God Particle: A "fatal" crisis for Materialism?

The infinitely large universe, with all its peculiar and puzzling characteristics, has always attracted the imagination of humans. Humans, from the very ancient time, have tried to solve the mysteries of the universe. In earlier times this task was mainly done by priests and intellectuals who served the religious authorities of their respective societies. Thus we find that the earlier picture of universe was shaped in the frame of theology, as it was only possible theory and philosophy. Like most of the branches of modern science, systematic research in the field of cosmology too, corresponds to the period when the whole Europe was awakening from its dark feudal ages. As Papal Church was the strongest and the greatest feudal lord which was holding back the growth of rapidly growing productive forces, a conflict arose between the representatives of the two contradictory forces. We see the reflection of this conflict in the field of human thinking too. New inspired thoughts and germs of thought were everywhere precipitating out of their fantastic theological shell. The proposition of the concept of heliocentric universe against the church propagated common views of earth centric universe marks the beginning of emancipation of the natural science from theology, although, in many minds it is still far from completion. From the very beginning, the process of the emancipation of natural science from theology was not so smooth, and marked with the innumerous acts of suppression of scientific discoveries and inventions, and unforgettable sacrifices of the Heroes of modern science for their thoughts. In fact, the ancestors of the modern bourgeoisie, the Protestant rebels, were as against the free investigation of nature as their Catholic counter-parts. They supported these scientific investigations only if they proved beneficial for their economic development and turned against them as soon as they inflicted on their own religious beliefs, the different shades of Protestantism. Burning of Servetus by Protestant Calvin and of Bruno by Roman Inquisition is just two of the numerous such cases and shows the similarity between Protestants and Catholics in this regard. In process of its historical development in the past few centuries, bourgeois class had already seen how dangerous the loss in religious faith of toiling masses can be for the existence of their rule, for example, the French revolution of 1789 and Socialist revolutions of 20th century. Thus, this legacy has taught bourgeoisie the very importance of maintaining, and even strengthening, the religious faith of common populace for the continuance of their exploitative rule. Making common masses believe in some supernatural authority, God, for grieves and sorrows faced by them, plays the most efficient role in diverting their attention from the real causes of their problems, generated by this unjust system. Thus, the most far-sighted ideologues of ruling class try their best to distort and obscure the real anti-religious and materialistic nature of every important scientific discovery and, for the same reason, any important discovery in every sphere of knowledge. This is the reason that even in the 21st century, when the progress of the natural science have surpassed, probably, even the dreams of the most quixotic minds of the 19th century, scientific discoveries are still being marked with the stamp of God and scientific theories are twisted so as to prove the existence of God.
The act of branding the probable discovery of Higgs Boson in CERN’s LHC experiment as a proof for the creation of universe by God, propagated by the hacks, serving this decaying capitalist system, and also by its conscious protectors and unconscious supporters, once again proves this. The basis for this misleading and false interpretation, of the theory that predicts existence of Higgs Boson, was the naming of this particle as "God Particle" by the particle physicist and Nobel laureate Dr. Leon Ledermann in his book The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, What is the Question? Though, he did not name it "God Particle" in the sense as it was later advertised by some theologians and a section of media. These philistines, who live not in a real material world but in the abstract world of ideas and in themselves are just a collection of ideas devoid of any bodily existence, have claimed that the discovery of "God Particle" will be a fatal blow for materialism as it proves the notion of creation of universe, at some point of time in the past, by an external agency or God. Hence, it becomes necessary to clear the smoke screen created around the probable discovery of Higgs Boson and have a materialist approach towards any such discovery.
Higgs Boson is a hypothetical fundamental particle predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Today, Standard Model (SM) is one of the most successful models of particle physics and the existence of all the fundamental particles predicted by it, except Higgs Boson, has been established experimentally. According to this model, in the period of 10-43 seconds after the birth of universe (about which it says nothing) the whole universe was in the state of vacuum which was filled with a dense field of very high energy. This field, also known as Higgs Field, was distributed homogenously through out the universe and was sharply fluctuating. Higgs Boson is the constituent particle of Higgs field. According to SM, at that time all the fundamental particles were massless and gained their mass later through the interaction with this field. This process of generation of mass in particles is known as Higgs Mechanism. The more one interacts, the heavier it becomes. This is why we have massless photon but comparatively very heavy quarks. Thus, this model predicts birth of property of mass in fundamental particles, or in other words, the creation of massive matter from the vacuum filled with Higgs field.
This is a very simplistic, and somewhat rough, sketch of this very complex theory, yet sufficient for our present task. The origination of matter having mass from the Higgs field is interpreted by believers of supernatural power or God as the creation of matter from an external agency. And thus the discovery of Higgs Boson, according to them, will be a refutation of materialism as it claims the primacy of matter which has never been created by some external agency.
Now, there are two important problems in this whole issue that needs to be addressed. First point is that of interpreting vacuum in early phases of universe as the presence of some external agency i.e. some sort of consciousness or God. Second point is regarding the stand of materialism to the conception of matter.
As far as the argument of interpreting vacuum to presence of God is concerned, it is an absolute sophistry. One doesn't require great expertise in science to visualize that vacuum is a physical reality which represents just the absence of matter and not the presence of any sort of consciousness or God in that particular part of reality. Creation of vacuum is a general phenomenon in many of scientific areas. So, if vacuum represents any sort of spirit or divinely thing, it means that we create this divinely existence every time we create a vacuum. It can be easily understood that equating vacuum with God or presence of consciousness is sheer stupidity. Presence of vacuum in the early phases of universe and origination of property of mass in the particles from it does not prove the existence of consciousness before origination of matter. Vacuum is vacuum and consciousness is consciousness, and presence of vacuum does not imply the presence of consciousness. On the contrary, it should be said that only massive matter itself is not the whole material world but just a part of material world. Vacuum is also a part of material world, one of the forms in which objective reality expresses itself.
Second point needs little more attention. Materialism claims that material world is primary which has been never created by any kind of external agency or consciousness or God. The problem with which materialism deals with is what came first matter or consciousness; whether this material world is reflected approximately correctly and relatively truthfully in our consciousness or not; if yes, it should be accepted or not; our consciousness can know looking at the history of development of materialism (see Brief History of Materialism), it becomes clear that it (materialism) has never claimed that property of mass or any other specific property is a necessary criteria for anything to qualify as matter, except that of being an objective reality, existing outside our mind. For materialism "the concept of matter expresses nothing more than the objective reality which is given us in sensation" and "for the sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside our mind" (Lenin—Materialism and Empirio-Criticism). It is not the task of materialism to find out that massive matter originated at some point of time or not; or to find out the different forms in which the objective reality expresses itself. It is a subject of natural science. Dialectical materialism, the most advanced and scientific form of materialism, just provides a correct scientific approach and methodology to solve any problem of natural science.
Thus, even, Fields theory proves to be correct and Higgs Boson is discovered, there will not be any crisis for materialism. The discovery of Higgs Boson will only uncover a new, previously unknown, aspect of matter. Thus, if Higgs Boson is discovered and notion of the birth of massive matter proves to be correct, no crisis is going to arise for materialism. In fact, whether Higgs Boson is discovered or not, CERN's LHC experiment will definitely deepen the profundity of our understanding of nature and universe, in other words of objective reality, and a new path will be shown for its further development, as Engels said—"with each epoch-making discovery even in the field of natural science ["not to speak of the history of mankind"], it (materialism) has to change its form", and so it will.