Opinion of Baruch Spinoza

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

Opinion of Baruch Spinoza

[afleitch]

Spinoza is interesting. His understanding of god was material and all encompassing but he denied that his ‘deus’ had any consciousness or will and was completely passive and indeed may not even be aware of it’s own existence. In recent years this view has in fact dovetailed neatly with the concept of ‘science as god’; that the very laws of physics established at the singularity and govern the universe and the movement of every atom within our own bodies is essentially ‘god’ but as Spinoza is long gone we cannot say he would now subscribe to such a view. Indeed Spinoza demanded that the best way to understand the deus is not through awe or reverence or worship but through objective study and reason, which one cannot do with theistic or pantheistic gods. Theology and philosophy must be kept separate because the role of theology is ultimately to tell one to obey, even at the expense of ones own volition while the goal of philosophy is to understand the rational and the true. His critique of religious scripture as a result of this is marvellous; study it without imposing any external ideas or doctrines that are not found within the text and if one does this, then it becomes clear that what the religious tell us about the nature of god can be demonstrated to be false. For Spinoza there was no supernatural rival to nature and as nature is reason then it should not be made subservient to scripture. I’m wading through the early stoics, so will probably spend some time on Spinoza at some point when I finish with the classics.

[afleitch]

I think much of it comes back to stoic thought; ‘God’ is synchronous with nature (and Spinoza says that nature has no supernatural rival) and nature is synchronous with reason and therefore reason gives us ‘truth’. Hume tells us that a miracle is "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". He then describes that this intervention is usually entirely to the benefit of the person who experiences it. I have always felt that this adequately outlines what a miracle is but I digress just a little. If a man walks on water, when men cannot walk on water, when he rises from the dead when men cannot rise from the dead then are these events ‘miracles’ and if not, what are they?  Now Hume would argue that because a transgression of the natural law has occurred then what occurred is likely to have been a misapprehension on the part of the viewer, an artifact of confirmation bias or a downright fabrication. This is how skeptics still approach such matters today. This is where Spinoza parts company. He infers that in some cases what is being witnessed is indeed a natural event whose cause has not yet been understood. His ‘deus’ is not a transcendent being who can suspend nature's laws and intervene in its function. As a result, any divine providence from god must be in accordance with the course of nature and this cannot be contravened. So if you seek divine providence, then that is to be found in the natural sciences.

Is Spinoza’s position therefore conducive to religious belief at all? If one accepts that the accounts of a man walking on water or rising from the dead do not fall under Hume’s rules are indeed events that occurred, then according to Spinoza they are natural events that are not yet understood. Natural events are the ‘will’ of god (though his deus has no active‘will’as such) then so too were those acts part of the ‘will’ of god. But if we hold that to be true, then those acts cannot be considered ‘miraculous’ and are simply part of nature. As a result, they are of no more empiric value than an exploding star, the warmth of the sun or a lizard catching a fly, all of which are acts of nature. And just as we didn’t know why the sun was warm and now we do, an event not yet understood will one day be understood. So theism is utterly irrelevant; it doesn’t make me ‘alright’ with god because Spinoza’s god doesn’t really care what I do, think or say. It is cool and indifferent and not concerned about my life, my safety or my ‘salvation.’ Furthermore, if god and nature are identical then perhaps the concept of god becomes dispensable.

[Mad Deadly Worldwide Communist Gangster Computer God]

If Spinoza thought there's 'something out there,' then clearly he isn't an atheist.  On the other hand, I think the idea of a God that doesn't know He exists is self-defeating, as someone who accepts the notion of a God that possesses all knowledge.  So after thinking about it, I suppose Spinoza's position, while respectable, encounters many problems, like the ones you mentioned.  So I'll agree with you that if there exists something equal to God, then the original belief in God makes very little practical sense, at least from a monotheistic viewpoint.

[afleitch]

If Spinoza thought there's 'something out there,' then clearly he isn't an atheist.  On the other hand, I think the idea of a God that doesn't know He exists is self-defeating, as someone who accepts the notion of a God that possesses all knowledge.  So after thinking about it, I suppose Spinoza's position, while respectable, encounters many problems, like the ones you mentioned.  So I'll agree with you that if there exists something equal to God, then the original belief in God makes very little practical sense, at least from a monotheistic viewpoint.

Not quite. He doesn't consider there to be something 'out there' at all but rather 'everywhere.'

Spinoza was probably as close to an atheist (the clues in the name) as you could possibly be. He wasn’t a theist. However if you mean Spinoza believed in a ‘god’ then that too is debatable, if I can explain. His ‘deus’ is unlike any god conceived by man and was the complete opposite of the providential god of the Jews and Christians. For him the deus was the natural order; not set apart from it. Some would say he was pantheist; that his deus was the water, the sun, the air, the flowers and, had he known about it every spectrum of the sciences and every atom. And I guess that’s a very spiritual interpretation but it’s one that most atheists and agnostics would hold. For example, wonder is to be found in the fact that not only does the sun sustain life on earth, but nearly every atom on this planet in every living and non living thing is made up of the same material that formed the solar system and formed the sun and that this only happened because other stars blew up billions of years ago. And we can go back further and further to the very singularity; the defining point of all science, all energy, all matter and all time. Holding that view in Spinoza’s time would have seen me labelled as ‘pantheist.’

However the reason why Spinoza shouldn’t be considered pantheist (nor should I) is because while atheists and pantheists agree than on an ontological level there is nothing else to the world but nature, they would disagree when the pantheist insisted that the identification of a deus with nature makes it necessary to hold the psychological attitudes demanded by theism. Spinoza didn’t consider there to be anything ‘holy’ about nature (and neither would I) While nature can ‘awe’ we should not be in awe of it. As the stoics asserted nature is neither positive nor negative; it is what it is. Holding reverence or fear of nature will not influence it towards a kinder or harsher disposition. For Spinoza in fact worshipful awe is not an appropriate action to take before the deus; the key to discovering and experiencing deus/nature, for Spinoza, is philosophy (which he divides from theology) and science.