Context: Newton personally believed in the concept of absolute space since it reinforced the idea of an absolute God, but the entire premise was proven false by what we know as ‘relativity of motion’ which makes use of Newton’s laws of motion.
Excerpts from ‘A Brief History of Time’ by Stephen Hawking:
“… Aristotle believed in a preferred state of rest, which any body would take up if it were not driven by some force or impulse. In particular, he thought that the earth was at rest. But it follows from Newton’s laws that there is no unique standard of rest.”
“Newton was very worried by this lack of absolute position, or absolute space, as it was called, because it did not accord with his idea of an absolute God. In fact, he refused to accept lack of absolute space, even though it was implied by his laws.”
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Yeah, no.
Newton was such a complex human. He seemed capable of holding many, sometimes opposing beliefs, at the same time.
Newton’s conception of the physical world provided a model of the natural world that would reinforce stability and harmony in the civic world. Newton saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation.
There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to his religious beliefs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_views_of_Isaac_Newton
If you are into learning about him there’s also a rather good read, The Janus Faces of Genius, by Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, that looks into his occult work.
Furthermore, for the sake of complexity, we can look into how, when he was the warden of the mint, he became responsible for the deaths of 19 people. He turned a largely ceremonial role into a task force, chasing down forgers and sentencing them to death.
Man, it was miles better when I just knew him as the motion guy back in primary school
Petition to edit all textbooks, renaming Newton as THE Motion Guy.
Petition to edit all textbooks
All in favor of the emotional motion guy motion petition to move forward unless acted on by an equal and opposite motion say aye.
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Because God, to be the absolute creator and the prime mover, He must occupy an absolute space.
Newton had described a universe where, when you push a ball, the ball pushes back. Each action, each motion, is relative to another. This implies that, for God to create the first motion, like rolling the Universe across the room, the Universe would have pushed back and moved God.
Newton didn’t believe this, and rejected the argument that his theories disproved God. But there is a reason we remember his laws of physics and forget the theological arguments. His work in physics held up to scrutiny for hundreds of years. He was accurately (enough) describing the motion of the world around him. His religious beliefs were based on the same philosophical musings and wishful thinking as every other theologian.
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Well, two things. First, this Absolute Space concept was something Newton believed, and even though some people believe his laws of motion disprove Absolute Space, Newton didn’t believe his laws contradicted Absolute Space. He definitely didn’t think his laws concluded that God can’t be real.
But as for your example, the question remains “from where?” Setting two things in motion doesn’t resolve the issue that there is an equal and opposite reaction. It just means now there are two of them. And if we assume that the laws of the universe do not apply outside the universe, we must also presume that there is a space outside of the universe with its own properties and its own laws. And then therefore there must be a space where the two spaces intersect so that one might affect the other. At that intersection, the universe where physics apply would be acting on the external-space where physics don’t apply. If the universe did not affect the external space, it would violate Newton’s laws. If it did, it would violate the laws of the external space.
It’s an unresolvable conflict, or at least it was during Newton’s time. Today, we understand that Newton’s description of physics was accurate on a macro level, roughly describing motion and energy in basic terms. I don’t know if Quantum Physics or Astrophysics can resolve the conflict. It’s not important to me whether or not it is possible for Absolute Space to exist, nor is it important to disprove the possibility of its existence. But I would say that we should follow the science to explore the universe, wherever that leads us. If that means we shed some previously held beliefs, then that’s reality for ya.
It would be comforting to think there exists a divine arbiter and prime creator that wants us to be good and happy, and to imagine we get to hang out with our loved ones when we die. I can understand why so many people want to hold on to those concepts. I just don’t think the universe is that small or unimpressive.
I am an engineer but even I felt insulted on behalf of mathematicians when you referred to him as the motions guy 😭
Eh, Leibniz can be the calculus guy.
We use Leibniz’s calculus anyway, and both were developed at the same time, prompted by the same paper. Newton just happened to publish first (I think) and was more well known at the time.
Hi, I’m Issac Newton, you might remember me from… The motions.
You just had an emotion, which was the result from an opposite emotion.
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He’s the messiah! Lisan al-Ghaib!
So would he lead us against the butlerian jihad?
how physics works doesn’t necessarily dis prove the existence of a supreme being that designed the laws of physics
This is how Darwin felt about evolution. It was the answer to “how?”, not “why?”.
“So then gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it could never put them into such a circulating motion, as they have about the sun”
Nah, he rationalized the shit out of it
How was it refuted?
God cannot be refuted nor confirmed. It’s like unicorns, elves, dragons, and many other myths: we have not seen proof of their existence, nor have any claimed proofs of their existence been confirmed to be a valid, but that doesn’t rule out that we will never find proof.
Such is my understanding science: there is no absolute certainty nor absolute confidence. I think only logical fallacies might never exist e.g an all-powerful creator immediately runs into the logical problem of “can god create a rock that it itself cannot lift?”.
But what if our universe were just a simulation within a machine of a highly advanced species? Their ability to modify the simulation to their will might make them akin to gods for us, but that also incurs the question: what if they were in a simulation themselves? That can be repeated to the root until a “real world” is reached, but that still leaves the question: how did everything come to be?
We can thus cut out all the “if god exists, who created god” and focus on a world without the need to get distracted by the god problem.God cannot be refuted nor confirmed.
I’d say that depends on the specific god claim. Some of them are unfalsifiable, but others could be demonstrated to be true or false. I feel like your examples support this, because you could easily demonstrate the existence of a unicorn or a dragon by finding and capturing one. Also, the fact that they’re fairly large land animals and there’s zero confirmed sightings, no photographs and no captures is pretty good evidence that they likely don’t actually exist (on Earth).
Generally, if the claim is that the god intervenes in some form, it should be testable. You could, for example, test whether prayer works. But if it’s more of a deist god that supposedly just created the universe and then fucked off then that’s probably not testable. But I don’t think any of the most popular religions propose such a god and it also wouldn’t really have any implications for human lives, so the claim isn’t as interesting to me.
I think only logical fallacies might never exist e.g an all-powerful creator immediately runs into the logical problem of “can god create a rock that it itself cannot lift?”.
I don’t like this argument very much because defining omnipotence in a way that includes logical impossibilities doesn’t really make sense to me to begin with. I think it’s more reasonable to define omnipotence as “can do anything that’s possible”.
I do however agree with the sentiment that we can’t know anything with absolute certainty.
Yes, the history of science is refuting claims about God or gods. What is left is the untestable vagueness of the God of the Gaps.
Mental compartmentalization is very annoying.
This is the bullshit that fundies are accidentally pointing to when they claim all the great scientists were theists
