by I Faded Twice 13 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
TerryWalstrom : In recent years a document has been found in a Newton collection in the Jewish National Library in Jerusalem that shows he set 2060 as the year the world would expire
Terry, as you later state, Newton was not expecting the world to "expire" at the end of 1260 years, nor was he expecting "the end of time". Rather, he was expecting the return of Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth for a thousand years.
This is JW talk not ex-JW talk. The world will not be ending, just each of our lives, so don't waste them on pointless speculation. Newton was a genius at physics but not religion.
Newton was a genius at physics but not religion.Hb
are there any comparable geniuses in religion? let's hear about them!
If you dabble in natural law, as Newton some of his contemporaries did, it is very hard to escape the notion that somehow your thinking reflects what went into creation in the first place . Even Einstein let that slip out once in a while, Isaac N thought that the solar system was so delicately balanced, that an occasional resetting nudge by "the Lord" was required. bsw.
@Waton, I wasn't suggesting for a moment that there are geniuses of religion, just that religion was not Newton's specialism, being more akin to a hobby, like his interest in alchemy. He had cracked gravity, so he gave Biblical prophecy and making gold from base metal the object of his brilliant mind as well.
It would though be interesting to consider what a genius of religion would look like!
The candidate would have to be able to pull out of thin air ideas which have no evidential basis but have an aura of the sacred about them and then by using these, manipulate the minds and hearts of his audience to financially reward him for his unsupportable promises and deceptions. TV evangelists perhaps?
We could put forward Fred Franz, not motivated by wealth but for the whole of his long lifetime he communicated his utter conviction of Biblical certainty yet proved eventually to be totally wrong. How many did he influence: say twenty million JWs over sixty years? Genius? More of a fixated, narcissistic fanatic I think.
