I read an article on cnn.com today that my wife sent me that’s very interesting. It seems that some of Sir Isaac Newton’s personal writings have recently been put on display in Jerusalem. What’s that have to do with the price of corn in China you may ask? Well, some of these documents express Newton’s belief in God and the Bible. In fact Newton, who is arguably the most influential scientist of all time, even says that he believes the end of the world would come after the year 2060.

“It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner,” Newton wrote. However, he added, “This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail.” [source]

Passages like the one above will undoubtedly shed new light on Sir Isaac Newton’s ideas about religion. It’ll be interesting to see how the scientific community reacts to such a man of science also being a man of faith. I can’t wait until these are all available online. They promise to be a good read.

Of course, these newly publicised documents don’t all deal with religious topics; some of them are budgets and personal letters. Nonetheless, this is one of the more interesting bits of news I’ve heard today.