Who is the greatest scientist of all time? The contest is between Newton and Einstein, and Newton wins! Newton wasn't "wrong," as many people think. Rather, Newton's laws were modifed and given a deeper and more elaborate context by Einstein's theories of relativity. But it was Newton who made the real breakthrough. So Newton gets first place, Einstein second, and if Darwin wins at all it must be the bronze medal.
Why is this significant? Because the atheists cite Darwin as their champion, and the Christians should counter with Newton. Newton was both an incredible scientist and a devout (although not strictly orthodox) Christian. He wrote more about theology and prophecy than he did about science. From Richard Westfall's essay on Newton in Gary Ferngren's collection Science and Religion I get the following Newton quotation: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and compets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." If the atheists are right that there is some great conflict between science and religion, how come Newton didn't experience this? Newton believed the two were entirely compatible. Even more, he was convinced, on what he felt were good scientific grounds, that science vindicates the central premise of religion.
Ah yes, Newton is a major headache for the atheists. Christopher Hitchens writes in God Is Not Great that "Newton...was a spiritualist and an alchemist of a particularly laughable kind." I'd set Newton's knowledge of science and religion against that of Hitchens anytime. So I'm not laughing.
Richard Dawkins concedes in The God Delusion that "Newton did indeed claim to be religous. So did almost everybody until the nineteenth century, when there was less social and judicial pressure than in earlier centuries to profess religion." Notice the sly distortions here. Newton didn't claim to be religious, he was religious. He certainly didn't have to make the serious study of theolgy that he did at Cambridge, and he didn't have to write the modern equivalent of 20 books on theology and prophecy, which he did. Contrary to Dawkins' absurd suggestion, it wasn't social or judicial pressure that made Newton a Christian.
If Christians distorted the atheist saint, Darwin, in this way, it would be a scandal. But apparently atheism means never having to say you are sorry.
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olpfccnjxi at 10:29AM on Jan 24th 2009
2. Hey, it's "our system has a bigger phallus than yours!"
Sheesh, Dinesh: think you could come up with something a little less childish? Or full of lies?
Watch:
"Why is this significant? Because the atheists cite Darwin as their champion, "
Wrong. Atheists do nothing of the sort. Why must you lie, Dinesh? Are you really that desperate that you must resort to a bald-faced lie?
"the Christians should counter with Newton. Newton was both an incredible scientist and a devout (although not strictly orthodox) Christian."
He was also into alchemy. Y'know: trying to turn lead into gold. That sorta nonsense. Oooops. Betcha didn't think of that, didja'now?
"Newton didn't claim to be religious, he was religious. He certainly didn't have to make the serious study of theolgy that he did at Cambridge, and he didn't have to write the modern equivalent of 20 books on theology and prophecy, which he did. Contrary to Dawkins' absurd suggestion, it wasn't social or judicial pressure that made Newton a Christian."
Contrary to your absurd notion, neither Dawkins or Hitchens speaks for all atheists. So why don't you crawl back into your little hole and have a healthy dose of the truth.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 12:05AM on Jun 21st 2007
3. "the atheists cite Darwin as their champion"
Don't they do this more indirectly? They do accept
a theory of evolution which seems to contradict some Christian dogma. Isn't their champion more a combination of the theory and of themselves for believing it.
DDwain at 1:12AM on Jun 21st 2007
4.
Okay, if we are completely honest here, you don't really have Newton and we don't really have Darwin. Why? Because the you are micsontruing Darwin's arugments, and many evolutionsists misconstrue Newton's arguments/
The fact is that, not one thing you can cite disproves Darwin's theory and as an educated man, you know this. You are willfully lying by asserting as such, and even though you ar more accepting of the theory than most, you are still not scientifically deating the merits of the theory, but rather the merits of it's preconceived notions in regards to your own religion.
Peter at 1:17AM on Jun 21st 2007
5. "..he was convinced...that science vindicates the central premise of religion."
Now I am anxious to know what Newton's central premise of religion was. Must I wait patiently
for the book?
DDwain at 1:27AM on Jun 21st 2007
6. "God" has always been the default explanation when there is no good rational explanation for a given natural phenomenon. But as time goes on, and science progresses, "God" gets pushed further and further into the background. Today, he/she is way back behind the big bang, if anywhere...
Yes, Newton was brilliant. Way back in the 17th century, he invented a scientific theory that perfectly (to the degree that such things could be measured at the time) accounted for the motion of any two celestial bodies. In his description of his solution of the 2-body problem, he never mentioned "God", because he had tamed that problem with his intellect. On the other hand, he could not solve the general N-body problem and thus could not explain how the whole solar system could be stable. This is where he invokes "God", as the designer of the whole solar system, because he could not master the N-body problem.
But mathematics and astronomy has progressed since then. At the end of the 18th century Laplace came up with perturbation theory to handle the N-body problem, and could thus rationally explain the stability of the solar system. Laplace found no need to invoke "God" to explain that phenomenon.
Likewise, biology has progressed, in a huge measure thanks to Darwin in the 19th century, to the point where we have a very good rational, materialistic explanation for life, and anyone who understands modern biology has no need to invoke "God" to explain the diversity of life forms on earth.
For an entertaining talk on exactly this topic, check out this video:
http://beyondbelief2006.org/watch/watch.php?Video=Session%202
The part about Newton starts at about 8:40.
Joe Bob at 3:14AM on Jun 21st 2007
7. Conservatives get a man who "believe in God'...
But owned major shares in a slave trading company responsible for tens of thosands of deaths and murders.
Some things never change.
BT at 9:08AM on Jun 21st 2007
8. Oh come now, BT: that's poisoning the well.
Knight_of_BAAWA at 9:26AM on Jun 21st 2007
9. Nobody seems to get it. God was invented so baseball players can look to the sky after they hit a homer and make the sign of the cross. It's all in the book, 'The Real History of Baseball, Part I'.
B.B. at 10:59AM on Jun 21st 2007
10. BT, the fact that Newton owned shares in a slave trading company would hardly bother the openly racist Ayatollah D'Souza, who has written that slaves were treated "pretty well." Bigot that he is, Dinesh would be far more bothered by the strong indications that Newton was gay.
richter at 12:04PM on Jun 21st 2007
11. This is absurd.
Before Natural Selection, humans had no concrete way of accounting for the emergence and/or existence of life - and this is why virtually every great thinker before Darwin's time would have almost certainly fallen back on the existence of god to explain these things.
Newton was not a naturalist. He did not study living things... but rather, his science dealt with much more rudimentary aspects of physics. And so, Newton is the last person you would invoke to justify belief in god - because, as I said, before knowledge of Natural Selection, the argument for design wasn't just the best argument - it was the ONLY ONE.
But now we have Natural Selection - and further to that, we even have detailed knowledge of genes and DNA - the underlying mechanisms of Natural Selection.
So if Newton had been alive today, do you really believe he would have been a theist?
macrosman at 6:29PM on Jun 21st 2007
12. Dinesh wrote: "If the atheists are right that there is some great conflict between science and religion, how come Newton didn't experience this?"
I don't know what it means to say that “there is some great conflict between science and religion.” Some beliefs that some people consider part of their religion are logically inconsistent with what is known to be true, or what is probably true. For example, the earth is not less than 10,000 years. But other beliefs that some people consider part of their religion may NOT be logically inconsistent with what is known to be true or what is probably true. I don’t think I’d say that there “some great conflict between science and religion.” The claim is too vague, and some religious practices, and maybe some religious beliefs, are not logically inconsistent with what some people know to be true, or what is probably true. Parts of Buddhism might be an example, though I don’t know much about Buddhism. Also, Martin Luther King did great things. If we see actions as part of religion, then some aspects of some religions are good.
I think it is important that we get across that SOME beliefs that some people hold are logically inconsistent with what some people know to be true, or what is probable true. For example, the earth is not less than 10,000 years old.
Finally, that Newton probably believed that an intelligent being contributed to the existence of the known universe isn’t particularly important to whether I’m warranted in inferring that an intelligent being did or did not contribute to the existence of the known universe. First, Newton was wrong about a number of things. For example, he thought that the known universe was about 6,000 years old. So he was merely human and with significant limitations. More importantly, many people today have a much greater understanding of the universe than Newton did. For example, Newton didn’t know about evolution, DNA, RNA or meiosis. Some people today have a much better understanding of the atomic structure and the behavior of electrons. Newton didn’t know about relativity theory or quantum mechanics. And we have a better understanding of the causes of gravitational fields than Newton did. In other words, some people today have much better information for determining whether an intelligent being caused the known universe to exist than Newton did. Newton looked at humans being and probably thought that only an intelligent super being could have poofed the first two humans into existence. But now we understand that this did not occur. Self-replicating molecules that were on earth about 3.8 billion years ago evolved into all the complex organisms that have lived on earth, including all the humans.
Wes at 1:37PM on Jun 21st 2007
13.
But Christians did distort Darwin, DD. They claimed he renounced his theory and converted to Christianity on his deathbed, a lie they have perpetuated to this day.
Peter at 1:39PM on Jun 21st 2007
14. Newton was human. He was a relatively bright human; and, for his time, he had a relatively good understanding of the universe. But humans -- even relatively bright ones that have, relatively to other humans of his or her period, a pretty good understanding of the universe -- are capable of making mistakes. So, that Newton believed that an intelligent being contributed to the existence of the known universe is not important to whether I believe it.
Wes at 1:42PM on Jun 21st 2007
15. On Darwin, at one point in his life he was religious. He was planning to join the clergy. After he wrote Origin of Species, he was not Christian. For example, he did not believe in the virgin birth or the resurrection of Jesus. “Agnostic” might be the best word to refer to his views on whether there is a God. In a biography that he wrote for his granddaughter, Darwin said of himself: “The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble to us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.” In the biography, he says why he is not a Christian and why he is an agnostic. Here is a link to a passage from the autobiography:
http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/library/cd_relig.htm
Wes at 2:12PM on Jun 21st 2007