[extropy-chat] against ID

[Damien Broderick]

At 01:10 AM 11/19/2005 -0500, gts wrote:

>I couldn't have said it better myself.
>
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/17/AR2005111701304.html

Well, you could have said it better if, instead of saying:

"Newton's religion was traditional. He was a staunch believer in 
Christianity and a member of the Church of England."

you'd said "Newton was a nonconforming Unitarian, who had to hide this fact."

Isaac Newton:

"In all the vehement universal and lasting controversy about the Trinity in 
Jerome's time and both before and long enough after it, this text of the 
"three in heaven" was never once thought of. It is now in everybody's mouth 
and accounted the main text for the business and would assuredly have been 
so too with them, had it been in their books.

"Let them make good sense of it who are able. For my part, I can make none. 
If it be said that we are not to determine what is Scripture what not by 
our private judgments, I confess it in places not controverted, but in 
disputed places I love to take up with what I can best understand. It is 
the temper of the hot and superstitious art of mankind in matters of 
religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best 
what they understand least. Such men may use the Apostle John as they 
please, but I have that honour for him as to believe that he wrote good 
sense and therefore take that to be his which is the best."

Damien Broderick