The difference between religious people who believe in a universal truth behind all things, and scientists who are looking for universal truths behind all things is that the scientists are finding it, and for the last 300 years have begun to understand it.

Newton, who believed in god wrote:

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea shore and diverting himself and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell that ordinary while the greater ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac Newton
English mathematician & physicist (1642 - 1727)

He was not a deist as such, as this ideology had not yet evolved, but he certainly contributed to the theory and the understanding of the universe:

"A deist manifesto to the core(probably The Rights of Man), (Thomas)Paine acknowledged his debt to Newton and declared that nature was the only form of divine revelation, for God had clearly established a uniform, immutable and eternal order throughout creation."

So you see that Science and Democratic Republicanism go hand in hand. Many religious people reject the centuries of hard grafting put in by their ancestors, and would prefer to return to a monoculture religious dictatorship based on old books of myths. This is similar to, for example, why strict muslims attack democracy. Funnily enough, Islam once lead the world in science, but the fell back due to the plague, the reconquest of Spain, and Attilla the hun destroying Baghdad.

There's only one way to go, and that's up.

Dave L






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2005 09:25PM by Dave L.