He was something like the Elon Musk of his day– a bit controversial, incredibly innovative, and always the topic of conversation. People were obsessed with Newton's every word and action.

When news spread, for example, that Isaac Newton had invested in the famous South Sea Company, investors clamored to buy the stock… simply because Newton was in it. Sort of like Dogecoin.

The South Sea Company eventually collapsed after barely generating a penny in revenue; it still ranks as one of the biggest stock bubbles of all time, and Newton himself lost a fortune.

But the obsession with Newton never stopped. People even paid attention to things that he didn't say to infer what he might be thinking.

In some of his earlier works, for example, Newton did not explicitly profess his faith in either the Catholic religion or the Church of England. Of course he didn't explicitly state that the didn't adhere to religious faith either.

But people took the omission as a sign that Newton was an atheist. (He wasn't.)

Bear in mind that England in the 1600s was a highly puritan society; "atheist" was one of the worst things you could call a human being back then.

Yet with so many people assuming that Newton was an atheist, there was a sudden surge of interest in alternative spirituality. It became cool to question mainstream religious beliefs. And a number of philosophers emerged from this new trend that Newton never intended to create.

One of those was Charles Blount, who argued in 1679 that organized religion was not the will of the divine, but the product of human beings seeking wealth and power over others.

He described clergymen as having a "vain opinion of their great knowledge" and that they "pretended to know all things which were done in Heaven and Earth."