It would be a better world if all people respected all other people, including scientists atheists, religious people, accountants and the other men on the street.

Science (the work) can be concerned only wilth science, and whether scientific findings are considered respectful or hateful can not be a consideration, if science is to remain unadulterated..

The word ’should’ when used to talk of respect alarms me. In the sense that ’should’ is a recommendation, everything’s fine. In the sense, that people should feel obligated to respect certain people or ideas, it’s not fine. Forced respect is not respect any longer, it’s mandated behavior.

Being fond of free choice, I claim the right to choose what or whom I respect. I would wish the same freedom for sociery. Recommendations are welcome. Mandates are not.

Wheatever. I’m done with the subject.

Your use of the word ’should’ (as I quoted). however,implies that the relationship between science and religion ’should’ be of a certain kind.
I contend that there should be no ’should’ involved.

Other than that, which to me is important, we agree.

Science, by definition, is the study of the natural world. Start introducing elements of the spiritual or supernatural, and you’ve strayed outside the realm of what science can properly address Whether conflict between the two arises or not depends on the nature of scientific findings and religious beliefs. When conflict does arise, there should be no question about which is which. The greatest leaps forward (tha nature of the solar system, etc.)
came about precisely because science stuck to its defined area of the physical world and refused to be polluted by religious beliefs.

An individual scientist, however, is more than his job. He is perfectly free to delve into whatever areas interest him, be that art, religion, metaphysics, magic or puppetry.
When he goes to the lab or office, however, to do science, he must confine himself to the study of tha natural world.

Science and religion can compliment each other in a person, but not in science. To suggest otherwise is to destroy the very nature of scientific inquiry.

To be sure, religious dogma can be a blindfold, blocking truths from those who refuse to see them. Scientific dogma can have the same effect. Neither faith nor reason can answer every question. As Newton knew, the surer path to wisdom is the one that has room for both.

Yet most of the commenters seem to miss that point as they’re caught up in trying to trivialize Newton’s religious studies or disproving any claims that he was a ‘fundamentalist’ (the definition of which could vary but it’s really inconsequential to Jacoby’s point: that science is the study of the physical world and religion is separate from that and the two should complement rather than conflict.)

Your personal beliefs, be they religious political or anything else, should have zero influence on your getting a job, as long as they don’t interfere with your performance on the job. This is naturally more easily said than done. If I’m interviewing 20 potential biologists, and I know that some of them claim to believe the literal story or creation, I will be much more inclined to hire the candidates that hold the concept of evolution in high regard, being central to biology. Of course, the likelyhood of finding very many creationist biologists is about that of an Issac Newton level scientist showing up at an interview wearing a clown suit, with spaghetti in his hair and praying five times daily to the God of Fluorescent Lights.

But here’s the much more important thing to remember: when Einstein (with the special and general theories of relativity) and Schrodinger/Heisenberg (with quantum mechanics) showed how Newton was WRONG, the scientific community recognized it, accepted it, and, wholesale, adopted the NEW understanding. I wonder how that would have worked out for the worshippers at Our Chapel of Newton’s Principles?

It was simply alchemy.

Newton did not publish these findings during his lifetime, likely due to the political climate. Those who wrote against the doctrine of the Trinity were subject to persecution in England. As late as 1698 the Act for the Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness made it an offense to deny one of the persons of the Trinity to be God, punishable with loss of office, employment and profit on the first occasion, and imprisonment for a repetition. Newton’s friend William Whiston (translator of the works of Josephus) lost his professorship at Cambridge for this reason in 1711. In 1693 a pamphlet attacking the Trinity was burned by order of the House of Lords, and the next year its printer and author were prosecuted. In 1697 Thomas Aikenhead, an eighteen-year-old student charged with denying the Trinity, was hanged at Edinburgh, Scotland.

Sure sounds like a “fundamentalist” to me. If Jacoby bothered to actually look at the kind of God Newton described, and not merely his use of the word “God,” he might have actually learned something about both science and religion. Instead he’s shown his ignorance of both.

Oh, and rather than bending over backwards to hire him, Cambridge would have thrown him out the door (as a matter of law at the time) if he had publicly revealed his beliefs. I guess that reveals Jacoby’s ignorance of history as well.