RE: Why was Newton a theist?
March 8, 2018 at 2:02 pm
(This post was last modified: March 8, 2018 at 2:03 pm by Fake Messiah.)
Yeah Newton wasted a lot of time on religion. But he was Christian because it was also very useful. I mean look at his contemporary, Voltaire who was an atheist and also an activist that saved people (sometimes unsuccessfully) from being killed by Church and had to live in fear on the border in France, so he can escape to Switzerland when Christians decide to kill him.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
