My Faith in the God Particle

I was reading recently about the continued search for the Higgs Boson, a.k.a. "The God Particle". There is quite a tremendous amount of religious fervor about the topic, and I believe that Stephen Hawking himself has a large bet where he believes it will not be found. Apparently, according to him, they (the scientists at Cern and the Large Hadron Collider) are running out of places to find the GP and it is running out of places to hide.

This got me to thinking of religious behavior in all walks of life. By "religious behavior", I don't necessarily mean behavior by religious people, but rather, behavior among people with vastly different opinions to which they are too emotionally attached, that appears to be religious in nature. We see this "religious" behavior in all walks of life, from Trade Unions to Prison Gangs, from Comic Book fans (Marvel vs DC) to Programmers (Java vs .NET). It appears to me that religious fervor is an evolutionarily successful behavior and our brains have evolved to be religious. Let's look at the benefits of religious behavior.

• Association with those who have similar opinions to you
• Isolation from those who may harm you because of differences in opinion.
• Strong pecking order in the form of hierarchy (i.e. moderators/popes/imams/comic book store owners)
• Preferences by the females for males that are higher up on the chain.
• The more people who agree with you, the more you believe you are right, despite evidence to the contrary.
  

Now let's look at the cons:

• War
• Isolation for those who cannot find others with their opinion
• Discrimination against those whose opinion is in the minority
• The mechanisms by which units establish pecking order are often unpleasant.
• The more people who disagree with you, the more likely you are to believe you are wrong despite evidence to the contrary.

Let's face it, religion exists because religious behavior is successful and contributes to the success of those who have the genetic predisposition to have similar opinions of its members. Humans are a social animal, and genes that contribute to being able to associate will survive.

On a Mosque at Ground Zero

I have been thinking about this whole Mosque at ground Zero thing. I wouldn't say I stand on any particular side of the debate, such that it is one, but the way I see it is as follows:
On the one side, yes, America values freedom of religion as a principle of the founding fathers, and allowing this Mosque to be built is really about standing up for this principle.
In addition to this, "At" Ground Zero really means two blocks away and is there really a spacial statute of limitations (i.e. what is the exact the radius around the site that should be considered "sacred ground"). Are there other businesses that should be "forbidden" from being constructed within this "sacred radius"?

On the flip side, are they putting this mosque up as a way of saying sorry? I have yet to see an official apology from the "higher ups" of the Muslim Religion (do they have a Pope or a Head Imam?) for the acts of their extremists, and an avowal that their actions were not condoned, and should not be considered to be approved by the majority of Muslims. The fact that there is such an uproar to this construction, should not be taken lightly by the Muslim community, and while I support their right to exist, I would think that they would opt for the ..."Oh, its gonna make people upset? well, then I will just move it somewhere else", rather than the "Hey deal with it, this is America and I can do what I want within the law, and this is legal...yeah, its a jerk thing to do, but its legal, so there" attitude that they are displaying. While the actual people involved in this probably do not intend this as a "slap in the face", there are those few fundamentalists that will see this as one step closer to their domination, almost a little victory.