Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics

Abstract

It is a quite common view among people, that are not aware of the developments in modern physics, that it is part of human nature to substitute religious faith in places where there is no knowledge. Therefore, an increase in knowledge would lead to a decrease in the necessity of faith. Further, it is argued that, ideally speaking, a full knowledge of the laws of nature would make obsolete any sort of religious faith and would ultimately allow a complete control of nature by man. Since referring to nature, such views must be founded in the natural sciences of which physics is the most fundamental. Therefore, the question whether such views are compatible with the 1 current state of natural sciences is ultimately decided in physics. Indeed, it is likely that these simplistic views have their origin in the world view generated by the successes of Newtonian physics from the middle of the 17th century until the beginning of the 20th century which viewed the physical world as a type of mechanical clock in which the motion of the gears affect each other in a precise and predictable way. In particular, the paper points out that the above views are no longer supported by current physics and that abstracted world views cannot be considered as part of natural sciences, but only as belief systems. 1

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