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July 18, 2007

Next Question

I hate to disagree with the mighty Mark Kleiman two days in a row, but, well...

In criticizing PZ Myers' claim that theists are "ignorant, deluded, wicked, foolish, or oppressed," Kleiman issues this challenge:

I've always wanted to ask someone like Meyers — or Dawkins, or Pinker — how much smarter he thinks he is than, let's say, Heraclitus or Socrates or Maimonides or Newton, who thought hard about religion and didn't dismiss it as nonsense.

Yes, it's true -- Newton believed in God. He also believed in alchemy, absolute space, a deterministic universe (save for God's intermittent interventions), and that Revelation predicts the End of Days. (And he "thought hard" about these topics too.)

In short, Newton was a man of his time. I'd like to think we've learned a little since 1700, wouldn't you?

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