Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish extraction who lived from 1632-1677. Spinoza\u00a0 strongly rejected the notion of a providential God \u2013 the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, in complete control of all things; he claims that the Law was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, this conception of God got him thrown out of the Amsterdam orthodox Jewish community for good when they excommunicated him in 1656.<\/p>\n
When Spinoza writes about God, it is not in the anthropomorphic sense of a God as usually portrayed by the Christian-Judaeo or Muslim varieties of religious scripture, i.e., very much like a person with human-like traits,\u00a0 an authoritarian or father figure perhaps.\u00a0 Someone who seems to take an active and personal interest in what the creatures he created here on earth are up to.<\/p>\n
(And, it should be noted, demonstrating a personality\u00a0 featuring some of the more regrettable human traits I can think of, such as being \u00a0narrow minded, vain, jealous, as well as being vindictive and vengeful! Anyone familiar with the Old Testament will know exactly what I am referring to!)<\/p>\n
Does this mean that Spinoza was an atheist?\u00a0 Not really, since he holds that God is the one and only unique and indivisible substance that the universe is made of. There are no other substances. The view is a bit more complex than that, and involves perceiving this substance through a variety of distinct attributes – such as Thought and Extension – but not its basic premise.<\/p>\n
It is interesting to note that Albert Einstein – also once accused of being an atheist – followed Spinoza in rejecting the\u00a0 anthropological concept of God,\u00a0 saying,\u00a0 instead,\u00a0 that he believed in “… Spinoza\u2019s God, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world”.<\/p>\n
So the point would be that, if God is everything, and everything is God,\u00a0 this will render the concept of a distinct metaphysical entity over and above the world – the great creator –\u00a0 logically and semantically empty (i.e., meaningless) since it doesn\u2019t signify anything over and above the totality of the cosmos, and the name “God” ends up being just another label for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish extraction who lived from 1632-1677. Spinoza\u00a0 strongly rejected the notion of a providential God \u2013 the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob, in complete control of all things; he claims that the … Continue reading