According to some, a major critique came during the 19th century from James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879), who in some sources is claimed to have maintained that different rotation between the inner and outer parts of a ring could not allow condensation of material. However, both the critique and the attribution to Maxwell have been deemed to be incorrect upon further investigation, with the original error being made by George Gamow in some popular publications and propagated continually ever since. Astronomer Sir David Brewster also rejected Laplace, writing in 1876 that "those who believe in the Nebular Theory consider it as certain that our Earth derived its solid matter and its atmosphere from a ring thrown from the Solar atmosphere, which afterwards contracted into a solid terraqueous sphere, from which the Moon was thrown off by the same process". He argued that under such view, "the Moon must necessarily have carried off water and air from the watery and aerial parts of the Earth and must have an atmosphere". Brewster claimed that Sir Isaac Newton 's religious beliefs had previously considered nebular ideas as tending to atheism, and quoted him as saying that "the growth of new systems out of old ones, without the mediation of a Divine power, seemed to him apparently absurd".