Hi you all! I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses and one of my reasons to be here is to share and learn more about the harmony of the Bible and science as well as to listen anyone who thinks something in the Bible is out of harmony with science.
My user name (Newtonian) was chosen because my beliefs are similar to Isaac Newton who believed in both science and the Bible as sources of truth Am I permitted to quote our literature here? I wanted to start off by sharing an article is our literature about Isaac Newton's search for God I will post a couple of excerpts but this link is to the article in its entirety:
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1977284#h=1:0-60:672Like me (and my religion) Newton rejected the trinity doctrine (of Christendom) for many reasons - including Bible manuscript research which he show was corrupted by trinitarians that inserted words into 1 John 5:7 to make it appear the Bible teaches the trinity doctrine.
A couple of excerpts from the article:
"Shortly before his death in 1727 he said of himself: “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 seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”2
Newton appreciated that God is the Source of all truth, and in line with the deep reverence he had for his Creator, he appears to have spent even more time searching after the true God than he did in searching out scientific truths. An analysis of all that Newton wrote reveals that out of some 3,600,000 words only 1,000,000 were devoted to the sciences, whereas some 1,400,000 were on religious topics.3"
Reference 3 - 3. The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, edited by H. W. Turnbull, F.R.S., Cambridge 1961, Vol. 1, p. XVII.
"In his writings, Newton gave much attention to the doctrine of the Trinity. One of his most outstanding contributions to the Biblical scholarship of the time was his work An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture, first published in 1754, twenty-seven years after his death. It reviewed all the textual evidence available from ancient sources on two Bible passages, at First John 5:7 and First Timothy 3:16.
In the King James Version Bible, First John 5:7 reads:
“For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”
Using early Church writers, the Greek and Latin manuscripts and the testimony of the first versions of the Bible, Newton proved that the words “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one,” in support of the Trinity doctrine, did not appear in the original inspired Greek Scriptures. He then traced the way in which the spurious reading crept into the Latin versions, first as a marginal note, and later into the text itself. He showed that it was first taken into a Greek text in 1515 by Cardinal Ximenes on the strength of a late Greek manuscript corrected from the Latin. Finally, Newton considered the sense and context of the verse, concluding, “Thus is the sense plain and natural, and the argument full and strong; but if you insert the testimony of ‘the Three in Heaven’ you interrupt and spoil it.”4"
Reference 4 -4. An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture, by Sir Isaac Newton, Edition of 1830, London, p. 60.
I was Lutheran until age 9, they teach the trinity doctrine. In my simple childhood mind I could not understand how Jesus could be God, and Jesus die for our sins when God cannot die! But I thought so many intelligent adults believed this so I must be wrong.
I was right - and some of the reasons are so simple a child could understand!
Sorry for the long post. Btw - our website is jw.org
