The God Particle

          Why is the Higgs boson called the God particle?  If I have it right, it’s because it explains the creation of matter—that is, the existence of all things.  God, if the scientists are right,  didn’t create anything, unless perhaps it was the single spark that exploded the universe into existence, the so-called Big Bang. And even that is getting more doubtful.  

          Proof of the existence of the Higgs boson has been some fifty years coming and was made possible by the physicists working on the Swiss particle collider at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) that only weeks ago produced a quantum particle with mass, thus fulfilling the prediction of its existence made by Higgs and other scientists in the 1960s.  The Higgs boson.  The God particle.  The particle that explains all mass and matter. It was an epic discovery, and one that leaves creation myths, including the Garden of Eden, as nothing more than the literary inventions they are, something like the stork story as an explanation for where babies come from.
          Science is beautiful in its own right, but it's a shame that it deprives us mere mortals of the comforting fictions we have dreamed up since before recorded history about gods, creation, and life after death.  Everything new that we learn about the cosmos and about quantum mechanics is a beautiful testimony to our minds and to the superiority of our species, but how can we not simultaneously feel diminished?  How can we not feel deeply the loss of prayer, Bible, God himself?
          This is not a new idea, of course, and I am not saying anything here that hasn't been said many times over by better minds than mine, but every individual's discovery of this essential truth is just as painful as the first one.   God is hard to give up.