On 6/19/2012 11:38 AM, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
As for Newtons arguments for God, please find below quotes from Soul of Science, p.
66-67. If you do not agree, you may want to read Newton's Principia and offer your own
interpretation.
Evgenii
"The reason Newton felt free to avoid ultimate causes was, of course, that for him the
ultimate cause was God. He viewed gravity as an active principle through which God
Himself imposes order onto passive matter—as one of the avenues through which God
exercises His immediate activity in creation. As Kaiser puts it, for Newton things like
gravity “depended on God’s immediate presence and activity as much as the breathing of
an organism depends on the life-principle within.” Like breathing, these active powers
were regular and natural, and yet they could not be explained in purely mechanical terms."
"A second way Newton found to “fit God in” was in his concept of absolute time and
space. From the mathematician Isaac Barrow, Newton adopted the idea that time and space
are expressions of God’s own eternity and omnipresence. Newton took God’s eternity to
mean He is actually extended throughout all time — in his words, God’s “duration reaches
from eternity to eternity.” He took God’s omnipresence to mean that He is extended
throughout all space — His presence reaches “from infinity to infinity.” Therefore time
must be eternal and space infinite.20 Physics textbooks often describe Newton’s concepts
of absolute space and time as purely metaphysical without explaining that his motivation
was primarily religious."
"A third way Newton found a role for God in the world was as the source of its orderly
structure. In the cosmic order, Newton saw evidence of intelligent design. “The main
business” of science, he said, is to argue backward along the chain of mechanical causes
and effects “till we come to the very first cause, which certainly is not mechanical.”
Newton also regarded several specific characteristics of the world as inexplicable
except as the work of a Creator. “Was the eye contrived without skill in optics,” he
asked, “or the ear without knowledge of sounds?”"
"A fourth way Newton found a role for God was by assuming that the universe needs God’s
intervention from time to time to stabilize it. For example, the orbits of the planets
exhibit irregularities when they pass close to other planets or to comets. Newton feared
that over time these fluctuations would accumulate and cause chaos, and the solar system
would collapse. Therefore, he argued, God must step in periodically and set things right
again. If the universe is a clock, then it is a clock that on occasion needs to be
repaired and rebuilt."
I note that Newton is described as "finding a role for God", which I think is correct.
Newton took his scientific discoveries and found a way to fit God into them, to give God
something to do, gaps to fill.
Brent
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