The theological significance of the Higgs boson

is nil.

Yesterday's announcement of the much awaited discovery of the Higgs boson will lead to a lot of hype, including claims that it presents some problem for belief in God, and particularly in a Creator. The Higgs boson has even been dubbed "The God particle", largely as a marketing exercise.
I find this ridiculous. This discovery is of no greater theological or philosophical significance than most other important scientific discoveries: the structure of DNA, the Genetic code, pions, neutrinos, positrons, quarks, pulsars, Einstein's theories of relativity, .....

These discoveries just show that we can understand and describe the natural world. (Indeed, a truly amazing thing). Sometimes we can do this well enough that we can even predict the results of experiments, including the existence of new particle or a new planet. However, this success neither proves nor disproves the existence of a Creator. Science, by assumption, is methodologically naturalistic. These were the same issues discussed by Laplace and Napoleon, centuries ago.

An earlier post explored similar issues associated with the Higgs boson.