Religious views of Isaac Newton was one of the Philosophy and religion good articles, but it has been removed from the list. There are suggestions below for improving the article to meet the good article criteria. Once these issues have been addressed, the article can be renominated. Editors may also seek a reassessment of the decision if they believe there was a mistake. | |||||||||||||
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I am glad to report that this article nomination for good article status has been promoted. This is how the article, as of December 7, 2007, compares against the six good article criteria:
For FA, it would probably need more information, further checkup about possible POV-problems and toning down the section "2060 A.D."
If you feel that this review is in error, feel free to take it to Good article reassessment. Thank you to all of the editors who worked hard to bring it to this status, and congratulations.— Fred-J 22:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
This article is terrible. Did the author ever read any of Newtons writings? How about the articles that are linked to? Over and over this article stated that 2060 was the earliest date that Newton had predicted as a possible date for the "end of the world". This is refuted by the #11 footnote. Of course Newton was never predicting the "end of the world", but the return of Jesus. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.91.99.147 (talk) 02:46, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
Hi contributors. I've been routinely contributing to this article's sister article, Isaac Newton's occult studies and just recently noticed that much of the information in the Occult article has been transplanted verbatim into this article under the "Biblical Studies" section. Though it does present a degree of redundancy, my concern is really one of if the two articles should be merged or more appropriately isolated. Most of the "Biblical Studies" and its subsections on Prophecy and 2060 were originally constructed with occult studies in mind since these are more in line Newton's pursuit of "hidden knowledge" and not "religious views" per say. So I guess my question is: are Newton's prophecy and biblical interpretations more appropriately located here, or within the Occult article? I suppose it doesn't do any harm to have duplicated information in both articles (though updating is more complicated), but traditionally it seems WP usually has an abridged section with a "Main article:" section link. To be honest, I felt that the prophetic and biblical interpretation information belonged more in the Occult article, so I created them there. At the time it seemed this article was reserved for Newton's more mainstream theological beliefs such as Anti-trinitarianism, Anti-Papal, influence of Meade and Protestant beliefs, etc (or at least that's what I envisioned at the time). Should the "Biblical Studies" section be abridged and redirected to Occult Studies? It seems there is a bit of article bleed-over here, so I want to avoid a lengthy Merge at some point later on. Should the two continue to carry the same information, I can foresee a Merge edit (those are a pain) at some point. -- Trippz (talk) 08:12, 27 June 2008 (UTC)
While the information is useful, I feel this section needs clarifying. Perhaps it could be titled "Newton's influence" as "Other Beliefs" implies the section is about Newton himself. I altered the last sentence because a) It implied that Newton's influence as the "crucial" idea" in something called the "disenchantment of Christianity" is universally accepeted. b) "disenchantment of Christianity" introduced a technical term that I'd never heard of and initially was confused by. Does this term mean rejection of Christianity? Or Christianity losing some of its "mystique"? Or ...?
Anyway, I will have a think and maybe edit/suggest more. Xhile (talk) 15:13, 14 February 2009 (UTC)
There are a number of publications that chart the connection between Newton & Freemasonry (and also the Rosicrucians). For example: 'Isaac Newtons Freemasonry: The Alchemy of Science and Mysticism' by Alain Bauer. In this book Bauer suggests that the Royal Society was itself a Masonic organisation and as such its member would have had to be Masons. Newton's concern with the Temple in Jerusalem and his attempts to work out its dimensions alone would suggest Masonic influence. This may be interesting in the context of the Christian Zionists beliefs of the present time and the collection of Newton's apocalyptic writings in the Yahuda collection in Jerusalem. --Wool Bridge (talk) 10:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
the only time Christ/Jesus is mentioned in the article is when stating that Newton considered it idolatry to make Jesus perfectly equal to God, without also noting that Newton considered Christ the Jewish Messiah, the savior of all humanity, and The Son of God. [1]. to Newton, Christ Jesus was not a mere man. that's what makes him more of a Christian than anything else but the article doesn't make that clear, almost like it doesn't want to mention Jesus. unlike Judaism Newton accepts Jesus as the Jewish Messiah. unlike islam Newton considers Jesus the Son of God.Grmike (talk) 00:01, 9 February 2010 (UTC)grmike
I think the sentence in the opening: "The law of gravity became Newton's best-known discovery, but Newton saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation." Displays some bias that an understanding of gravity ought to imply a lack of existence of God. If this is not the intention then the sentence is unclear. I will change it to "Newton saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation."
Olleicua (talk) 18:48, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Part of the Isaac_Newton's_religious_views#Orthodoxy section seems to be POV and/or original research:
I think this part should be removed/edited.
This was passed as a good article in 2007. Recently Drift chambers (talk · contribs) (who is now indefinitely blocked) added a lot of material too it. Much of it made a mess to this article. If somoene is interested in incorporating the good edits into this article properly that would be great otherwise I propose reverting it back to this version. I do not know enough about the subject to judge the merit of many of these edits. AIRcorn (talk) 01:40, 27 March 2012 (UTC)
I removed the two quotes from Tiner's book Isaac Newton: Inventor, Scientist and Teacher because the book is the only source I've ever seen for the quotes and because within the book they are unsourced and presented as part of a spoken conversation (where there is room for some liberties), and because the book presents a known fake quote as fact (the "atheism is so senseless" quote). It may well be that the two quotes accurately reflect his views, but there is little or no reason to think they're actual quotes. I'll check back in about a week and if nobody responds then I'll remove them again. OneGyTT|C 20:46, 12 June 2012 (UTC)
Newton was, like Einstein, a Pantheist. “...God... is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially; for virtue cannot exist without substance. In Him are all things contained and moved... This was the opinion of the ancients. So - · Pythagoras, in Cicero De Natura Deorum (Pythagoras and Cicero were Pantheists) · Thales (Thales was a Pantheist) · Anaxagoras (Anaxagoras was a Pantheist) · Virgil Georgics iv 220, and Aeneid vi 721 (Virgil was a Stoic and Pantheist) · Philo Allegories at the beginning of Book 1 (Philo was influenced by Stoicism) · Aratus in his Phænomena, at the beginning [refer page 22] (Aratus was a Stoic and Pantheist)
“...It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always and everywhere...”
Principia Mathematica [1]
Vortexengineer (talk) 05:09, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
In both the sections Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton#God_as_masterful_creator and Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton#The_Bible it's stated that in a 1704 manuscript, Newton predicted that the world would end in 2060. These sections are almost identical and thus redundant.
A few lines later in Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton#The_Bible that "he did not believe that the End of the World would take place in 2060". While this is consistent with the explanation that Newton's real goal was to counter frequent speculation that the world would end much sooner, it is confusing and could possibly be interpreted as contradictory. I've also read in "Newton's Notebook" [2], p. 143, that he gave estimates the world would en sometime in the nineteenth century, revised later to 1948. (This source is a good coffee-table reader but its citations to Newton's works are probably not precise enough to cite in the main article as a reliable secondary source.
I would therefore propose the following:
I'm not knowledgeable enough on this topic to do this right now but can undertake more research and attempt such an improvement if it meets with editorial encouragement. Dominic Widdows (talk) 20:10, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
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Would it be appropriate in section Religious views of Isaac Newton#God as masterful creator to link to Creationism? I found the following secondary source (by Christopher B. Kaiser): "So the basic principles of Newton's natural philosophy were rooted in the creationist tradition..." [3] Of course, there's plenty of primary sources about it, too: [4] fgnievinski (talk) 01:26, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
The article treats IN's heretical beliefs as if they sort of come from nowhere, and it treats his biblical studies as a separate topic. The reason he held heretical beliefs is that he closely read scripture. Somehow, the section on the Bible and on his beliefs should be merged into one topic. Jonathan Tweet (talk) 17:31, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
As Bart Ehrman said, Jesus did not preach "I am the Second Person of the Holy Trinity and I am myself God". So, obviously, the dogma of the Trinity is a later invention. First Christians died without knowing it. It is the result of many theological fights/disputes, which took centuries. So, no, that's not just Newton's view, it is an objective historical fact. tgeorgescu (talk) 01:02, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
Newton was a rabid Christian fundamentalist, but, you see, "rabid Christian fundamentalist" in no way precludes "occultist" and "heretic". tgeorgescu (talk) 07:46, 19 February 2023 (UTC)