Abstract
Both naturalists and Bible-believing Christians claim Newton as their hero. Whose side is he really on? In any list of the most influential people over the past 1,000 years, Sir Isaac Newton (1643-1727) always appears near the top. After all, he helped turn medieval thinking upside down by explaining why apples fall out of a tree. Well, at least that's the popular view. He was a brilliant and insightful scientist. By his mid-twenties, he had already made his most significant contributions to modern thought-the invention of calculus, discovery of the fundamentals of optics, and development of his famous law of gravity and three basic laws of motion. Virtually every aspect of modern life rests, in some way, on Newton's findings. So it's no surprise that everyone, even biblical creationists, wants to claim him as their hero. But we need to be careful.