Right there, you either lied or you are buying in to a lie because youwant to believe. There is no book. Newton didn't get good results from alchemy, so he did not make a book on alchemy. You are elevating lab notes on failed experiments to the level of holy writ. Then you can't really analyze them and evaluate them, can you. So it seems that you are just going to draw conclusions without analysis and evangelize those conclusions here. Do you see a problem with that?
A biography can tell you what parts of a man's writings are generally considered worth reading and what parts are generally thought not to be. Unpublished writings in particular need to be treated with some caution, as there may be a good reason why the author did not publish. Newton studied hard for holy orders, as it was one one of the requirements for his position at Trinity, Cambridge (see the interesting post by Danshawen), resigning his post when his doubts on the doctrine of the Trinity became impossible for him to overcome. If I were interested in c.17th Protestant theology, I might possibly think it worth the effort to read this material (though I'm not aware that Newton has any reputation in theological circles). But from a scientific point of view (this is a science forum), I am not. Just because Newton wrote some (unpublished) notes about something does not make it science.
actually I'd also disagree with you on this point. Everyone has time restraints and while the books you suggest may be interesting, they probably do not make any valid arguments or numerous researchers would have popularized them through their manuscripts and dissertations - particularly given Newton's prominence. Would you care to clarify a few of his arguments and why they are important?
Einstein specifically cites Spinoza. If you'd read Spinoza you'd know he was explicit in that the 'creator' is totally impersonal. You can replace the word God with Big Bang and Universe and his logic is consistent. And by logic I mean - Logic. A Spinozian god does not exist in the Bible - at all.
You mean how is the fact that the Bible is a collation of superstitious myth, legend and fable relevant to Newton's treatment of it as a historical narrative? It is supremely relevant. It renders useless your attempts to use Newton as a poster boy for fundamentalism. At the end of the day you will stop fantasizing that you are living in my head, telling me what I have or have not read. My opinion is that you are lying, that you set up this thread to justify the literal interpretation of myth, legend and fable as historical narrative, namely, your personal religious beliefs which you hold to be inerrant, if not divinely inspired. My opinion is that telling us you are an agnostic in the face of this devotion to a particular brand of Protestantism is a dumb lie; dumb on account of focusing our attention on the lie, and dumber because it paints you as a crank who is only partly concealing his game and/or who is merely baiting us to flame on. Indeed this has no basis in reading the book, so I will agree with you in part. Of course you omitted the facts I already stated which have a basis in the book, beginning with my statement that Newton was indoctrinated as a child to interpret Biblical myth, legend and fable as historical narrative. So there I disagree since you are manipulating the dialogue, ignoring most of what I am saying to you, and selecting out only a few of my ideas here and there, and then mangling them. All of that just speaks to the subterfuge needed to continue to pretend that you are not trying to install Newton as a fundie poster boy, while attempting to fly under the radar as a purported agnostic. So where is there any merit in anything you are propounding here? I can't even see that you've scored points for successfully deceiving us. That is correct. You are not sure whether to tell us you are advocating fundamentalism undercover or not, using Newton as poster boy, and trying to snare science-literate readers into a trap. If you want to have intelligent discussion, then you have to at least try to be honest, and you have to stop making stupid assumptions about me. If you are here to paint Newton as the poster boy for the interpretation of myth as historical narrative, then come out of hiding and say so up front. If you want to preach fundamentalism from behind the skirts of Newton's rants on religion, then say so before dragging the readers into a crank trap. If you want to engage in intelligent discussion, then drop all of the pretense and just speak frankly, without all the games. Does God exist? Certainly not. God is an invention of ancient mythology held over through the effective programming of naive and narcissistic personalities through indoctrination. God is a tool of Machiavellian schemes to organize people around their phobias and incite them to promote particular business concerns, such as the organization of fundies around the teaching of evolution to support the antics of the Bushies leading to deregulation of the banks leading to mortgage backed securities, leading to the enrichment of a few at the cost of some 13 trillion to the economy and decades of financial ruin to millions of others. God is a tool to organize fundies around their homophobia and xenophobia leading to the resentment that environmentalists might limit people from free exploitation of God's gift to Adam of this playground called Earth, to use as he pleases, so that the energy companies can profit from the interference from your illiterate buddies who attack climate science, in order to give the public the perception that science is flawed, confused and just plain wrong. This is a broad general attack, which would include exploiting Newton's manic rants on religion to attempt to paint him as a poster boy for fundamentalism, as if this will give your buddies' pseudoscience (e.g. Creation Science Institute) some newfound credibility, so they can start a flash rag campaign attesting to some new profound hole in the fabric of science. God is a tool to organize them around all of their phobias, all of that angst and rage, to incite them to go to FAUX News, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Shawn Hannity and dozens of their protégés, who have converted the "Come to Jesus" holy-roller motivational techniques of the televangelists into New Age telemarketing campaigns designed to urge voters to keep the worst assholes imaginable in office to derail every piece of reform proffered by the liberals who are still obstructed from cleaning up after the ravages of the Bushies and their corporate bedfellows. That's all God is. A tool. For Newton, God was a tool of his phobias against the papacy, planted in him through childhood indoctrination. God was a tool for winnowing out secret messages that Newton felt were being transmitted to people through paranormal phenomena--clairvoyance, telepathy, and all of what he considered secret codes in the Bible. And he wasted enormous amounts of his life's energy trying to break these codes and explain those purported paranormal phenomena. Unfortunately for this thread, Newton was a brilliant scientist. Therefore his attempts to decipher Daniel in the text you singled out, and his lengthy exegetical treatments of related sections of the Bible given in that same volume, are done with extreme detail, methodically, analytically, but continually relying on the inerrancy of the literally interpreted passages, subject to his belief that every word, every phase contained a subtext, the pieces of which, when woven together, spelled out some esoteric message that only a thorough scientific analysis could divine. And all of that is pure bullshit, since we now understand that the forces Newton was only then discovering are intrinsic to the natural world. Just as the Earth is not really a flat table held up on legs set in place by God, and shaken by him when he is angry, gravity is not God's yo-yo string, and the law of gravity cannot be repealed by Jesus to levitate himself by magically playing “walk the dog”. Similarly death is final. Thus the thousand laws of nature that prevent the reanimation of dead bodies cannot be repealed by Jesus to Frankenstein himself or Lazarus or me or you. All of that is the stuff of fairy tales, believed by only the most naive of people, understanding, of course, that many minds have been crippled into a fatally naive condition through the programming of childhood indoctrination. Fairy tales are suitable for children: thus to prevent the intellect from maturing to the healthy adult state, religions build phobias and complexes into the vulnerable minds they program, and these devices arrest the development of those minds such that they continue to saturate under the influence of Biblical fairy tales. The book you selected begins with one of Newton's worst errors in his many vain attempts to produce valid exegesis. He tries to affirm clairvoyance as related to the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation. The first and most glaring flaw, which invalidates the rest of his manic analysis, is that he merely surmises the source of this story by attributing it to the legendary characters within it. While he must be credited for absorbing terabytes of factoids about history used in setting forth his extremely overworked thesis, it's all wasted on the simple fact that the events which purport to be foretold were all written by the anonymous sources after the fact, a conclusion Newton could easily have reached, had his common sense not been fatally damaged by religious indoctrination. Therefore the value of this enormous tome is nothing. There never was, and never will be, any value to researching the Bible for proof of paranormal phenomena. God does not exist. All that exists outside the religious mind are the natural world and its laws. All that exist within the religious mind are phobias, manias, angst and the defense mechanism that chooses the fight or flight option. The rest is illusion.
Once more you spout your beliefs without consideration of the book, of which the entire purpose of this thread is. You discredit Newton with your infallible beliefs, so certain of yourself. Well, have a nice day.
That's fair, but I don't want my fallible interpretations to be picked apart by readers here who clearly are disinterested in actually reading the book and would rather just poke holes in my words, as if I am in any way a representation of Newton's work. Neither can I truly summarize in a short response his book, because the book itself is very to the point, and should be taken as a summation of the whole. Knowing that I do absolutely no justice for his research, I will say this: He interprets the Book of Daniel, which comprises two visions "Of the Four Metals" and "Of the Four Beasts" and connects them very specifically, as well as many other characteristics thereof, to four successive empires (Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman). It shows a link between the Bible and history, one which he then uses to attempt to calculate the date of the Second Coming. Newton felt that the Bible held not only history but foretold the future. Through 7 citations in the Bible that all refer to 1260 days (or "a time, times, and half a time"), he concludes there to be a period of 1260 years from a certain event until the Second Coming. That certain event he relates to the Church of Rome, because it is when the Antichrist comes into power, which he equates the start of the 1260 years to be. Though he's known to have predicted 2060, my understanding is that he was not certain and that was a best guess at the time, from the year 800 when Charlemagne is crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, so the most interesting part of this is the 1260 years, starting from year 800AD being his best guess at the time. While one may be able to argue the Bible was written after the 4 empires, when you read the Book of Daniel and the Book of Revelation with the understanding gleaned from Newton's work, it makes a lot of sense. But this is my own personal opinion which is of course fallible, I just think others should take the time to investigate on their own. If you open-mindedly research fulfillments of prophecy, such as the Jews returning to Israel in 1948, you will find the list is quite extensive. I am not saying this is irrefutable proof, but it is something an open-minded person should not dismiss absent specific reason to beyond their own beliefs.
I stated no beliefs concerning the book. I stated beliefs concerning you. The facts I stated about the book are that Newton erred in attributing authorship of the legend of Daniel to other characters within the legend, and he therefore erred in properly dating the story. It was written around 150 BC. This error, plus the fallacy of reading legend as historical record, leads Newton to the worst possible kind of exegesis. He is steeped in the superstition of clairvoyance and coded messages and expends enormous energy developing contrived explanations to shore up his superstitions. He wanders extensively though the Bible committing the same fallacies. No, I do not discredit Newton at all. Whatever personal flaws he had are the product of abandonment in his infancy by his mother, living as a closeted gay in Puritanical England, being a loner and not able to express intimacy, therefore deprived of the sense of well being that accompanies trust and companionship, and, once he was famous, saddled with the strain of fame and fortune. I discredit his tome that opens with Daniel for the reasons stated above. While I am generally certain of what I say before I say it--in recounting the facts surrounding this thread--I am by no means infallible. The facts as I state them are neither fallible nor infallible, they stand on the evidence that supports them. You have not bothered to counter that evidence. That does not make my arguments either fallible or infallible. It simply means that facts I propounded have, by default, been admitted by you as true. That leads to the necessary conclusion of our discussion as follows. Resolved: that Newton's religious tracts, while manic in their defense of his Puritan beliefs and superstitions, do not justify the irrational beliefs of modern fundamentalists. and therefore Newton should never be cited as the poster boy for people like the Creation Science Institute, who systematically program their congregations with pseudoscience, lies and propaganda to shore up their interpretations of myth, legend and fable as historical narrative through attempts to pervert facts of science and artifacts of history as needed to achieve those ends. Therefore we reject the proposition that Newton's rambling tract on Daniel etc. supports the goals of Christian fundamentalism. Thank you for finally admitting to your errors. See you later.
Open minded people do not accept the possibility of paranormal phenomena because their open mind refuses to close itself to the inviolable laws of nature, which prohibit clairvoyance, telepathy, reanimation, and all forms of magic found in the beliefs such as those you are expressing.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! I find it quite amusing that scully wants us to accept mythical nonsense, paranormal activity, prophecy crap, the anti Christ, etc etc etc, as legitimate scientific possibilities. I bet he supports some of our "top of the range" conspiracy quackery also, like 9/11 or faked Moon Landings.
I will agree with you with the proviso that you do not count yourself among the open-minded. It is not up to you solely to decide what is paranormal nor what the inviolable laws of nature are. No doubt that as often as you and I disagree, we would define many of the same phenomena as either nonsense or common sense. However, I don't think that any man, woman, witch or warlock can claim to know precisely what is woo and what is not. Open minded people do accept the possibility of paranormal phenomena because, well, they're open minded. They know that many phenomena can be dismissed upon further investigation, but many others can never be dismissed and may just always remain inexplicable. I will not venture here to give any examples. I do know that 'open minded' doesn't just arbitrarily mean whater Aqueous Id wants it to mean to suit his own close-minded prejudices. Sorry, pal. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
All you have done with your rambling posts Arne, is just align yourself with sscully and the same God bothering, Creationist, religion inspired agenda. Prophecies, religious myths etc are not science and do not give scientific answers. That is a fact...The bible even as the Catholic church agrees, is not a scientific reference...It is a book of fairy tales, as agreed by the Catholic church.
And all you have done is, most unscientifically, made up your mind about what sscully and then, I, were talking about without really paying attention to what we are saying. I don't think that's what sscully was trying to say at all, and I haven't said or implied a word about creationism. The bit of my post you have quoted begins, "I will not venture here to give any examples." How is that rambling? And then all I say is that Aqueous Id is not the be all and end all judge of reality. Do you disagree? If not, I have to question who is being scientific here, and who is being close-minded and fanatical. Perhaps I haven't understood the topic, but I think sscully wants to talk about the work of Isaac Newton. FYI, I am no creationist, but even if I were, that would be my right and I ought not have to endure barbs and jibes about what nonsense it is. If you don't agree with someone's views point out in a reasonable way why you think they are wrong. Don't just call them nonsense and seize the moral high ground of 'science' when you have shown you have no respect for scientific thought, and scientific thought, whatever else it may be, at its best can in no way be conceived to be a moral high ground. That's not what science is about. How is is that a 'closet creationist' like sscully and a religionist like me understand that, but you and AI do not?
No sscully wants to give some sort of scientific legitimate status to religious myth, and wants to use Newton as a means of achieving that. And it does not stand up to scrutiny.
Okay. You're right, but I'm right to in that even a brilliant man like Sir Isaac could not help but be a man of his time and milieu. For better or worse, regardless of what we 21st century people might believe Sir Isaac would have been strongly influenced by a Christian upbringing in a Christian society. He could almost not help but be a believer. Hey! I wonder did he have a cockney accent? imagine him saying 'For every action there's an equal an opposite reaction, mate.' (Now imagine Michael Caine saying it) Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Seriously about milieus, you would think for instance that surely Abraham Lincoln, of all people, had an enlightened and liberal view of African-Americans. The fact is that in anticipation to the emancipation from slavery he worked hard to either get them all shipped back to Africa or persuading (I forget, Belize or Panama or some other central American country) to take every last one of them because, afterall 'those couldn't be happy living in this cld climate in an industrial society'. It was for their own good! (I am not quoting Lincoln, just paraphrasing his general feeling as I have read of it)
Totally agree with what you mention about Newton being a man of his time, and that is exactly what AId also rammed home. Galileo was another.
Since you seem preocuppied with accents, maybe you need to start a thread on it. EG: Why countries like the US can have so many regional accents, while Australia of a similar size, all have the same accent....England/Ireland/Wales/Scotland are other examples.
Well maybe we should. I am not preoccupied, I think. It's just a thing I know a little something about. Like I know that a good actor could mask his native accent and sound like some other sort of person. I don't want to start in on how much I hate Tom Hanks (don't ask!) but the man can do accents! Like when he played some Eastern bloc type character in that movie where he was stuck in the airport (BTW, think of all the movies Hanks has made where he's stuck in something!). Hanks accent was uttery convincing. So I think he's an ass and a half in real life, and I dislike a lot of his work, but I will admit the man can do accents.
It's a subject for another thread, you're right. And Fraggle would be the man to contribute to it. However here is the short answer to your question: The U.S. has quite a few regional accents because of it's size and somewhat long and regionally isolated history and geography, but that is changing fast due to modern communications and media. Australia has a briefer history, and while it is a vast country, even now there are only 25 million people. Of course, England has a far longer history than either Australia or America, and when travel was by mud rut and rafts isolation was much greater. Then there's the whole class thing going on in England. I had a cockney friend once, who I liked to call 'Master Bates' because I respected him and that was his name, who I asked why he can't just put on a posher accent since snobbish people looked down on the Cockney way of speaking. (Yes, he had better mimicking abilities than Sir Michael, but not his good looks). Master Bates snarled reply was, 'Oo da fok wansta tok like 'em?' If I had thought of it then, I might have answered, "Popular television and film actor Michael Caine, but he can't!"
This is off topic, but since someone else began the digression I'll contribute. Australia is a much newer country than the USA; the first colonists arrived in 1788, after we had already fought our war of independence. So Australian English has simply had much less time to diverge into regional dialects. Most of the colonists were convicts, and their children felt a strong need for solidarity in order to rise above their humble origins. This is considerably different from the linguistic history of the USA, which was founded by successive waves of migration from different regions to different regions: the Dutch in New Amsterdam, the Scots-Irish in Appalachia, the French in Louisiana, the Latin Americans in the Southwest. Not to mention Africans of many different linguistic communities who were not assimilated into the "Melting Pot" until much later, and of course myriad Native American tribes who played a much larger role in our cultural history than Australia's native people have. (Chief Sequoia invented a phonetic writing system for the Cherokee language and for many years the native population of Oklahoma had a higher literacy rate than the invaders.) As for England, those dialects have been diverging since the Anglo-Saxon invaders took over the land abandoned by the Romans more than 1,000 years ago--long before there was a central government, radio stations and other forces for standardization. And as for Scotland and Wales, English was not even their primary language until more recently, and in Ireland it still is not! Gaelic and Welsh are Celtic languages, only distantly related to English and the other Germanic languages. Now, back on topic... (And if the Moderator would like to break these posts off into a separate topic and move it to the Linguistics subforum, be my guest.)
