not, and has never been a prophet! No one has ever made statistically significant prophecies. Many people make prophetic claims but none of them do. Because of this the only rational response to a claimed prophet is doubt. Provide some historical evidence of this Habakkuk. I imagine if there were any, and if this book provided anything resembling a prophecy I'd have heard of it before.

No one has ever provided evidence of any of the phenomena that you are describing. They tried, I went to a Catholic highschool, they tried. But I have never seen sound reasoning. No scientifically credible evidence.

"They" was referring to Akinas and his five proofs.

Re:God Particle

[UnknownSoldier]

> our definition of 'real faith' sounds more like 'expectation' to me.

No, faith requires action. Passively expecting something to happen without doing anything is not faith, just a belief, or maybe even hope.

> With regards to your comment that scientists have *faith* that the Scientific process leads us to a better understanding of the universe - the very fact that you are using a computer to send this message is clearly evidence that it does.

Well, you and I can clearly see that but there are those that faith has no place in Science -- which is poppycock. Science has as much faith as any religion.

Re:God Particle

[Brannoncyll]

It is the last comment on which we disagree. I argue that faith is absolutely not required for science. Scientists should never absolutely trust any of their theories or measurements, and should always be ready to accept a better theory that comes along. The pursuit of science is reason free from passion.

A computer could do science; taking measurements and evaluating the results against a set of possible theories or parameters. Clearly a computer does not have *faith*.

I'm not surprized they are not progressing

[arcite]

They need more energy credits. I know that Chairman Yang has repeatedly suggested that a series of three boreholes are completed near the capital, which would allow the commencement of discovering the secrets of pre-sentient algorithms. Once this happens, it's only a matter of building enough condensers to harvest the required food to grow a larger population of Thinkers. With a viable mind/machine interface in addition to the overwhelming benefits of telepathy in battling the the Hive drones, transcendence is assured. The discovery of the Higgs will be a happy coincidence, not to mention the realization of finally being able to live peaceably with the mindworms.

My Bet

[medv4380]

My Bet is that the Higgs doesn't exist. It's only in the standard model to support Massless particles like Massless Neutrinos, but the Solor Neutrino Problem already puts serious cracks in that assumption. So my bet is that there is no such thing as a massless particle.

Re:My Bet

[Parlyne]

You've got it inside out, I'm afraid. The Standard Model would work just fine with no Higgs if no fundamental particles had any mass. (N.B. In such a situation, protons and neutrons would still be massive, as most of their mass is actually binding energy from the strong force.) The problem is that the mathematical structure of the theory is such that it makes certain nonsense predictions if any particles are given mass (like predicting certain processes to occur with probabilities greater than 100%). The Higgs circumvents this by allowing the masses of those particles that are massive (possibly other than neutrinos) to be a result of the interactions between the particles and the ground state of another field. This means that the behavior is different from that of a simple mass once you get near the the energy scale at which excited states of that extra field (the Higgs, that is) are accessible.

I've heard this before, and it didn't end well

[OverkillTASF]

It's probably nothing... probably... but... well, no... we're well within normal bounds again. Continuing sequence.

Re:There is no Higgs Boson

[MightyMartian]

Translation: I'm a complete fucktard who reads the first paragraphs of SciAm articles, and somehow, due to the extraordinary combination of intellectual arrogance and a near lack of intellectual function, I shall post these grand declarative statements on /.!

Re:There is no Higgs Boson

[Lore17]

The Kruger-Dunning effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect. The less you know about something, the more certain you are that your intuitions about it are correct.

Jedi Voice

[HiggsBison]

This is not the Higgs you're looking for.

this just in...

[Cyko_01]

...there is no news to report regarding the higgs boson particle.

Re:this just in...

[timeOday]

At what point does the lack of finding it where the models predict it "should" be become news in itself?

Re:this just in...

[Parlyne]

At the point when that whole range has been ruled out. Presently, there is still a window from about 115 GeV to 145 GeV that has not yet been excluded (and, for the most part, was not expected to be able to be excluded yet).

Re:this just in...

[marcosdumay]

"The previous news was wrong" is news.

Also, each day that people don't find it puts us farther away from the Higgs bosson. In a year or two the information that "researches still didn't find the bosson" will be very newsworth.

Re:Good News Everyone,

[MichaelJE2]

If you didn't read that in Professor Farnsworth's voice, you lose.

Who says that the Higgs has any mass at all

[Sla$hPot]

It seems like all the questions about the Higgs particle and it's properties is everybody's best guess.
The energy of the Higgs could be as high as 10^16 TeV implied by the standard model.
If it is just above 100 TeV then we wont be able to produce it in our labs anywhere in the near future. 10^16 TeV then forget about it.
Maybe we should spend more time on physics models that can be tested instead of hanging on to wild theories with hundreds of free parameters that nobody understands anyway.
All this guessing is really just turning science into a religion.
Try with some new ideas.

Re:Who says that the Higgs has any mass at all

[Parlyne]

The Standard Model of Particle Physics as a whole has about 20 parameters. All of them have been measured - some to significantly better precision than others - except for the mass of the Higgs. It is, quite literally, the only remaining free parameter in the model. Saying that it is a free parameter, however, is not the same as saying that any value of it works equally well. In particular, there is a technical problem with the Standard Model (violation of the unitarity bound on WW scattering, to be precise, which essentially implies that, at sufficiently high energies, a pair of W bosons will scatter with probability greater than 1) that is only solved if the Higgs mass is below about 1 TeV. In fact, even if the Standard Model is wrong, something has to fix this issue at an energy scale below 1 TeV. So, even if there is no Higgs in the standard sense, we expect to find something at energies that the LHC can access.

Re:Who says that the Higgs has any mass at all

[Sla$hPot]

Thanks for the reply.

            In fact, even if the Standard Model is wrong, something has to fix this issue at an energy scale below 1 TeV

Well then it should even be detectable at Fermilab's Tevatron. Maybe it is not self interactive like the photon.
But the next big question is.
What will it mean if the Higgs is discovered, except from finishing an almost 40 year old hunt for the missing puzzle piece. Knowing that it exists?
Considering all the years and efforts spend on searching, the discussion on what such new knowledge could be used for, has been surprisingly absent.

Re:Who says that the Higgs has any mass at all

[Parlyne]

While it's probably possible to create the Higgs at the Tevatron, it's not necessarily detectible. The problem is that, at certain mass ranges (like the most likely remaining one between 115 Gev and 145 GeV) the dominant Higgs decay signals have huge backgrounds to contend with; and, the Tevatron will simply not have enough data to say anything about possible excesses in that range. Also, the fact that the proton/antiproton collisions at the Tevatron occur at 2 TeV does not actually mean that physics up to 2 TeV is accessible there. The problem is that protons are composite particles and physically interesting high energy processes are actually the result of collisions between the constituents of the (anti)protons (collectively, these constituents are termed "partons"). Since each (anti)proton has >3 partons (the actual number is indeterminate, but necessarily no smaller than 3), the parton involved in the collision will almost certainly have significantly less than the (anti)proton's total energy.

Fluctuations

[AkkarAnadyr]

Well, fluc you Amelicans too!

Re:Do not want

[Rik Rohl]

I'm torn on this. On one hand I would like them to find it as validation of all of the great work done in creating and verifying the Standard Model (and as a way of justifying the $$$ spent in finding it). But on the other hand, i kinda hope they don't, because some of the coolest advances in science have come from the "Hmm, that's odd, i wonder what happening here" factor.

No Higgs Boson?

[Greyfox]

I'm pretty sure there's one under my couch...

Re:There is no Higgs Boson

[Brannoncyll]

I'm afraid that for your viewpoint to qualify as real science you have to get your hands dirty and come up with a competing theory that not only explains all of the measurements that have been performed in the past (not just by hand-waving arguments but actual numbers) and also makes predictions that can be tested. Do you have one of these or is this just some gut feeling?

How about some theories!

[Deliveranc3]

Slashdot the bastion of brilliance, trolldom, general opinionated discourse, Not-RTFA, IANA*. Holy crap people get on the ball, with the program!

I know you're not particle theorists but I do expect some entertainment! Where are your stones! Man up and spew some malarkey!

Why am I not suprised?

[bigsexyjoe]

Why am I not surprised?

Maybe the Higgs is just a statistical fluctuation

[NewToNix]

New data presented at a conference in India shows no new signs of the Higgs. The signal was probably just a statistical fluctuation."

Has anyone considered that the Higgs may actually be just a statistical fluctuation, a mathematical artifact required to both satisfy the symmetry of the fundamental particle structure and at the same time insure the uncertain nature of... well, nature.

I know this may sound like (and it may actually be) a silly question, but I am serious in asking it.

We have had to learn to deal with (if not fully understand) the dual particle/wave nature of light. Could we be looking for something that has a similar duality, only in this case of being both a mathematical construct but one that while having no physical existence still may mediate in physical ways with special particles like quarks?

Could such a thing exist (if exist is the correct term), even if the Higgs is not such a thing?

I'm not looking for religious based replies, I'm just considering the possibility (or not) of such a strange duality of an interacting but non physical thing existing (being present without physical existence?) and possibly even being measured, much as we do with the things we accept as having rather strange dual natures, like light.

Sorry for the probably poorly expressed concept, but it's the best I could do --if you can see what I'm trying to formulate a description of, and have any insights into the condition I'm trying to describe, I'd really like any edification anyone can offer --except religious explanations. I'm just looking for thoughts on the scientific possibility of could such a dual nature interacting concept (not a thing, just a concept of a thing mathematically expressible to a useful enough degree to make falsifiable predictions about, existing). The language is not helping me at all --how does one express the possible existence of a non existing, but interactive thing?

Have some decency!

[lanceran]

I have a statistical fluctuation in my pants every morning but I dont brag about it to everyone. Bah... nerds.

Re:Statistical fluctuations are where the magic is

[Sulphur]

A butterfly fart is enough to screw with them.

Butterflies don't fart; air tunnels through their gut.

Re:Good News Everyone,

[Sulphur]

If you didn't read that in Professor Farnsworth's voice, you lose.

Good news everybody; there is Hawking radiation coming from the lab.

Re:Statistical fluctuations are where the magic is

[martas]

What possible reason could there be for anyone to know that?

Rational basis for believing in God? Easy.

[denzacar]

People are a superstitious and cowardly lot - so they imagine themselves an imaginary friend to protect them from all those other imaginary boogeymen.

Or did you by "rational basis for believing in God" actually mean "rational basis which would promote belief in God"?
Cause with current, 21st century's, understanding of psychology, medicine, mental disorders, applied pharmacology, logic, philosophy etc., belief in gods is nothing more than an attempt to ignore the problems until they disappear on their own.
Any rational basis promoting such behavior would not be very rational.

Re:There is no Higgs Boson

[__aacvzh55]

The models that we are using today to describe the universe are hopelessly inadequate. In my view there is no Higgs boson. A whole lot of stuff that we consider fundamental today in reality should be derived from underlying properties. Mass and gravity as most noticeable examples. There is no Higgs, but keep looking so that everyone else can be convinced it does not exist.

or hows about the top quark - mass of a gold atom with no structure.. sure..

Re:Statistical fluctuations are where the magic is

[monoqlith]

It's a physics joke. It's...just...oh, nevermind.

Re:Statistical fluctuations are where the magic is

[martas]

Wait, "tunnels" as in quantum tunneling? Ohhh, I think I'm starting to get it now...