

The Rapture date, according to Isaac Newton - Jun8
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23401099-the-world-will-end-in-2060-according-to-newton.do

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Jun8
So, it's definitely not this weekend
(<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>):

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?' "

