September 2010

You may have noticed that Stephen Hawking has a new book out. He has been poking the beehive by declaring that science does not need to make reference to God to explain the Universe.

I have no problem with this. It’s a simple fact. The more we discover about the Universe the less there is room for the Abrahamic God as depicted in the 3 major religions that came out of the Near East. In fact it’s been decades since the claims to said deity have been falsified.

What I do have a small problem with is the way that scientists revert to the God device when addressing certain cosmological concepts. Examples like ‘The God Particle’ for the Higgs Boson, and Hawking’s last line in his eponymous book ‘A Brief History Of Time’. It’s annoying. More importantly it’s a poor use of language. It gives the impression that scientists such as Hawking and Higgs buy into the deity fallacy. Which they patently don’t.

I wish that science communicators would refrain from using this term when explaining current theories and hypotheses. Even if they do want publicity in he week their book hits the shelves and eStores!