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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 19, 2023 13:02:26 GMT
Newton as I understand him was a strange man. He was rather argumentative and fixed in his views ,and did not get on very well with the folk around Oxford. As you know, Oxford at that time was a Christian institution where you have the trinity, as per the god, the son and the holy spirit. Newton, bless him, had this view that believing Jesus was the son of god was blasphemous. He saw Jesus as a kind of imposter. Naturally you can imagine this did not go down too well, indeed it was heretical. However Newton was not completely opposed to the church and was a strong believer in god and very religious, just not the kind of religious that was tolerable, given the way it divided into sectarian groups too. Newton was in a group of one!
I find this interesting. The church is as you know very much opposed to paganism and sees it as worshipping false idols. So going on the overall view and neglecting details like the son of god, it seems as though this was the the way. There was only one system governing the entire universe. Today we call this system Newtonian mechanics. Now try a little thought experiment and hopefully you will see the importance of this step. Take away anything in this world that has its existence thanks to the application of Newtonian mechanics or anything derived from it. We would be left with a civilisation as sophisticated as the Middle Ages.
The thing was you had to be a monotheist to make this mental connection and find the path from the old world to the new. There was only one path and it was hidden for a very long time. Well done to Newton for standing his ground, even when he was hated as he was in his time.
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Post by johnofgwent on Jul 20, 2023 11:27:48 GMT
Newton as I understand him was a strange man. He was rather argumentative and fixed in his views ,and did not get on very well with the folk around Oxford. As you know, Oxford at that time was a Christian institution where you have the trinity, as per the god, the son and the holy spirit. Newton, bless him, had this view that believing Jesus was the son of god was blasphemous. He saw Jesus as a kind of imposter. Naturally you can imagine this did not go down too well, indeed it was heretical. However Newton was not completely opposed to the church and was a strong believer in god and very religious, just not the kind of religious that was tolerable, given the way it divided into sectarian groups too. Newton was in a group of one!
I find this interesting. The church is as you know very much opposed to paganism and sees it as worshipping false idols. So going on the overall view and neglecting details like the son of god, it seems as though this was the the way. There was only one system governing the entire universe. Today we call this system Newtonian mechanics. Now try a little thought experiment and hopefully you will see the importance of this step. Take away anything in this world that has its existence thanks to the application of Newtonian mechanics or anything derived from it. We would be left with a civilisation as sophisticated as the Middle Ages.
The thing was you had to be a monotheist to make this mental connection and find the path from the old world to the new. There was only one path and it was hidden for a very long time. Well done to Newton for standing his ground, even when he was hated as he was in his time.
It seems to me hardly surprising that a man so involved with time, motion, velocity etc should reject the strange but seemingly mainstream now i looked it up doctrine that christ the son of god has always existed when in fact the christian scriptures require adherence to the belief he was birn of woman a mere two millennia (and a bit) ago. |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 20, 2023 11:35:50 GMT
Newton as I understand him was a strange man. He was rather argumentative and fixed in his views ,and did not get on very well with the folk around Oxford. As you know, Oxford at that time was a Christian institution where you have the trinity, as per the god, the son and the holy spirit. Newton, bless him, had this view that believing Jesus was the son of god was blasphemous. He saw Jesus as a kind of imposter. Naturally you can imagine this did not go down too well, indeed it was heretical. However Newton was not completely opposed to the church and was a strong believer in god and very religious, just not the kind of religious that was tolerable, given the way it divided into sectarian groups too. Newton was in a group of one!
I find this interesting. The church is as you know very much opposed to paganism and sees it as worshipping false idols. So going on the overall view and neglecting details like the son of god, it seems as though this was the the way. There was only one system governing the entire universe. Today we call this system Newtonian mechanics. Now try a little thought experiment and hopefully you will see the importance of this step. Take away anything in this world that has its existence thanks to the application of Newtonian mechanics or anything derived from it. We would be left with a civilisation as sophisticated as the Middle Ages.
The thing was you had to be a monotheist to make this mental connection and find the path from the old world to the new. There was only one path and it was hidden for a very long time. Well done to Newton for standing his ground, even when he was hated as he was in his time.
It seems to me hardly surprising that a man so involved with time, motion, velocity etc should reject the strange but seemingly mainstream now i looked it up doctrine that christ the son of god has always existed when in fact the christian scriptures require adherence to the belief he was birn of woman a mere two millennia (and a bit) ago. ? |
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Post by steppenwolf on Jul 20, 2023 12:40:50 GMT
Newton was probably what we would now call "autistic" - along with many of the great geniuses who advanced our knowledge. like Dirac etc. But Newton was also a "polymath" which is virtually non-existent nowadays because everyone is specialised in very small fields. He was a genius. His understanding of mechanics is immortalised as "Newtonian Mechanics" and he even derived the laws of optics from calculus.
I couldn't give a shit what his religious views were.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 20, 2023 12:59:41 GMT
Newton was probably what we would now call "autistic" - along with many of the great geniuses who advanced our knowledge. like Dirac etc. But Newton was also a "polymath" which is virtually non-existent nowadays because everyone is specialised in very small fields. He was a genius. His understanding of mechanics is immortalised as "Newtonian Mechanics" and he even derived the laws of optics from calculus. I couldn't give a shit what his religious views were. Pagans believed in many gods. In other words they imagined the universe was affected by many influences, e.g. like a society is influenced by many people. Newton believed in one universal system, so if you were smart you would see how that led to the creation of Newtonian Mechanics, which works everywhere and all the time. It is hard to imagine a world without Newtonian Mechanics. Maths was used to create buildings, and that is why it is called geometry, as per geo meaning earth. They could measure buildings out and stuff like that. Our country inherited the knowledge of the Greeks. Our understanding of medicine was wrong for a very long time because we copied Greek errors as well as Greek knowledge. They got so far with their geometry and then stopped. They could not imagine maths was useful for anything else. If you find this odd, you should look at ourselves in the current time. to break strongly held society beliefs is something that causes an uproar and the sacking from all respectable institutions. |
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Post by johnofgwent on Jul 20, 2023 13:12:21 GMT
It seems to me hardly surprising that a man so involved with time, motion, velocity etc should reject the strange but seemingly mainstream now i looked it up doctrine that christ the son of god has always existed when in fact the christian scriptures require adherence to the belief he was birn of woman a mere two millennia (and a bit) ago. ? have i confused you ? Simply put, the few references i was able to suck bits out of from beyond a cambridge paywall suggest your initial assertion that Newton rejected the divinity of Christ to be factually incorrect snd that he was in reality a believer in the divinity of christ the son of god, but rejected the doctrine that father, son and holy ghost had ALWAYS existed, tending instead to what i now see clearly to be the more logical position that christ did not exist until a certain event in a certain stable. I’m not sure it matters to me now what he thought, and i’m not sure it mattered to the forty years younger me with the beard, guitar and fishbadge in the pulpit in my lay preaching days. I’d be interested to hear what the Abbott on Caldey Island has to say about this, but again only from a passing interest in other people’s points of view. |
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Post by Bentley on Jul 20, 2023 13:17:47 GMT
Newton was an alchemist. Apparently he wrote more about his research on alchemy than his ‘ scientific’ research.
He also believed in invisible forces , gravity for example . If you believe in invisible and mysterious forces then it is easy to believe in a creator god .
He claimed that light and gravity travelled at an infinite speed but it must have crossed his mind that if that were the case then there would be an infinite power of light and infinite gravity . He never addressed it so he possibly knew that his theory of gravity and light might not be exact .
I never made that up , iirc it’s in ‘ A brief history of time ‘ by Stephen Hawking l
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 20, 2023 13:35:11 GMT
English is my first language so using words that don't exist is too much for my we brain.
There could be a difference between private beliefs and his public persona here.
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Post by johnofgwent on Jul 20, 2023 13:44:58 GMT
English is my first language so using words that don't exist is too much for my we brain. other than a mis spelling caused by this crappy chinese iphone i’m struggling to find a non english word in my comment which confused you sufficiently for you to reply ‘?’ |
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 20, 2023 13:46:26 GMT
English is my first language so using words that don't exist is too much for my we brain. other than a mis spelling caused by this crappy chinese iphone i’m struggling to find a non english word in my comment which confused you Learn Chinese and your phone should work a little better!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2023 13:48:55 GMT
English is my first language so using words that don't exist is too much for my we brain. other than a mis spelling caused by this crappy chinese iphone i’m struggling to find a non english word in my comment which confused you Baron's use of the word "we" was wrong. He was obviously using it to describe a small brain, so it should have been "wee". |
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Post by Bentley on Jul 20, 2023 14:07:52 GMT
have i confused you ? Simply put, the few references i was able to suck bits out of from beyond a cambridge paywall suggest your initial assertion that Newton rejected the divinity of Christ to be factually incorrect snd that he was in reality a believer in the divinity of christ the son of god, but rejected the doctrine that father, son and holy ghost had ALWAYS existed, tending instead to what i now see clearly to be the more logical position that christ did not exist until a certain event in a certain stable. I’m not sure it matters to me now what he thought, and i’m not sure it mattered to the forty years younger me with the beard, guitar and fishbadge in the pulpit in my lay preaching days. I’d be interested to hear what the Abbott on Caldey Island has to say about this, but again only from a passing interest in other people’s points of view. You are correct. He never rejected the divinity of Christ , he rejected the trinity. Something that would have had a very negative affect on his standing if it was revealed . |
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Post by johnofgwent on Jul 20, 2023 14:08:16 GMT
Anyway.
To return to the thread title as opposed to the content therein, i am unconvinced Newton’s theology had any more impact on the modern world than AkenAten
In reality i suspect the theology of Darwin - a man chosen to accompany Captain Fitz Roy on the Voyage of the Beagle far more for his theological achievements and standing than for his prowess as a naturalist - more pertinent
Darwin’s travelogue journalling his voyage was of course the starting point for the man’s greatest contribution to science, but it was his standing as a man of god, and a god-fearing man that bought him a ticket to ride that ship. Captain Roy’s predecessor committed suicide in mid voyage necessitating a return to port to take on a new Captain and it was thought placing Darwin among the ship’s complement might aid in ensuring Roy did not do likewise
His early writings of the exploration of the Canary Islands sounds like a chapter out of a fellow of that age Thomas Cook. The tale starts to get interesting when he spends time with the Gauchos and then of course at the Galapagos he finds his place in history.
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Post by Baron von Lotsov on Jul 20, 2023 14:57:35 GMT
Darwin has nothing to do with this thread. Newtonian Mechanics is something that changed our understanding of the universe in the most fundamental way. The governance of the universe is attributed to God, so Newtonian Mechanics is God's law on how things should work. You would never have figured out relativity either if it were not for this understanding of the universal nature of it. Relativity was not so much a proof Newton was wrong, but just he had not uncovered the whole of the truth and as we investigate quantum effects we find more and more of these paradoxical goings on, but the main point is they work anywhere. We can do the calculations for a trip to Mars because we now know the laws of physics are the same there as they are here. Before Newton this was not the view. It was really backward. Indeed looking at the Dark Ages is a reminder of the scary reality if we ever want to regress in the technological sense.
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Post by Bentley on Jul 20, 2023 15:36:13 GMT
They were quite aware of this at time
“English poet Alexander Pope was moved by Newton's accomplishments to write the famous epitaph: Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night; God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.”
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