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Originally Posted by IMDABES
wasn't he just outwardly religious for obvious reasons? I just can't fathom a guy like that being genuinely religious.
As previously mentioned - he was INTENSELY religious. We are talking about at least 1/2 of his work dedicated to dating judgement day, genesis, and various other biblical topic. It isn't just an elaborate cover-up. One of the reason he was strongly disliked was due to its borderline heretical religious views. The heretical views of Newton are not of ''atheism'' as the 21th century physicist would like to see, but he was actually sometimes ''more religious'' then his counterparts of the Royal Society.
If you asked Newton what his main focus of research and goals are, he would undoubtedly say theology over ''natural philosophy''(the old name for physics)
He simply saw his physics studies as a way of understanding god; this attitude being the very popular among physicians all the way up to Albert Einstein. This is why classic physics is often said to end with Einstein; a clear shift from ''physics to understand god'' to quantum theory based on sheer luck, statistics and mathematics.