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.
Reader Comments ( Page 2 of 2)
16. Dinesh wrote: "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."
Whether Newton and/or Darwin believed that there is a God is not important to whether I'm warranted inferring that there is or is not a God. They were alive a long time ago. I have a better understanding of the universe than they did -- partly thanks to their great contributions. Also, they are just human. Humans make mistakes. Newton believed the universe is less than 10,000 years old.
Wes at 2:25PM on Jun 21st 2007
17. I think that Michael Faraday was the greatest scientist of all time.
As with all Christian scientists(I'm assuming here) he believed that he has found God so why would he be looking for him qua scientist?
I think that DD is misdirecting the argument here, which is between theists and atheists on the 'playing field' of reality(where else)...
He is misdirecting the argument from sciences which explain reality towards 'champions' of science who are, when all is said and done, only human after all.
DD loves to debate himself on this issue. We could hardly expect DD to lose a debate between himself and a straw man.
I like commenting on DD's posts when they generate a real debate... this one has the feel that DD is fishing for ammo in some future debate perhaps between himself and Hitchens.
Who are Christians 'warring' with anyways? Atheists, Evolutionists, Darwinists, astro-physicists, scientists in general?
Christians believe that God is real... well, where is HE?
Habeus Corpus?
pboyfloyd at 4:43PM on Jun 21st 2007
18. Does this commentary fall into the "penetrating perspectives" category? Amazingly childish...no, make that "infantile" prattle.
Newton comes nowhere near Einstein, by the way. Einstein's Relativity theoriess were not a simple matter of a "revision" of Newton's gravitational theories; Relativity essentially demolished the entire concept of separate categories of "space," and "time."
Newton's "discovery" of the calculus was matched by that of his German contemporary, Leibniz; whose "method" was the superior of the two. Leibniz, the author of "The Theodicy," was also deeply religious. So what? And his theory of "monads" could even be compared, to some extent, to theories embraced by contemporary particle physics.
Einstein effectively "reinvented" the known Universe; his accomplishments remain the "crown jewels," of Physics, in my opinion. Time and Space were indisseverably conjoined -- as were mass and energy -- by Einstein's Relativity Theories, and the most famous equation in history: E=mc2.
Dylan at 11:00AM on Jul 9th 2007
19. Thanks to this article, I better understand the Christians' inability to undertstand modern science; they are stuck in the 17th century.
cdnbirch at 1:38AM on Jun 22nd 2007
20.
Was Newton a Christian?
He did not believe in the divinity of Christ.
There are many references to his work in Hebrew, and on Old Testament texts. To Christians at the time, Jews were Christ killers, and being a Jew was a job killer.
There is also evidence of his belief in successive creations. He did not believe in hell. He believed that people could be gods other than the supreme god.
There is serious evidence that Newton was a heretic.
Was he a socinian of the anti Trinitarian movement?
Was Newton even religious, and if so, in what sense?
Newton refused to take holy orders, even though he was required to do so for his position at Trinity College. Charles II passed an ordinance, making one exception to the religious rule for Newton, by creating the Lucasian professorship. Stephen Hawking is now the Lucasian professor.
Newton on his deathbed refused the sacraments.
In a society where people who did not go along with the establishment view of God were burned at the stake, one has to be very careful to not to take actions and words at their face value.
People of differing beliefs hide, and they hide well in hostile environments. It is in the inherent contradictions and subtle inferences that dissenters make themselves known.
Do you think Galileo was a believer? He sure professed to be when facing a long jail term. Jefferson toned it down after vicious attacks on him due to his lack of a belief in personal god. Payne did not and paid the price of nonconformity. Even Einstein used the standard "code language" that could be interpreted that he believed, but meant he was an atheist. He finally came right and out said he was not a believer. Even today, herein the USA atheists are very careful to whom they declare their beliefs. They have lots of carefully chosen catch phrases to use, as necessity arises, which don't actually say they are a believer, but can mislead others into thinking so.
Was Newton hiding behind words?
www.isaac-newton.org/
http://www.isaac-newton.org/heretic.pdf
cdnbirch at 4:34AM on Jun 22nd 2007
21. There are a number of things in this "article" that are worthy of my contempt, but this is my favourite.
"I'd set Newton's knowledge of science and religion against that of Hitchens anytime."
Well, yes. Lovely. Because Hitchens presents himself as a scientist, this little throwaway line works wonderully well.
Rob at 11:55AM on Jun 22nd 2007
22. macrosman said: "Before Natural Selection, humans had no concrete way of accounting for the emergence and/or existence of life"
And evolution still does not explain the origin of life. Evolution explains the origin of species regardless of where the first life came from. No matter how some christians might want evolution to be the theory that explains everything from the origin of the universe to the origin of man (I'm not saying that you do, but it is probably where you got the idea from. Or you didn't pay attention in biology), it does not. It only deals with existing life. The science of finding out where that life came from is abiogenesis.
Albert at 2:24AM on Jun 25th 2007
23. Yes, Newton was religious. More's the pity, because if he hadn't copped out on the n-body problem and said "God did it", we wouldn't have had to wait 200 years for Laplace to work it out. Newton could have worked this out in his sleep. Instead, he squandered the rest of his life, and his brilliance, on metaphysical and theological garbage, none of which is worth remembering. His somnambulance was one of the great tragedies of western scientific history. But wherever religion intrudes, learning come to a screeching halt.
By the way, Newton was expanding upon the work of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and others, so he was actually a contributor to an existing body of work, not it's originator. Darwin founded an entirely new branch of science. Still sure that Newton was greater?
mark4nier at 10:23AM on Jun 25th 2007
24. "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." -- Those twenty-five words are Newton's biggest mistake. It took another century before Laplace solved the N-body problem and certainly should have been able to, he pretty well invented Calculus on a dare and was exceedingly intelligent even as far as supergeniuses go.
Putting aside the fact that Newton wasn't a trinitarian and it seems honestly thought that belief in Jesus was a violation of the First Commandment (he held that Jesus obviously wasn't the God who delivered the Jews out of Egypt) and as such refused to get ordained (as was required by his position) because he thought it was blasphemy. Putting all of that aside... he wasn't a great scientist because he was religious. In fact, as those 25 words at the end of Principia show, he was a good scientist in spite of his religion (at least most of the time).
Were he less religious, and had he spent more of his time dealing with secular matters rather than his absurd little hobbies... who know what he might have accomplished.
Tatarize at 7:46AM on Jun 23rd 2007
25. What a childishly silly post. "We" have Newton, and "the atheists" have Darwin.
We all have the ideas that both Newton and Darwin contributed to all of us. Newton was great and his greatness derives from confirmation of his theory of gravitation by the observations. Darwin was great and his greatness derives from confirmation of his theory of evolution by the observations.
Whether Newton believed that science and religion were entirely compatible or whether he was "convinced that science vindicates the central premise of religion" is of no relevance whatsoever in considering his greatness. His dabbling in alchemy adds not one iota to his scientific reputation, but is generally not counted much against him either, since he lived in the 17th century and couldn't possibly have have known what is now known about chemistry, for example. Ask a typical serious Christian you meet on the street - what has Isaac Newton contributed to your understanding of God? Ask a typical serious scientist you meet on the street - what has Isaac Newton contributed to your understanding of science? The result of these polls will confirm the obvious: Despite the time Newton devoted to religious study, he left no significant legacy or significant new ideas - he wasted his time and talent.
Tim at 11:23AM on Jun 23rd 2007
26. As you have said, Newton's ideas about physics are just as applicable today as they ever were. Scientists threw out Newton's equations for gravitation when Einstein came along, but Newton's equations seem just as valid as Einstein's in the proper context. Although they were based on the idea of absolute time, which scientists of today claim does not exist, they are still valid for describing motion relative to one source of time such as time as measured by the rotation of the sun or by the rotation of the earth. Scientific time measures a second as a certain number of transitions of a cesium isotope molecule, meaning that if you have a cesium isotope molecule at rest and one in motion, you have two different measurements of time.
In astronomy it seems more reasonable to me to use a single measurement of time from two different frames of reference because there is no distance contraction such as occurs with the Lorentz equations that scientists use for relativity of time.
For instance, using the equations of Newton and Galilleo, you can consider the orbit of Mercury, which travels at a speed of 30 miles per second, and figure what the time would be on a clock on Mercury compared to a clock on the sun. It works out to an answer that agrees with the answer obtained by scientists from the Lorentz equations to eight decimal places.
The fact is that time is much more relative than scientists will admit, and the equations they use today are not the only way of looking at time or the equations describing gravitation.
Robert B. Winn
Robert B. Winn at 6:05PM on Jun 23rd 2007
27. This is a frivolous sort of argument. Even laypersons today are capable of knowing many scientific facts that Newton himself could not even have imagined -- among them, that alchemy is false, that God isn't constantly correcting the orbital perturbations of the planets, that natural selection accounts for the existence of species, that the cosmos is billions of years old, that germs cause disease, that black holes seed the galaxies, that the genetic information of any given organism is encoded in DNA, that time is relative, and on and on.
Of course it goes without saying that even your average contemporary scientist knows far more about the empirical character of the world than Newton did. And, as it happens (which is suggestive) contemporary scientists are also overwhelmingly atheistic. None of this is because contemporary scientists are wiser or cleverer or better than Newton was; it's simply because Newton lent them his shoulders. As a consequence, even we minnows can see farther than that giant Newton. Too bad not everyone wants to enjoy the view.
"Q" the Enchanter at 1:59PM on Jun 23rd 2007
28. Darwin isn't the champion of Atheists for the fact he's a scientist, It's because he discovered evolution and wrote about it in such detail that it disproves creationism.
If you guys want Newton as your champion show us a discovery or theory that he come up with that proves god, then he can be the christians Darwin.
But until then you are just clutching at straws. No theory or discovery of newtons had the existence of god anywhere in it. It was just something that he, Due to the time he was living, Happened to believe in.
God Be Gone at 4:20PM on Jun 23rd 2007
29. I am pretty sure Newton was a greater scientist.
Robert B. Winn
Robert B. Winn at 8:43AM on Jun 26th 2007