Does Science Take Us Away From or To God?

[Roy (34-year veteran)]

@Eddie

Even supposing that the solar system needed no tinkering, Newton still would not have said that we no longer need God to explain it.

@Eddie

@John_Harshman

I object to your attempt to enlist Newton to your cause.

Object all you like, but I wasn’t promoting a cause, just making historical statements about what Newton and other great early modern scientists in fact believed, as can be verified by their statements.

That’s clearly untrue. You were making claims about what Newton would have believed under different circumstances.

[Eddie (Edward Robinson)]

@Roy

You were making claims about what Newton would have believed under different circumstances.

We know that Newton, Boyle, Kepler and several other of the titans of early modern science that natural laws were an expression of the reason and will of God. Not only is this obvious from many statements in the primary sources, it is the view of the leading historians of science today. And this is the only fact I need to make my point, i.e., that the high rate of disbelief among modern scientists and particularly among NAS scientists does not follow logically from belief in the existence of natural laws (or from our more detailed modern understanding of those laws).

You can try to distract from the main point by complaining about the exact way in which I phrased my response to John Harshman about Newton’s view on rewinding the planetary clock, but my main point was clear from the beginning, and your comment does not refute it.

You are, of course, welcome to give your own explanation of why such a high percentage of modern US scientists don’t believe in God, and why this was not the case for the early modern founders of science.