One of the most brilliant simplifications I’ve ever come across is the term “the God Particle.” Physicists think this subatomic speck of matter, if it is ever found, could explain the mysterious code at the origin of the physical world. To know this would be to “know the mind of God,” as Einstein wanted to do. The Nobel Prize winning physicist Leon Lederman wrote a book with that name 15 years ago that was so interesting that even a physics klutz like myself (I almost failed it in high school…) read and enjoyed it.

It turns out, though, that the physicist who launched the hunt for this elusive particle doesn’t like its nickname. “It embarrasses me,” Peter Higgs said in Geneva this week at a news conference our correspondent Robert Evans attended. “Although I am not a believer myself, it’s a misuse of terminology that might offend some people.”

Higgs, now 78, first proposed a theory of the particle officially knows as the Higgs boson 40 years ago. CERN, the giant nuclear research centre at the French-Swiss border near Geneva, is building a vast underground particle collider to try to find it. “The likelihood is that the particle will show up pretty quickly … I’m more than 90 percent certain that it will,” Higgs said after visiting the collider due to start working early next year.

So the term “the God particle” may be coming to the religion blogosphere pretty soon. Instead of doing the homework and writing the essay, I’ll let others explain what it is — here are some good examples at National Geographic and Wired and a cartoon here.

Lederman, by the way, also seemed of two minds about calling the Higgs boson the “God particle.”

As he put it in his book:

“This boson is so central to the state of physics today, so crucial to our final understanding of the structure of matter, yet so elusive, that I have given it a nickname: the God Particle. Why God Particle? Two reasons. One, the publisher wouldn’t let us call it the Goddam Particle, though that might be a more appropriate title, given its villainous nature and the expense it is causing. And two, there is a connection, of sorts, to another book, a much older one…

Lederman then goes on to quote Genesis 11:1-9 , the Tower of Babel story about mankind dispersing. Finding the God Particle, he says, would be like undoing the confusion that followed.

Even if the physicists have qualms, I think the term “God Particle” is so expressive that I’m glad Higgs didn’t get his way. I know there are those out there who don’t agree, who do and who don’t say. There are also deep implications for science and religion. Still, some things are just so awesome that a reasonable comparison with the divine seems to me like a good way to put something so hard to understand into perspective.

Do you think it’s offensive?

For the first time since Pope Benedict’s election in 2005, the Vatican has issued a speech he did not read. The Pope was to have visited Rome’s La Sapienza University on January 17 but student demonstrations (the kind that would have made anyone who was alive in the 1960s nostalgic) forced him to change his plans.

A small number of students and professors accused the Pope of being against science, citing a speech he made in 1990 when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The students and professors argued that that speech showed he would have supported the church’s heresy trial against the astronomer Galileo in the 17th century. The speech did not, in fact, state that and the Vatican promptly said the protesters had misunderstood it.

As pictures from the university showed, the protest appeared to be more against a man accused by some Italians of interfering in politics with his positions against gay marriage and abortion, and his opposition to proposed legislation that would give unmarried couples more rights. While many Italian students do not like Benedict, Italian media reports said most believed he had a right to speak, even if he would be booed. A large group of students turned up at the Pope’s weekly audience on Wednesday with banners saying “If Benedict doesn’t come to La Sapienza, La Sapienza will come to Benedict” and “Students with the Pope.” One held up an Italian flag with the slogan “Viva il Papa.”

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarciscio Bertone wrote a letter to the rector of the university explaining that the the pope would not show up because he could not be assured “a dignified and tranquil welcome“.

On the eve of the event that was not to be, the Vatican decided to release the text — which in itself hardly deserved such controversy. The speech is a long philosophical discourse on faith, reason, the search for truth and the reasons why a pope should speak at a university. Benedict said he was speaking as Bishop of Rome rather than as a professor (which he said he was doing at Regensburg in 2006, where he made the famous speech that upset many Muslims).

He cited philosophers down the ages, from Socrates in ancient Greece, St Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages and contemporary thinkers John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas (as well as Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate). Many professors might have had difficulty following such an erudite speech, let alone the students who were ready to throw eggs if he had come to deliver it.

One phrase they might perhaps have appreciated was his admission that his own intellectual family had not always got things right: “Various things said by theologians in the course of history or put into practice by Church authorities have been shown by history to be wrong.” If he had gone to the university despite the protests, he might have added an impromptu comment that students sometimes err too.

Pope Benedict’s decision to scrap his planned speech to Rome’s La Sapienza University after protests by professors and students there is the second time he has stumbled publicly because of his old professor’s habit of enlivening lectures with quotes from other sources that function as rhetorical straw men to be knocked down.

In this case, the protesters branded Benedict as anti-science because of comments he made in 1990 about Galileo. Discussing the famous case, he quoted a passage in which the unconventional philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend defended the Church for forcing the legendary Italian scientist to recant his view that Earth circled the sun. Benedict described Feyerabend as “agnostic-sceptic” (certainly not a compliment from the Vatican’s former doctrinal watchdog!). He characterised Feyerabend’s stand as “much more drastic” than another defence of the Church’s view offered by the “Romantic Marxist” Ernst Bloch. In fact, Benedict said he cited these two views to illustrate “the extent to which modernity’s doubts about itself have grown today in science and technology”.

In his ill-fated speech in September 2006 at the University of Regensburg in Germany, Benedict quoted Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus (1350-1425) as saying that Islam was a violent and irrational religion that had been spread by the sword. In this case, he did not make clear right away whether he agreed with these words or not. Many Muslims assumed he did and rioting — sometimes bloody — broke out in the Islamic world. The Pope later distanced himself from the quote, without apologising for using it.

The Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano has run a long front-page story explaining that the 1990 quote on Galileo was actually “a defence of Galilean rationality against the scepticism and relativism of post-modern culture”. John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter has provided an English translation of Benedict’s original text here.

The veteran theology professor Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict’s real name) often argues on a philosophical level where non-specialists can easily get lost. Given his liking for this style of academic argument and the long paper trail he built up before being elected Pope in 2005, one wonders how many other texts are out there that Benedict’s critics could use or misuse against him.

Science and religion are sometimes portrayed as adversaries, especially by the “new atheists“, but the real picture has always been more complex. The latest breakthrough in stem cell research shows how quickly opposing sides can become allies. On Nov. 20, two research teams announced they had transformed ordinary skin cells into stem cells without destroying human embryos in the process. That meant that scientists could solve an ethical dilemma they had effectively created when they began using human embryos to produce stem cells.

Religious groups critical of embryonic stem cell research immediately hailed the breakthrough as an advance that opened the door to ethnical use of these potential wonder cells. They have now begun to use it as a welcome argument to bolster their positions in disputes on the issue. This must be happening in quite a few places, but here are two examples that show how science is helping religion in this case.

In Germany, the Roman Catholic Church has severely criticised the governing Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party for agreeing to loosen tight restrictions on embryonic stem cell research there. The law bars German scientists from working on stem cell lines developed after January 1, 2002. Researchers say this is hampering their work and want the cut-off date to be moved up to 2007.

When the CDU agreed to this last week, two outspoken Catholic cardinals, Joachim Meisner of Cologne and Karl Lehmann of Mainz, condemned this as a betrayal of the Christian principles the party’s name claimed to represent. Meisner was especially critical of Research Minister Annette Schavan, a Catholic. He said the CDU decision was baffling, coming as it did “when science is opening up perspectives that present no ethical problems.”

Lehmann issued a statement as head of the German Bishops’ Conference: “The notable new successes in adult stem cell research and the reprogramming of cells are an additional argument against expanding embryonic stem cell research … so we call for a significant restructuring of European and German research funding from embryonic to adult stem cell research.”

In Belgium, the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) thinks the breakthrough will help it keep its official Catholic status endangered by its stem cell research. The Vatican has been quietly investigating the university’s fertility centre, which does embryonic stem cell research that is firmly opposed by Catholic teaching. The university, with the support of Brussels Cardinal Godfried Danneels, has been arguing it needed to continue that work until research into adult stem cells — which it also does — finds an ethical way to produce them. No steps have been taken, but no compromise seemed possible. If the Vatican stripped KUL of its Catholic status, it could lose many Catholic students who study theology there.

“This reduces the bones of contention with Rome,” said KUL Vice-rector Mark Waer. “If these insights are confirmed, at some point it shouldn’t be necessary anymore to experiment with embryos.”

Cardinal Danneels agreed: “This is joyous news that can bring a turnaround on an important ethical question, the manipulation of the embryo. I’m very happy about this.” He also told the weekly Tertio that he always thought “the embryo problem might solve itself. Hasn’t Leuven been working all this time researching how equally good results could be reached with adult stem cells?”

There have been articles reporting that Asian laboratories had an advantage over those in countries with Christian traditions because Eastern religions had fewer qualms about using human embryos. The New York Times had a feature on Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka, one of the researchers pioneering the new technique. He gave no religious or philosophical reason for wanting to avoid destroying human embryos and simply said his scientific career changed when he saw a human embryo through a microscope: “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realised there was such a small difference between it and my daughters … I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

Until now, there have been two explanations for the origin of the Giant’s Causeway, that magnificent collection of interlocking rock formations on the County Antrim coast in Northern Ireland. Geology tells us it is made of columns of basalt that formed after intense volcanic activity millions of years ago. Irish folklore tells us that it was a bridge that the giant Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool) built to cross over to Scotland to fight another giant. The geologists are right, of course, but the old Irish tale is harmless fun.

Now Biblical creationists are trying to add a third interpretation. The Belfast Telegraph reports that a new group called the Causeway Creation Committee wants to add a creationist explanation to a tourist centre project being discussed.

The newspaper writes:

Their belief is that the causeway was created by a huge watery catastrophe - Noah’s flood… The committee has been set up to lobby for information on their theories to be included in any future visitors’ centre at the causeway. They say more than 1,000 people have so far signed the petition.

Founding member Stephen Moore (30) is a Christian evangelist who runs outreach programmes for young people in Portrush.

He explained: “We don’t believe God created it the way it is, it was definitely a result of volcanic activity. Where we differ from the official theory is that we believe the cause of that activity was the flood we read about in The Bible. It says the fountains of the great deep opened up and because of that there was volcanic activity.

“The other main difference in our view is the date. They say the causeway was created 60 million years ago but we believe that’s a fairy tale. When you follow The Bible timetable it is about 4,500 years ago and due to volcanic activity that surrounds the events of a global flood.

“I take issue when people talk about the scientific view because our view is scientific as well. We use the same evidence and observations, we just interpret it differently.

“It just comes down to what glasses you are wearing.”

Further down, the report says:

But a longer term goal for the committee is to have intelligent design theories taught as science as part of the curriculum in our schools. Intelligent design is the assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection.

Its website states: “We also desire to see the fact of Intelligent Design being taught alongside the Theory of Evolution in our local schools.”

The issue has been discussed on several blogs in the area — see here and here.

Is this just a case of “what glasses you are wearing?” Is one explanation just as good as another?

We noted here just the other day the all-but-absent ethical angle in the Daily Telegraph story about the creator of Dolly the cloned sheep and a new technique for creating stem cells without embryos. Now, we have two reports from Maggie Fox, our Health and Science Editor in Washington, that address the scientific and ethical issues.

Our story length limits meant the two had to be broken up, but they should be read in tandem.

One deals with the science:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two separate teams of researchers announced on Tuesday they had transformed ordinary skin cells into batches of cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells — but without using cloning technology and without making embryos.

The other deals with the ethics :

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists and ethicists alike welcomed the news on Tuesday that two groups had been able to reprogram ordinary skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells — the body’s ultimate master cell.

Now, that’s more like it.

Despite all the optimism, this doesn’t mean the ethical debate is over. As Maggie’s second story explains, scientists will still work on embryonic stem cells because they could prove more powerful in the end. My question in the last post was whether opponents of embryonic stem cell research would support public funding for the new technique. Now I’m wondering how the debate about funding will play out between these two techniques.

The Daily Telegraph had a fascinating scoop over the weekend — Professor Ian Wilmut, the creator of Dolly the cloned sheep, has abandoned the therapeutic cloning method for a new way to create stem cells without an embryo. In classic Fleet Street style, the London daily announced in the second paragraph that the decision “will send shockwaves through the scientific establishment.” It took another 16 paras to get to other constituencies for this story, who are mentioned in passing in the line that “there is an intense search for alternatives because of pressure from the pro-life lobby, the opposition of President George W Bush and ever present concerns about cloning babies.”

That doesn’t take away from their scoop in any way — it is primarily a science story, written by their science editor Roger Highfield, and it’s a good one. But this second angle is of enormous importance to many readers out there who have moral scruples about embryonic stem cell research.

I was intrigued by a line high up saying: “Most of his motivation is practical but he admits the Japanese approach is also “easier to accept socially.” If I read that correctly, it means that science — which helped create this moral dilemma by developing the embryonic stem cell technique — may solve it eventually with another breakthrough that looks equally (or more) interesting to the scientist. That could take care of this issue, but others are bound to pop up that cannot be solved with a technical fix. Wilmot discusses this on a linked page publishing an extract from a book that he and Highfield wrote called After Dolly: The Uses and Misuses of Human Cloning. He believes an embryo cannot be considered a person until it is about 14 days old because it has no nervous system. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, counts personhood from the moment of conception, since it considers the potential in the embryo just as important as the cells that are already there. It’s hard to see how a technical breakthrough can bridge that gap.

Science writers like Highfield can explain the details of the procedure far better than I, so please look their way (here’s a quick Google News search) for more. What interests me is the impact this may have on opponents of embryonic stem cell research. Will they embrace this as the moral alternative, or oppose this as well as “playing God”? Would those who say they want the often-mentioned benefits of stem cell research but oppose public funds for the embryonic type on moral grounds now campaign to have this new method bankrolled with taxpayers’ money?

Amid the hullabaloo in the “science vs. religion” debate, one conference produces more thought-provoking arguments than the usual fare. It’s called “Beyond Belief” and it’s been held these past two years at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. The first reports of this year’s session (Oct 31-Nov 2) are just coming out — the latest edition of New Scientist has a full-page story and an editorial (registration required) — and there was an interesting new tone to the debate.

The 2006 session was called Beyond Belief – Science, Religion, Reason and Survival and New Scientist’s report read: “It had all the fervour of a revivalist meeting. True, there were no hallelujahs, gospel songs or swooning, but there was plenty of preaching, mostly to the converted, and much spontaneous applause for exhortations to follow the path of righteousness. And right there at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts was God. Yet this was no religious gathering - quite the opposite. Some of the leading practitioners of modern science, many of them vocal atheists, were gathered last week …” For a fuller account, see George Johnson’s very readable report in the New York Times.

This time around, the meeting was entitled Beyond Belief - Enlightenment 2.0 . The New Scientist report observed: “Last year’s meeting resounded with rallying calls from atheists determined to replace faith wherever they found it with a scientific world view. This year things were more conciliatory, with speakers recognising that we need many tools to make sense of the world besides the strictly rational…”

We’ve noted before that the neo-atheist wave that hit the best-seller lists a while back seems to be waning. The mood at the “Beyond Belief” symposium seems to be another sign that the discussion among scientists may be going beyond the polemical stage. As the New Scientist editorial observed: “To borrow from a popular biblical saying, humankind cannot live by rational thought alone. To want to cleanse society of religion before understanding its evolutionary roots and purpose seems strangely unscientific”

Not everybody was converted, of course. University of Toronto biochemist Larry Moran, in one of the first blogs on the meeting, poured cold water on some of the arguments as reported by New Scientist. The Science Network promises to post videotapes of the debate soon.