Re: God/No God

On Apr 16, 7:08 pm, j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
But astronomy and astrology were the same science up until fairly
recently. Both Copernicus and Galileo were astrologers

Nope - Copernicus was not an astrologer. Galileo was - one's gotta
make a living, and back in the day most astronomers were astrologists
to pay the bills. Which isn't to suggest that all astronomer/
astrologers didn't believe in astrology, but there's nothing to
indicate that they all did believe, either.

I consider that roughly analogous to back in those days most Western
painters and musicians having Christianity as their main theme. Was,
say, Raphael a practicing Christian? Who the hell knows, but I he
knew he had a good paying gig when he saw one - including when the
Catholic Church commissioned him to paint the Sistine Chapel.

At one point Sir Isaac Newton heard Sir Edmund Halley speak
dismissively of astrology, and he responded: “Sir Halley, I have
studied the matter, you have not!”

I call bull***. There is no indication Newton believed in astrology,
and from what I have read he in fact likely rejected it. So I looked
that one up - here's what wikiquote says:

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"I have studied these things — you have not."

* Reported as Newton's response, whenever Edmond Halley would say
anything disrespectful of religion, by Sir David Brewster in The Life
of Sir Isaac Newton (1831). This has often been quoted in recent years
as having been a statement specifically defending Astrology. Newton
wrote extensively on the importance of Prophecy, and studied Alchemy,
but there is little evidence that he took favourable notice of
Astrology. Brewster attributes the anecdote to the astronomer Nevil
Maskelyne who passed it on to Oxford professor Stephen Peter Rigaud.
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http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton
.

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