Bells
Staff member
Back then, you had no choice but to be a theist.
You bring up Newton..
His polished writings on theology were not the musings of a dilettante but were the products of a committed, brilliant and courageous analyst. If he had published his ideas in the late seventeenth century, he would have had to leave the university, and would almost certainly have retired to what he would have seen as the freedom of his manor in Lincolnshire. He would never have enjoyed the senior political and administrative positions he was awarded in the early eighteenth century and indeed, would never have written the Principia or Opticks.
Which is why I asked you, what alternative was that? Do you think he or any of the great thinkers, creators, inventors of the past has any choice?
Religion had to be a part of his life. There was no alternative.
Compare it to today. A government school today does not teach about God or Christ or religious ideology. Back then, they were taught religion first. The fundamental basics of science were taught with a religious lean. Their educators would have been people involved in the Church.
Theism was not optional but mandatory.
Newton approached religion and theology analytically. He was deeply religious, but not in the sense that one would expect. He was analytical of it. And he hid it. With good reason.
As it is to all people of faith, religion was central to Newton’s life. Although there is obviously overlap between them, one should — or might — observe a distinction between Newton’s religious actions and beliefs, and his technical theological researches. The latter consisted of his study of prophecy; the nature of God; the nature and historical role of Jesus Christ; the form and function of pre-Christian religion; the evolution of Christian doctrine, particularly in the century following the Council of Nicea (325 CE), and the documentary history of the Bible and patristic literature. He wrote up much of this work in the form of treatises, many of which are as original and monumental as the works in the exact sciences for which he is best known. The fact that they are not part of the canon of major religious writings from this period is a direct consequence of the views that they express; since they were radically heterodox and would have been considered formally heretical by the Church of England, Newton decided to suppress them.[4]
So your use of Isaac Newton shows that you have not really read much about history. You think it's a trump card? Your 'ta daaaa' moment? It shows a deep level of ignorance of how life was for scientists of those days.
You are talking about periods where people were still imprisoned or even killed for being heretics.
So I ask you again, what alternative was there?
And before you answer, try and open up a history book or two.
Why?
Do you want to defend genocide some more by calling it something else? Or do you want to lie some more? And I guess we know the answer to that, don't we?
A word of advice, QQ, trolling as you do with your dishonest schtick, is really not a good look.
