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HIGGS’ BAZOOMS
BY PETER KURTH (published 11.23.05)
“I cherish the greatest
respect towards everybody’s religious obligations, no matter how comical.” -- Herman Melville
So
do I, Herman, so do I. I just find
it harder and harder these days not to burst out laughing when people talk
about God.
I
should put “God” in quotes, because I don’t think a lot of
these people are really talking about God at all. They’re talking about religion, and
specifically their own.
They’re talking about what New
York Observer columnist Nicholas von Hoffman calls “God locked
up, guarded by ministers, priests, rabbis, popes and mullahs.” And in many cases -- though unfortunately
not enough -- they’re a regular laugh riot.
Surely
the funniest “religion” story of recent days involves the Rev.
Pat Robertson -- televangelist, former presidential candidate, right-wing
nutcase, would-be assassin of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
and host of the immensely popular Christian TV show, “The 700
Club.” On November 11,
Robertson warned the town of Dover, Pennsylvania, that its citizens
shouldn’t count on “God” if and when calamity strikes.
Why? Because the residents of Dover had the
temerity to toss out of office eight public school board members who
favored the teaching of “intelligent design” next to evolution
in science classes.
Maybe
you heard this story already – maybe not. It’s worth repeating, not just for
its comic value, but because it’s so expressive of the way these
“Christians” think. In
that uniquely hilarious way he has, Robertson intoned from his studio-lit
pulpit:
"I'd
like to say to the good citizens of Dover -- if there is a disaster in your
area, don't turn to God; you just rejected Him from your city. And don't wonder why He hasn't helped you
when problems begin, if they begin. I'm
not saying they will, but if they do, just remember you just voted God out
of your city. And if that's the
case, don't ask for His help because He might not be there."
Uh,
Pat … He might not be there anyway.
I believe the jury has been out on this since at least 1882, when
Nietzsche declared that “God is dead” in his unfortunately
titled The Gay Science. I also believe that, even if
there’s such a thing as “intelligent design,” it
can’t be “taught,” because it can’t be
demonstrated. It’s a question
of faith. It belongs in the realm of
religion and philosophy – let’s say, in the “social
sciences.”
Oh,
hell, let’s come right out with it:
It belongs in a church, not in a publicly funded school system.
“God
is tolerant and loving,” Robertson continued, again on no
demonstrable evidence, “but we can’t keep sticking our finger
in his eye forever. If they have
future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them.”
Well,
maybe he could. Certainly it would
help if people actually read Darwin and got to know him, fossils and
all, for a man who never (quite) rejected the existence of
“God.” Granted, Darwin
was raised Unitarian -- "a Jewish faith," as I've heard it
described by more than one of Pastor Robertson's co-fanatics -- and he did
indeed abandon the notion of what we now call “intelligent
design” (the story of Adam and Eve being a little too much for any
thinking person to contemplate). But
Darwin was never an atheist.
Ultimately, he preferred to call himself an agnostic, and even in
his theory of “natural selection” and the random development of
species, he adhered firmly to a faith in what he called the “fixed
laws” of the universe.
Now,
who or what “fixed” these laws?
It’s a legitimate question, and one that scientists, believe
it or not, have been working for a long time to figure out. I don’t think they ever will,
frankly, but not for want of trying.
According to London’s Guardian,
there’s even a multi-billion dollar project underway among
international physicists to uncover the secrets – for that matter,
the very existence – of what is colloquially called “the God
particle … a mysterious sub-atomic fragment that permeates the entire
universe and explains how everything is the way it is.”
A
big task, you might say, and you’d be right, inasmuch as this
experiment involves the construction of “a gigantic atom-smashing
machine” that would “accelerate particles from opposite ends of
a 20-mile tunnel at near-light speeds and smash them into each other
head-on.”
Won’t
that be fun? “The scientists hope
the resulting cataclysmic explosion of heat, light and radiation will
recreate the conditions found in the first few billionths of a second after
the big bang. And when that happens,
they hope the God particle, otherwise known as the Higgs boson, will show
itself.”
You’ll
forgive me for saying that, when I first read this sentence, I thought it
said “Higgs bosom.”
I’m sure Pat Robertson would make the same mistake, the very
devout being more sex-obsessed than any other randomly developed species I
can think of.
Meantime,
I don’t really get the argument.
So far as I’m concerned, it was all settled by Rodgers and
Hammerstein in The King and I,
when the British governess tells the king of Siam, “But, Your
Majesty! The miracle of creation is
the same miracle whether it took thousands of years or six
days!”
Who
invented “days” to start with?
Who decided that “God’s” time was the same as our
own clocks and watches? Who is so
stupid that they can’t recognize a metaphor when they see one? Well, you know who …
But
I wouldn’t teach that in science class, either. I just wish the Christers
would keep their personal beliefs out of government and out of the
schools. As my hero von Hoffman
further declares, “This is not a struggle to be carried on in the law
courts and the legislatures… We don't need lawyers here; we need
fumigators. We need people in HAZMAT
suits to go in and smoke 'em out.”
Amen,
brother. E=mc2.
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