[charles1948]

I'll leave it at that.  Nobody believes in the Higg's Boson. 

[evan_au]

why the Earth remains stable.  Instead of being instantly crushed into a Black Hole...
I knew somebody would appeal to "Quantum Physics" to explain the inexplicable!

If you are just talking about the Earth, the ancient Greek philosopher Democritus had an answer as good as any at the time:
- Matter is made up of something called "atoms", which are indivisible.
- Therefore, the atoms of the Earth prevent the atoms of Charles1948 from crushing them

Of course, if you are talking about the LHC or the core of the Sun, the indivisible atom isn't quite so indivisible, so you have to rely on Quantum Physics
- But Democritus' atomic hypothesis works ok for the bulk of the Earth
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democritus#Atomic_hypothesis

[puppypower]

Does the gravity that keeps us on the surface a force that pushes us down rather than pulls us down?

If you look at the action of gravity, it causes mass to lower gravitational potential energy. If gravity was a force, like the other three forces, this loss of gravitational potential energy, should result in an exothermic output, where the action of gravity causes an equal and opposite reaction. This reaction should look like anti-gravity. One such action and reaction is gravity induced spin and rotation where the induced centrifugal force creates an anti-gravity appearing force vector, that acts away from the center of gravity.

In the EM force, if an electron lowers energy, it gives off a photon. If this photon hits another electron in an atom; action and reaction, the new electron gains the same amount of energy. Gravity appears to show the same behavior if we take into account rotation and centrifugal force as a reaction to the original action. 

If we look at the universe, and assume all the mass in the stars and galaxies is outputting gravitational energy, as gravity lowers potential, this output should have an anti-gravity style impact, relative to the source of the gravitational energy output. Galaxies and stars will rotate as part of the energy output reaction. Highly wound spiral galaxies outputted a lot gravitational energy output.

In the case of distant stars and galaxies, excess gravitational energy output, that reaches the earth, will have a force vector that pushes toward the center of the earth; direction opposite the gravity of the source. The result on earth is an action and reaction push, that reinforces its own  gravitational potential. The universe is designed to evolve forward in spite of a local reversal vector. There is a type of push on the earth, from the exothermic output stemming from distant gravitational potential, being lowered. This speeds up evolution, and prevents steady state situations, where stars linger in expanded states and don't fuse due to its own balanced reaction vectors.