It's not biology versus physics but in many ways it is science versus culture: Peter Higgs, he of the Higgs Boson, colloquially called 'the God particle', doesn't think much of Richard Dawkins, the biologist not famous for biology but rather for hating religion.
Why does Dawkins, and by extension a number of biologists, hate religion so much and why don't more physicists give a crap? Don't physicists see that religion is solely responsible for all of the evils of the world, as Dawkins and his acolytes do?
Well, no, physicists don't. Denying the benefits of a liturgical society to engage in some personal vendetta is silly. When is the last time a group founded on atheism put boots on the ground after a natural disaster, or set out to help starving people? Never, but religious groups do it all of the time and get very little publicity for it. Not every religious person is some crackpot Young Earth Creationist, just like not every Organic Food shopper is a crackpot anti-vaccine person too.
Why would Higgs get into all that now? The Nobel Committee has shown itself to be unfailingly political so they may not like him taking on Britain's most famous science personality. It's not like he is religious, he just seems to deny the 'evidence by anecdote' Dawkins uses, like when Alok Jha relates him telling some story of a girl who got molested by a religious person (of course - only religious people abuse kids) but was treated worse by her parents. He lambastes religious people for not being evidence-based and then happily recounts anecdotes as fact. That is what we call irony.
Higgs was in a Spanish publication so he probably felt like he could vent a little. But, no, the Dawkins faithful are everywhere. Or maybe he just felt like this was a long time coming. Higgs will be remembered for 21st century physics, Dawkins will be remembered for intolerance and creating silly divides in the 20th century. if you have to pick a legacy, choose that first one.
Peter Higgs criticises Richard Dawkins over anti-religious 'fundamentalism' by Alok Jha, Guardian
Ciudad del año 2012: CERN, la máquina que desveló el cemento del Universo by Pablo Jáuregui, El Mundo
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