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The dominance of religious world views is an important feature of human history. Nearly all cultures which have existed were based on a religious interpretation of reality which is connected with a spiritualistic metaphysics. There is only one great exception to this general rule: modern societies which are shaped by the European culture. In Europe the development of modern science since the Copernican revolution has led to the erosion of the old cosmos metaphysics which included the religious views of Christianity and to the elaboration of a scientific world view which has no use for the spiritual entities characteristic for religious beliefs: for gods, devils and demons, angels and ghosts. But it has not been clear in the first phase of this development, that "numinose" entities ("numinose Wesenheiten") have no place in a world view of this kind. As is well known, still Isaac Newton required the assumption of the existence of God to show the stability of the planetary system.¹

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-011-0471-5_5

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