The perfect example of this debate was played out in a Colbert interview with Lawrence Krauss recently; it’s worth re-watching in the wake of the Higgs. Krauss, the New Atheist, touts his new book, "A Universe from Nothing." There are three kinds of nothing, he insists, and according to the laws of quantum mechanics, each one left to itself will produce the something that we see around us. "It sounds like the ultimate free lunch," Krauss admits, but there you have it; it’s just science. "The universe is more remarkable than the fairy tales that were talked about by Bronze Age illiterate peasants."
"Why does it have to be an attack on my God?" Colbert asks. "There’s just no evidence for God," replies Krauss, "All I’ve said is that you don’t need Him." Colbert, as always, gets the last word, however. Suppose that something always comes from nothing. "If there is no God, no ‘thing’ called God, if He is nothing," concludes Colbert, then by your own theory "can’t something come from Him?"
When they announced the discovery of physics’ most elusive particle this week, scientists didn’t overreach. They just did damn good science. The fans and the foes of religion, by contrast, are overreaching on both sides. The quest for the Higgs boson, and its ultimate discovery, neither proves nor disproves God.
Yes, do watch the Colbert interview with Lawrence Krauss