Talking About God ... the Particle, That Is

"We need to talk about the 'God Particle,'" wrote Dennis Overbye to open his defense of scientifically minded folk invoking the divine.

Overbye was responding to critics of his articles on the search for the Higgs boson, aka the God Particle, which might give all other particles mass and generally simplify the universe. Whenever Overbye invoked the divine, readers "wrote in wanting to know why I had ruined a perfectly good article by dragging mythical deities into it."

My guide in all of this, of course, the biggest name-dropper in science, is Albert Einstein, who mentioned God often enough that one could imagine he and the “Old One” had a standing date for coffee or tennis. To wit: “The Lord is subtle, but malicious he is not.” [...]

If Einstein were around today, he would likely be scolded every other time he opened his metaphor-laden mouth for giving aid and comfort to the creationists. Indeed, the architects of intelligent design have not been shy about interpreting his aversion to divine dice playing and a remark wondering if God had any choice in creating the world, as support for an intelligent designer. Einstein didn’t mean it that way, of course. He was only using a metaphor to wonder if it was possible to build more than one logically consistent universe. That’s a question that still provokes hot debate.

Einstein's concept of God was decidedly non-theistic, but it was still Something Big, and he wasn't afraid to use it.

Overbye compares the contemporary secular community's distaste for divine reference to the antiwar left's historical skittishness of the
American flag, which yielded the most powerful patriotic symbol to conservatives.

... likewise I think it would be a mistake for scientists to yield such a powerful metaphor to creationists and religious fundamentalists.

The Higgs particle is not God, but as theorized it is a piece of the sublime beauty of nature that had Einstein figuratively on his knees. I can’t prove it, but I can’t help wondering if Einstein, a man with what the geneticist Barbara McClintock called “a feeling for the organism” —
in this case the universe — was aided in his intuition by being able to personify nature in such a familiar and irreverent way.

What’s in a Name? Parsing the ‘God Particle,’ the Ultimate Metaphor [New York Times]

Wired* on the search for the God Particle here. Tension and drama mount among physicists here.