A little food for thought....
Not only does the conclusion not follow, the search for a propagation medium has turned up negative in all experiments. The Michelson-Morley being one of the first.
Moreover, Newton believed that his laws of motion implied the generation of conditions of increasing disorder in the world, such that God would have to intervene periodically to rectify it in order to save it and keep it going:Isaac Newton:
Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.One other quote from Newton (his public position, regardless of his private views):
-- Principia Mathematica (1687) Laws of Motion I
I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
-- Letter to Robert Hooke (February 5, 1675)
I would say that the notion of perfect does as much harm as good to our understanding. "Perfect" as a static state is merely a mental construct. It doesn't exist. Any state of "perfect" only sets the stage for the next stage of "perfect", and so it goes, a moving target receding at the speed of... light? At the speed of thought. Perfect can only be dynamic, it is a continuous process.
Such a mental construct can't have any effect on whether God is or isn't continuously present in his creation. But a dynamic "perfect" is consistent with a God who is present in the here and now. "Perfect" as a moving target doesn't bother me, in my understanding at least, that is what creation looks like, a moving, living, changing, growing thing.
There is a beautiful order to creation, implying to me a well designed formula at the heart of it all, but there is also a kind of beautiful messiness about it, suggesting a creation that responds to damage and overcomes it. Which is to say, a creation that responds to the expected unexpected.
sensorium Dei could well refer to an infinite, universal creative field, “originally empty” of all content, designed to be the matrix and carrier of all possibilities for our universe...
The blank canvas where God will paint his masterpiece, with his perfect formulas, and his little human agents of messiness who fit themselves into any available space, respond to local anomalies and bridge them with their bodies and their lives. With God's help.
Thanks! Interesting article. I have read a bit of Newton's works, but had been unaware of his theocratic leanings.
Personally, I would argue that if God himself is absolute and fixed, then perfection is absolute and fixed.
If that was the case, we might as well blow the planet to hell and gone, and all, each of us, do ourselves in.
SO now I return to one of the things I have said frequently, it's not the BEING, but the DOING that seems to be important.
It is the DOING of things, and our constant attempts to do things better, and be better people, that makes it impossible to compress the universe into a singularity.
And interestingly enough, it makes the outcome still somewhat questionable.
YEC - read later
BUMP
This is a variation of Last Thursdayism. God is immanent in all of nature, and any change initiated will change the past along with the present, making the universe appear to obey consistent natural laws.
Newton's work inspired Kant.
How many transcedences did Kant really have? If you draw up the limits of reason, and then transcendentalize it, where did he put the transcendent majesty?
Transcendence as Calvinist. Never heard of that before. From Pannenberg?
I sat beneath the poets’ tree
for a moment of serenity
when sudden and ironically
Nature intervened
I felt the sun beat down on me
and in my heliocentric reality
I mocked the cosmic cosmetology
Again Nature intervened
A cloud relieved my anxiety
and allowed a moment for philosophy
so I pondered life’s cumulus duplicity
Once more Nature intervened.
Dead leaves ascended suddenly
Hues danced in the air harmoniously
The breath of Life has set them free
My conscience intervened
As I sat beneath this poets’ tree
As many a man had previously
I found calamity in my sanctimony
I learned of life, I learned of me
And discovered life’s true gravity
Because God has intervened.
B4L8r