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Newton did believe in God, a divine being, whom he cited as the keeper of balance in the universe. In his Principia, he states that "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is won't to be called "Lord God" (Newton 42). He continues with a listing of the characteristics of this God: "The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect" (Newton 42). Newton had, in fact, been born into an Anglican family -- but he had also come to maturity during the Age of Enlightenment, which was primarily naturalistic in its worldview. Newton's beliefs in God were similar to those of the Deists. They did not make Newton a Christian in the Orthodox sense by any means. He viewed belief in Christ as idolatry and saw the Scriptures of the New Testament, including...
Newton did not accept Jesus Christ to be God, in spite of what Mark states in the Gospel: "Then a cloud appeared and covered them, and a voice came from the cloud: 'This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to Him!'" (Mark 9:7). Newton's religious ideas were informed both by Protestant theology and by naturalistic philosophy, both of which tended away from orthodox teachings concerning Christianity, as they had existed throughout the middle ages.
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In his Principia Newton describes "gravity" as the force that operates throughout the universe. He was not exactly a heliocentrist in the sense that the Sun was the fixed center of the universe but rather that the Sun, Earth and Planets together united by gravity formed the center of the world: "The…
Works Cited
Newton, Isaac. Principia. NY: Library of Classics, 1953.
Westfall, Richard. The Life of Isaac Newton. UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
God vs Evil Forces There is a major problem in the question of the existence of God as well as the presence of the evil forces. If God is almighty, loving and omnipresent how could there be suffering and evil forces in this world? With all the power God has, He could eliminate each and every evil making the world a peaceful and a beautiful place to live for the people.
Doctrine of the Holy Trinity The Doctrine of the Trinity and Anti-Trinitarian Theologies: Servetus, Milton, Newton The Doctrine of the Trinity The Arian Heresy Anti-Trinitarianism Part I: Michael Servetus Anti-Trinitarianism Part II: John Milton Sir Isaac Newton The Arian heresy -- or rejection of the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity -- is actually relatively uncommon among contemporary Christian denominations; to pick one particular national example, Post-Reformation England would tolerate a broad array of theological stances -- from
Darwinism has had a major effect on how people view the creation accounts of Genesis, believing the creation tales to be completely erroneous and based on nothing but myth and myth alone. Darwinism has planted the seed of the idea that humans are merely a by-product of chance. They are accidental and contingent parts of creation -- not the lords of the universe as the Bible would lead us
Philosophy professor Alvin Plantinga explains that the argument -- "If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and all-good, He would have created the best of all possible worlds" -- is not satisfactory at all. "How, indeed, could one argue, from the existence of evil that it is unlikely God exists?" (Plantinga, 1974, 61). We have every reason to believe that "…all natural evils have perfectly natural causes," Plantinga quotes from Cornman and
Perhaps the essential myth of all those that exist is that of the cosmogony, or the birth of the universe. This myth has taken incredibly many forms in the course of history, but it should be noticed that all of these forms postulate the existence of a divine will behind the creation of the world, be it a single God as in Christian doctrine or many divinities as in
How did Galileo respond to the edict? What did he do to protect himself? The original 1616 edict was not taken entirely seriously: "The Sun-Centered universe still remained an unproven idea -- without, [Pope] Urban believed, any proof in its future" (Sobel 138). However, Galileo still undertook steps to protect himself, defending his writings as a way: "to show Protestants to the north…that Catholics understood more about astronomy" (Sobel 140).