I think all of us, at one time or another. From the London Quarterly Review (1835):
Newton was now president of the Royal Society, and Halley obtained that professorship, which in 1698 had been refused to him by Bishop Stillingfleet, in consequence of his being an infidel, which he was at no pains to conceal. This, as appears on the authority of Dr. Maskelyne, was well known to Sir Isaac Newton, who, however, we are told, ' never permitted immorality and impiety to pass unreproved ;' and when Halley ventured to throw out any thing disrespectful to religion, invariably checked him, saying, ' I have studied these things—you have not.'Apparently astrologers (yes, there are gobs of them who insist that we should taken them seriously) have taken to quoting this out of context as a proof by authority that you should listen to them.
Newton was in some ways a "Bible believing Christian." He was also a secret unitarian which makes him an "infidel" in the eyes of the "orthodox." If you want to split hairs, you could say "heretic" not "infidel," but many orthodox don't see a difference between the two.
ReplyDeleteNewton was also an alchemist.