Max Planck - moderni deisti

Max Planck 1918
Tuona vuonna hänelle myönnettiin fysiikan
Nobelin palkinto kvanttiteorian kehittämisestä
kuva wikimedia

Max Planck kastettiin pikkulapsena kristillisen kirkon jäseneksi Kielin kaupungissa Holsteinissa. Isän puolelta hänen iso-isoisänsä ja isoisänsä olivat olleet teologian professoreita Göttingenissä.

Planck oli omien sanojensa perusteella desiti, joka uskoi persoonattomaan jumalaan, mutta ei ihmeisiin.

Kopsaan tähän wikipedian artikkelista kohdan, jossa kuvataan hänen suhdettaan uskontoon

Planck was very tolerant towards alternative views and religions.

In a lecture in 1937 entitled Religion und Naturwissenschaft he suggested the importance of these symbols and rituals related directly with a believer's ability to worship God, but that one must be mindful that the symbols provide an imperfect illustration of divinity.

He criticized atheism for being focused on the derision of such symbols, while at the same time warned of the over-estimation of the importance of such symbols by believers.

Max Planck said "As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter" in 1944, indicating that he believed in God.

Planck regarded the scientist as a man of imagination and faith, "faith" interpreted as being similar to "having a working hypothesis". For example the causality principle isn't true or false, it is an act of faith.

Thereby Planck may have indicated a view that points toward Imre Lakatos' research programs process descriptions, where falsification is mostly tolerable, in faith of its future removal.

He also said: "Both Religion and science require a belief in God. For believers, God is in the beginning, and for physicists He is at the end of all considerations… To the former He is the foundation, to the latter, the crown of the edifice of every generalized world view".

On the other hand, Planck wrote, "...'to believe' means 'to recognize as a truth,' and the knowledge of nature, continually advancing on incontestably safe tracks, has made it utterly impossible for a person possessing some training in natural science to recognize as founded on truth the many reports of extraordinary occurrences contradicting the laws of nature, of miracles which are still commonly regarded as essential supports and confirmations of religious doctrines, and which formerly used to be accepted as facts pure and simple, without doubt or criticism. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely."

Later in life, Planck's views on God were that of a deist. For example, six months before his death a rumour started that Planck had converted to Catholicism, but when questioned what had brought him to make this step, he declared that, although he had always been deeply religious, he did not believe "in a personal God, let alone a Christian God."
wikipedia

J. L. Heilbron kommentti (1986) 
On the other side, Church spokesmen could scarcely become enthusiastic about Planck's deism, which omitted all reference to established religions and had no more doctrinal content than Einstein's Judaism. It seemed useful therefore to paint the lily, to improve the lesson of Planck's life for the use of proselytizers and to associate the deanthropomorphizer of science with a belief in a traditional Godhead.

The Dilemmas of an Upright Man: Max Planck and the Fortunes of German Science. Harvard University Press. p. 198.