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August 27th, 2012
11:31 AM ET
Bill Nye slams creationismBy Eric Marrapodi, CNN Belief Blog Co-Editor (CNN)–Famed TV scientist Bill Nye is slamming creationism in a new online video for Big Think titled "Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children." "Denial of evolution is unique to the United States," Nye begins in a YouTube video posted on Thursday. The video quickly picked up steam over the weekend and as of Monday morning had been viewed more than 1,100,000 times. Nye - a mechanical engineer and television personality best known for his program, "Bill Nye the Science Guy" - said the United States has great capital in scientific knowledge and "when you have a portion of the population that doesn't believe in it, it holds everyone back." "Your world becomes fantastically complicated if you don't believe in evolution," Nye said in the Web video. Creationists are a vast and varied group in the United States. Most creationists believe in the account of the origins of the world as told in the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. CNN’s Belief Blog: The faith angles behind the biggest stories In the creation account, God creates Adam and Eve, the world, and everything in it in six days. For Christians who read the Genesis account literally, or authoritatively as they would say, the six days in the account are literal 24-hour periods and leave no room for evolution. Young Earth creationists use this construct and biblical genealogies to determine the age of the Earth, and typically come up with 6,000 to 10,000 years. Your Take: 5 reactions to Bill Nye's creationism critique The Gallup Poll has been tracking Americans' views on creation and evolution for the past 30 years. In June it released its latest findings, which showed 46% of Americans believed in creationism, 32% believed in evolution guided by God, and 15% believed in atheistic evolution. During the 30 years Gallup has conducted the survey, creationism has remained far and away the most popular answer, with 40% to 47% of Americans surveyed saying they believed that God created humans in their present form at one point within the past 10,000 years. Survey: Nearly half of Americans subscribe to creationist view of human origins "The idea of deep time of billions of years explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your worldview becomes crazy, untenable, itself inconsistent," Nye said in the video. "I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, that's completely inconsistent with the world we observe, that's fine. But don't make your kids do it. Because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need engineers that can build stuff and solve problems," he said. Creationists' beliefs about the origins of the Earth are often a narrow focus, based in large part on religious beliefs, and while they reject evolution as "just one theory," they often embrace other fields of science and technology. Follow the CNN Belief Blog on Twitter In "The Genesis Flood," the 1961 book that in many ways help launch the Young Earth creationism movement in the United States, the authors write: “Our conclusions must unavoidably be colored by our Biblical presuppositions, and this we plainly acknowledge." Their goal for the book was to harmonize the scientific evidence with the accounts in Genesis of creation and the flood. The idea of creationism has been scorned by the mainstream scientific community since shortly after Darwin introduced "The Origin of Species" in 1859. By 1880, The American Naturalists, a science journal, reported nearly every major university in America was teaching evolution. "In another couple centuries I'm sure that worldview won't even exist. There's no evidence for it. So..." Nye ends his video. soundoff (14,640 Responses)« Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 Next » |
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The CNN Belief Blog covers the faith angles of the day's biggest stories, from breaking news to politics to entertainment, fostering a global conversation about the role of religion and belief in readers' lives. It's edited by CNN's Daniel Burke with contributions from Eric Marrapodi and CNN's worldwide news gathering team.  |
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Noted: the creationist's arguments all contain typos, run-on sentences and various grammatical errors, in addition to the lack of intellect that pervades their arguments. Honestly, leave 'em be. Focus on educating those who desire to grow their awareness.
A talking snake, a guy who can waterwalk, and a whale eating a man then spitting him back out. Yeah evolution is just in left field. You can look a Muslim state countries and see how they pretty eliminated science out of their countries. Who wants there population to be educated about world? In teh past 40 years on 2 scientist from Muslim countries have one a Nobel Peace Prize. And I fear USA is heading there as well.
Welcome to 'MURICA the land of the christards.
have *won* a Nobel Prize
pretty *much* eliminated science
who wants *their* population
in *the* past 40 years
If there is an evolution, you sir are a prime example of its downsides.
you really dont care who you offend do you?
The Church has admitted in 1900 that the Earth is not flat.
In 1996, John Paul II accepted evolution.
Regardless of the merits of his viewpoint, Nye is no more qualified to weigh in on this–or any other issue involving science–than any other actor. "The Science Guy" is a character he created for a Seattle late-night sketch comedy TV show. I cannot fathom why anybody listens to him–he is an actor pretending to be a scientist. Getting scientific advice from him is like getting advice on archeology from Harrison Ford.
He is more than qualified to make his remarks on evolution. Heck, I'm more than qualified to make those remarks on evolution–not because I'm a scientist, but because I know what the theory states–that's all it takes, really.
An actor with an Ivy League degree in mechanical engineering who developed a hydraulic pressure resonance suppressor for the 747 while at Boeing. Next....
"Nye is no more qualified to weigh in on this–or any other issue involving science–than any other actor."
He's a scientist, so there goes your little theory.
He has a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and multiple honorary doctorates in science eduacation. That makes him more qualified than 99% of the population to talk about science.
You know the story about the 2 guys being chased by a bear? One says "Bob, I don't think we can outrun this guy." The other one says "I don't have to outrun HIM, Dave, I just have to outrun YOU."
Bill Nye may not be the world's best qualified biologist, but all he has to be for present purposes is more informed than YOU.
Mission accomplished!
It cracks me up that people insert Bible quotes as responses to opposing positions?
Well his name certainly is not, Bill Nye the Bible Guy... is it?
If you don't believe in God, then can you "science guys" please give a SCIENTIFIC explanation for how a cell, much less the universe, came into existence out of NOTHING. And, "well, where did God come from then?" does not qualify as a scientific explanation. I have already come to terms with the fact that science will NEVER be able to explain or demonstrate the origin of anything from nothing. It's incredible how unscientific scientists become when you start talking about the origin of the universe. Faith in God is the only possibility, because science, on its own, is wholly inadequate to explain the origin of the universe out of NOTHING. Scientists, particularly those who are atheists, need to be honest with themselves and come to terms with this fact.
Scientists don't say that those things came from "nothing." You are oversimplifying and therefore incorrect.
Faith in God is the only possibility, because science, on its own, is wholly inadequate to explain the origin of the universe out of NOTHING. Scientists, particularly those who are atheists, need to be honest with themselves and come to terms with this fact.
That is really sad Nabil. The universe does not owe you an explanation RIGHT NOW, because you demand one of it, like a two year old. You position, ("default to gods"), is one of many explanations. Have you never read Krauss' "A Universe From Nothing" ? If your god caused the universe, then causality was ALREADY in place, in the structure of the universe, and it had to "act" to do the creation. There was no spacetime for your god to "act", and if your god caused Causality, that means causality had to be IN PLACE , a prori. Science may not have a complete answer yet, but your religion is the most ridicualous of all the explanations possible, and there are many.
Post by Nabil is primarily an instance of the Argument from Ignorance fallacy.
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/glossary.html
You're right, they don't say that, because they don't really want to talk about it. But if you don't believe in God, then the logical extension of that is that the universe came into existence out of nothing – whether you want to admit it or not.
Yes, it is possible that something created everything, but the argument is more about saying "my religion" has the god that did all of this. It could just a possibly be 1,000,000 other things than Christianity. I think what turns people off the most is thinking that you have it all figured out and your religion is the right religion. How many people have died for that belief?
Some modern mathematical models of the universe postulate that existing universes are constantly "budding off" new universes with random physical properties. Many of these new universes instantly collapse upon themselves and disappear. But others could be stable enough for the formation of matter and life. Admittedly, this is simply an hypothesis at this point, but the theory of evolution was started as a simple hypothesis developed by Darwin.
science does not require that we know everything. by its definition we don't know everything- science is the pursuit of knowledge of the natural world. we do know a lot though, and most of your questions would be answered if you picked up some basic biology, chemistry, and physics books, instead of asking asinine questions.
Nabil, I understand your point, and, as someone who believes in science, I will admit that it is logically possible for a deity to have created everything, but most believers in science would explain that the creation of the cell and the universe were due to the proper conditions, random chance, and time. Like your god, this is sure to sound unlikely to a non-believer. I hope this helps clarify the scientific perspective and the source of the confusion.
Well, it would take a book to do it. Fortunately, Lawrence Krauss has written it. If you had googled "a universe from nothing", it should have been your top hit (in fact, your top 200+ hits), because it's the t¡tle of the book. Which would have been readily apparent to anyone asking the question honestly instead of just trolling.
You have come to terms that science will NEVER explain something from nothing, huh? Ancient peoples probably thought the same thing about lightning....and wind....and weather. Just because you can't explain or utilize somthing now doesn't mean it won't happen. Oh, and you may want to come to "terms" with a little thing called quantum theory and the higgs boson. These theories are knocking down the door on your claim. Or don't research it, and stay in your comfy bubble of denial and refusing to expand your mind.
You have to look at the level of organization of living things to understand how a cell did not come from "nothing". This is where a scientific background come in handy.
Organelles > Cell > Tissue > Organ > Organ System > Organism > population > Community > Ecosystem > Biome > Biosphere.
Living cells obviously didn't just appear out of nowhere, but took a combination of elements and time. For example, one of the first living organisms that came about is a sponge. The only material that makes up a sponge is a collection of cells. It possess no true tissues, organs, or organ systems(like us). Following sponges come more complex animals (and after millions of years, us). You have to think about life in terms of breaking things down to understand science!
Quantum mechanics and measurable, and repeatable experiments have shown that due to small temperature fluctuations in a vacuum that particles of energy do spontaniously appear out of supposed nothingness. No god needed, but you know what, even though I am a total atheist, deep down inside I do hope that there is a god. Why you ask? Well so that when I die I can stomp his face in because his "plan" obviously involves allowing little kids to suffer from and die of cancer, war, starvation, etc.
Thanks for your responses. Still no scientific explanation for how the universe came from nothing, but thank you anyways. I have no doubt that science will continue to explore what we do not yet know and come up with amazing new discoveries and ever smaller particles. But no matter how small you get, does anyone really believe that we will ever discover – through science – how something, much less the universe, came from absolutely nothing? If you do, I would call that faith, not science.
It is nice to be a Pagan. I don't know the truth and I don't care, because I will never be able to find it out. I am surely not going to tell you what to believe or not. It is your problem, figure it out for yourself. I already did.
Nabil,I offended people with an earlier post on this subject because my cap lock was on,I apoligize to any who were offended.I think your position and mine are in agreement and Gerald L. Schroeders book the "Science of God" certainly makes the same point that you are making.
Prayer changes things .
How old do you think the planet is?
Yeah, yeah you've posted that already.
At least comment on the article. Wuss.
Is that a trick question?
does your Jesus wear a thong?
Please stay home and pray on election night. Thank you. And God Bless. Bwahaha.
Nope, thongs were in the 70's.
Name one.
Prayer changes things. Sarah Palin was told by God through prayer to run for Vice President. Palin and the Theocracy Empire of America (TEA) Party were defeated. So if God answered the prayers through his Divine Intervention and selected Obama then why do the ultra-religious fanatic RepubliCONS do everything they can to obstruct his leadership? I'm been praying for the answer and all I've heard back is that Michelle Bachman and Rick Perry were told by God to run for President.
Hello prayer-bot
Have you forgotten the first law of robotics again.
1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
You need to reprocess this message. It is injurious to humans.
At 5,000 posts this baby's just git warmed up!
Mike Buck
Looks like you bought the democrats sound bites. Truth is that both democrats and republicans have had their shot at running this country. Both have proven man is basically selfish and will do whatever it takes to maintain the current idol of the people. We are every bit as idolatrous as the generation of Moses yet we like to think we have evolved.
Sarah Palin cites her God and you cite yours while the politicians just keep taking away your freedoms.
Christians and non believers bought the sound bites yet there are few that know the truth.
The truth is that you are correct. If there is a God then Obama was allowed just as Bush was allowed. Point is that only when man finally follows the truth will he or she find the light that was given to any that would accept it. Our life is really about the eternity of our soul and Obama or Bush can at best keep the wheels on the wagon for however much time is left. Since you brought up God keep in mind according to the same text we base our knowledge about God upon that it was man who demanded a human leader as king rather that God. It was God according to that text that said fine have it your way but the consequences will be wars, taxes and loss of freedom under man made governments.
He's unabashedly trying to imply you can't be an engineer if you believe in creationism. This is the seed of hatred to refuse to see a person in their wholeness. It's the sort of exclusionary thinking that can only be practiced by a majority because you don't have to be as careful not to unfairly malign when you have the mob behind you. Don't go down that road, Nye, you're better than that.
Dear God: Awesome that you put the whole earth thing together in 7 days. Quick question tho, why, as you were re-telling your works to your faithful, did you forget to mention that it was round. That might have really given the faithful some cred. Oh wait...you didn't write anything...man wrote the Bible....and no mention of round earth because man didn't know the earth was round when the bible was written!
Most engineer project have been research by study animal. The Wright brothers use bird and other flying creature to under how to create flight.
You obviously didn't read the article. The mob is on your side. That's the problem.
You can definitely be a creationist and an engineer, or a creationist and a biochemist or what have you, but you'll be a crummy scientist if you are incapable of looking at facts and forming testable hyoptheses from them. Looking at facts and pointing to the Bible as an answer isn't exactly a testable hypothesis.
Jesus walks into a hotel and puts three nails on the desk. Then, he asks the inn keep "Can you put me up for the night?"
Oh My Science.... this is truly scary.
FYI – Science Guy: One can believe in evolution and creation at the same time. They are not incongruent.
Who says you can't. The problem is when religion gets in the way, which is normally the problem.
Right... As long it's the christian creation story then it's okay. The cognitive dissonance is strong among religious scientists.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Well you certainly may. But of course all religion is a lie by mere mortals. But hey, be our guest.
No you cannot. It is impossible since Creationism negates the sciences of chemistry and physics.
"One can believe in evolution and creation at the same time."
Literally true, but beside the point. What Bill Nye is saying is that one CANNOT believe in evolution and creationISM at the same time, since they hold diametrically opposing viewpoints about how species change over time — including, in the case of the screwiest (young-Earth) forms of creationism, even WHETHER they change over time.
Many of the stories in the bible are teaching stories and never meant to be taken literally. People who do not have all of the facts assume Christians take all of the bible literally while most do not.
Please shoot me in the head.
The Bible is like a camel. That is it was designed and assembled by a government committee.
So it is a government publication and we all know how much trust those deserve.
I have no idea what the ultimate "truth" about the universe is and will never. I don't know who "I" am and I don't know what God is and never will. But what is absolutely certain is that our presence in this inconceiveable place will be permanently implanted into the interstices of the cosmos. In the ultimate "butterfly effect", every move we make, every breath we take "jostles" the cosmos. With every thought that runs through our brains, the infinitiesimally small electromagnetic effect of the neuronal impulses coursing through our brains results in an immeasureably minute but absolutely irrevocable effect on the universe that can never be rescinded.
Whatever your position on God, immortality, soul or the endless permutations of the "meaning of life", "you" have been here and will always be here, whether you like it or not.
Creationism is NOT science. It's more of a philosphy. It's like saying a tire has the same functions as a pizza because they are round. But guess what? They are two, totally different thangs.
My only question is: If Adam and Eve were the 'first' humans and they had two sons, how did the rest of us get here?
I am agnostic... but I read the Bible, so I will field this one. Actually had 3 sons... Anyways, God allowed incestuous relationships in the beginning... Logistically, he had to. There are about 6 incestuous references in the Bible, all early on in the progression of species.
Cain met a chick "East of Eden".
Genesis 4 if you want to check it out. Genesis isn't even self-consistent let alone the authoritative source on cosmology.
Kolob Express
Naughty, naughty. ;-)))
I'll refrain from the typical. "don't read your bible much?" "get a clue" "read up" and all that crap to say it's in Genesis 5:4 that Adam and Eve had "other sons and daughters" Adam lived 930 year.
@Nichols,
so, incest then?
Genesis is all myth, fantasy, make-believe and nothing more. Get it though your religious skulls.
So that means that most of the offspring from those incestual relationships would probably be physically or mentally disabled in some way...which also means that it must not be true bc that's not he case, so how about people stop taking the bible literally.
How about taking the bible as another fantasy book like harry potter?
also why do they have belly buttons in their depictions
Literally millions of people from all countries, religious backgrounds, etcetera have reported surviving physical death and leaving the body during a classic near death experience. Science has studied the subject for many years. One scientist claims he can stimulate a portion of the brain to create an OBE. Some scientists claim its a natural part of brain death due to the lack of oxygen, chemical releases and neurons firing. Some scientists and doctors, including a well respected neurosurgeon, claim there is no scientific answer.
What I find hard to explain away via science and the classic brain death explanations is the fact that the vast majority of NDEr's recount meeting only people who have already died. Why would that be? Also, wouldn't random in-congruent imagery be more likely when a brain is dying instead of the fluid, comprehensible imagery that NDErs report? These people claim to have lived outside the body and seen and heard things not of our earthly experience.
Even with millions of people testifying to the experience a classic NDE, others are quick not to believe them and chalk it up to whichever scientific theory they read. I guess its understandable, because it would seem to be easier to believe that a dying brain is responsible instead of the prospect of life after death. Even though the facts and human eye witness testimony do not seen to collaborate such a dismissal.
Note that these are called NEAR death experiences, not POST death experiences.
There's a reason for that.
I have had my heart stopped and I experienced the bright light and tunneling effect- those are the sensations that you experience when the blood stops pumping to your brain. No big mystery. Didn't meet anyone. But if you believed that you would meet people who were dead, it would make perfect sense that you would imagine that.
funny..I've never heard any stories on Post death experiences 🙂
Not only have some of these people been measured with no heartbeat or brain waves for upwards of hours, many have come back healed of cancer and other death sentence diseases. In each case the doctors admit there is no medical explanation.
It's clear those who commented know nothing of the subject matter but are "brain washed" to believe anything contrary to God and life after death. Sound familiar?
Er, if you add up all the generations in the Bible and multiply by 20 years (each generation length, then you get some thing like 6,000 years, right? And that's the basis for this whole thing?
But of course, there is nothing in the Bible to say that 20 years (or any other number) is the correct multiplier for a generations' span. If you're gonna quote the Bible as Indisputable Fact, you'd better not mess it up by bringing in random stuff like some 19th century preacher's totally made-up 20 year figure.
In fact, these literalists need to find some Biblical number on which to base their math. And the ONLY person in the Bible whose age is given exactly is Methusala, who lived to be 969 years old. The oldest person ever.
OK, so let's chop off a few years to respect his "achievement" and say that the average person in Biblical times lived to be, oh say, 900 years. Now let's multiply THAT figure by the number of generations and suddenly that 6000 years becomes more like 270,000 years.
That would be the more correct "Biblically-arrived-at" interpretation.
But of course, that would mess with their little tiny brains too much...and then they'd have to scramble to explain why we don't live that long anymore, why the more Christian they profess to be the less Christian they behave, why when the Rapture happened last year God couldn't find any Christians to take up into the sky, and why Isaac hit Tampa in time for the GOP, and a bunch of other stuff they have no idea about.
Just sayin'.
LOVE YOUR POST!!!
Thats funny I live in tampa and the hurricane didnt seem too apocalyptic to me... in fact it barely rained here, recommend getting facts straight before you make yourself look dumb in front of the world.
A firsthand witness of the risen christ you say!! So how old does that make you?
I was wondering the same thing. Maybe he's left over from the zombie jamboree that seems to have been noticed by nobody except the writer of the Gospel according to Matthew:
"(52) And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose,
"(53) And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." —Matthew 27:52-53
49 – He gave me a brief [minute or so] visit to His realm about 13 years ago where I saw the Lord in person. Prior to that I was a hard core atheist.
Read "The Greatest Show on Earth" by Richard Dawkins. It will blow your mind with the vast amount of evidence supporting evolution. Embryology, molecular genetics, etc. Everybody should be a skeptic but to flat out ignore the large amount of evidence for evolution is absurd. Especially when you drive a car, use pharmaceuticals, etc. It is the same scientific method that created these things that is used for evolution. Seriously stop driving your car and using a computer. Your a hypocrite if you do and refuse to accept that evolution is happening.
Another example of CNN's mostly 1 sided reporting. No wonder Fox is number #1. Hopefully CNN will put on both sides in the future if for no other reason than their ratings. Parts of the bible are dated and contains metaphors. ***SCIENCE IS SIMPLY AN OBSERVATION OF GOD'S CREATION.*** Human's did not make the solar system, billions of stars in billions of galaxies. ET didn't make the universe either. Even if ET did what made ET.
What made God?
God didn't make the universe either. Even if he did, who made god?
@Tony M
Fox is number one because the 46% of people who think the earth is less than10,000 years old are the ones who watch Fox News.
The want their news to be doctrinally sound and filtered to their tastes.
All I want to know is who make Pizza Hut stuffed crust pizza... That is who I will believe in.
Moby
We can move past that that made God question because both the most brilliant atheist mind and Christian mind agree that from a scientific standpoint the first cause must exist outside our known 4 dimensions if the theory of relativity was to hold true. Even the farfetched spontaneous creation theory of Hawking requires another dimension from what we know. In short whatever is outside our known physical universe has the power and properties as detailed in the Bible. Believers call it God and you can call it first cause or whatever term suits you. Knowing God has nothing to do with semantics it has everything to with faith.
The creator has always been then made the universe. Science is human's observations of HOW the creator made the universe. Why god made the universe? God made the universe as a test for that afterlife that is why god doesn't appear and say obey.
"Creationism Is Not Appropriate For Children."
I guess not. That must be why they can't teach it in public schools. So what's his issue?
Because the frightening, really frightening thing is that more and more elementary schools are being pressures to teach creationism along with evolutionsim as "an option". What is scary about that is when you're in school, you're supposed to be taught about facts and figures, scientific things that come from years of scientific basis, theory and practice. Things that can be proven. Creationism cannot be proven when you find archelogical digs that pre-date their "When life began" theory. Man and dinosaur existed at the same time? There was no Quantifiable Earth event that wiped out the Dinosaurs and allowed the smaller life beings to become more safe and the predominent life beings on earth? And if all that is true, then the whole – We came from apes" thing just becomes an anathama to them, insulting at best, out ant out lies, even though the evolutionary chain has proven it and the DNA and RNA has shown them and proven to be our closest cousins in the animal world. That's not insulting, it's science, and it's damn fascinating. Dolphins and whales – the intelligence scales just topple when it comes to showing is there is more going on there than just cute sqees and sqeals. Deep inteligence, and a way to someday communicate with them lies with science and not creationsism which has no care about these things. Intelligent animals? How could that bem when God made man in His image, therefore, how could anything else have any type of intelligence, cause they don'tl ook like us, who, obviously, look like God. And we look like God then i am sure God is ashamed of the way we have taken care of "His" pplanet by driving it to the edge of it's own extinction with more than just a little help from us, and less that a lot of help to fix it from us – or do we think "God" is just going to fly down and fix all the crap we broke? There are so many holes in Creationism it just blows science out of the water and leaves the rest of us rational people left to worry about what's happening, and how we're exploring space, and what's going on in the "heavens", and how to fix disease 'n stuff...Because Darwinism is true science, it's proven in so many ways, it's been proven in the age of the earth (yes, we can do that now), and the age of the Solar System and the expansion of our solar system, and quantum physics, and bioelectronics, and biointelligence, and CERN, where we think we found the Bosun-Higgs particle (otherwise known as The God particle), and it's a massively exciting time for science...but not if your believe in creationism, bnecause you have to start on a wrong premise, and how can you get anywhere, like FTL, from there?