Johan F Prins, Cresta, Jhb: How arrogant have physicists become? I have just read the article "No need for God, says UK boffin Hawking" (September 3).

If you are a physicist of repute, you must prove such a claim so well that the alternative must be an obvious absurdity. It is Hawking's right to believe what he wants, but he should refrain from giving credence to such a claim as if his knowledge of physics gives him a deeper insight into the matter.

I am also a scientist in the physical and engineering field. Before I retired, I discovered that it is in fact theoretical physics which has become a fairy tale, since Bohr, Heisenberg and Born succeeded in 1927-1930 in painting Einstein as an old crank who in his old age just could not accept new ideas anymore. This caused theoretical physics to become the greatest delusion ever.

Theoretical physicists have been barking up the wrong tree for nearly 100 years now, and have wasted billions of dollars on research looking for non-existent entities such as the Higgs' boson.

I am not a member of any organised religion, but nevertheless do not find it acceptable that physicists want to think that their discipline is so impeccably correct and "self-correcting" that it can divine on the existence or non-existence of God.

The present reality is that the leading physicists in the world are also the most dogmatically bigoted persons one can ever meet.