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The Rapture date, according to Isaac Newton
- Jun8 15y agoSo, it's definitely not this weekend (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20rapture.html?hp http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/us/20rapture.html?hp). The interesting part that people may not know about Newton is that he used most of his time on mumbo-jumbo (i.e. alchemy) and religious stuff like this. One wonders, if this mind, one of the greatest (if not the) mind in history, would have achieved if he had focused all his energy on science. Similar thing happened to Blaise Pascal: After his conversion (due to a accident where he nearly died) he stopped all his mathematical activities, except for one night when, to dull the pain of a toothache, he returned, and almost invented calculus! So, when making fun of all the fundamentalists getting ready for Rapture, etc., bear in mind that the "deadly loop" of religion can hold even the greatest. Here's Marvin Minsky's excellent quote on the "deadly loop" of religion (http://www.j-paine.org/dobbs/heroes_and_differences.html http://www.j-paine.org/dobbs/heroes_and_differences.html): After a dinner of take-out dim sum, Minsky, who had been reading the Koran with some dismay at its violent inquiry-blunting formulae, sermonized, "Religion is a teaching machine — a little deadly loop for putting itself in your mind and keeping it there. The main concern of a religion is to stop thinking, to suppress doubt. It's interested in solving deep problems, not in understanding them. And it's correct in a sense, because the problems it deals with don't have solutions, because they're loops. 'Who made the world?' 'God.' You're not allowed to ask, 'Who made God?' "