Religious Scholar

Congratulations to the CERN team for validating the work of Peter Higgs of Edinburgh. And why not start a new religion, Bosonianism (or perhaps Higgish)? Everything had to come from something, and the Higgs Boson is at least as credible as other creation stories. What it lacks in imagination, it makes up for in respectability.

Perhaps, to drop a "t" from a title by Henry James (whose brother William was a religious scholar of sorts), The Bosonians will help narrow the gap between those who believe in a higher power and those who have a purely mechanical/mathematical concept of the universe and its beginnings.

A traditional believer may now imagine that God invented the Higgs Boson, and aren't we clever to finally figure it out. A liberal believer has no problem incorporating science into a view of the cosmos, while agnostics and atheists have long been on the side of reason and discovering the subatomic answer to all questions was just a matter of time. Everyone should be happy.

Of course, that won't be the case. But at least we are witness to the birth of a new tradition, yet another--and perhaps even more important--reason to remember the Fourth of July.