The suggestion that the Higgs boson ‘explains’ the creation of the universe by giving mass to something that exists without having any existence is also as breathtakingly surreal as the suggestion that the universe came about when God breathed life into it. It is not possible to envisage any process which might underlie either. So why do so many of us express a preference for scientific nonsensibility rather than religious nonsensibility, when both are equally experientially bankrupt?

“A mite and the ‘widow’s mite,’ are some way apart, my dear,” said Aunt Dorothy; “your ‘widow’s mite,’ I suppose, might be the parsonage and the glebe, and those cows in your uncle’s park and meadow. Take care what you offer to the Lord. He sometimes takes us at our word. And there are plunderers abroad who take their own estimate of people’s mites, widows’ and others.”

Having done what was required to gain admittance to the kitchen, as the public rooms are termed, as well as to the more exclusive Salle Privée […]

This hand was ready to give the works to any physician, a member of the Medical Association in good standing, who'd go off the reservation by daring to serve a medical co-operative on a full-time salary.