Spinoza's God

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Dave_Noonan said:
I don’t understand how this is the case. For Spinoza God is entirely infinite and has an idea of everything. Maybe I’m misunderstanding your argument.

I think to say that Spinoza equates God with “the Force” is oversimplifying Spinoza’s Ethics to the point of misrepresenting it. A force doesn’t have infinite qualities considered under the attributes of either thought or extension.
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If God is infinite, does Spinoza argue that you and I are God because we are part of all that is? What say you?

A Force also does not have a brain, and I don’t think Spinoza is arguing that God has a brain, since God is not a person. So why shouldn’t Spinoza call God a Force and get rid of the confusion? Why shouldn’t a Force have infinite qualities while not having a brain to think its thoughts?

There is no love in Spinoza’s God, because his God is impersonal.

A loveless God should be thought of as a Force, all the more so because, for Spinoza, we have no free will; and what is Force but the absence of free will? 🤷
 
Charlemagne_III said:
If God is infinite, does Spinoza argue that you and I are God because we are part of all that is? What say you?
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No certainly we are not God because human beings are not infinite, but for Spinoza humans are within God because all existence is God and humans exist. As I noted in my earlier post, that’s part of what Spinoza is arguing against–the human rendering of God into human images and characteristics or somehow equating humans with God.
Charlemagne_III said:
A Force also does not have a brain, and I don’t think Spinoza is arguing that God has a brain, since God is not a person. So why shouldn’t Spinoza call God a Force and get rid of the confusion? Why shouldn’t a Force have infinite qualities while not having a brain to think its thoughts?
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I think you’re confusing “thought” and “brain.” Forces don’t have thoughts; for Spinoza, God has an idea of everything because God is infinite when considered under BOTH the attributes of thought and extension–not just extension. But God doesn’t have some type of human equivalent of a separate brain somewhere, no. There’s no “where” to God’s thinking, except “everywhere.”
Charlemagne_III said:
There is no love in Spinoza’s God, because his God is impersonal.
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No Spinoza would agree that God has no emotions in the sense that humans do, although God does have an idea of these emotions because God has an idea of everything. See above. For Spinoza, God doesn’t get angry, jealous, regret, hate, show favoritism or love (just as examples), thus–again like Philo in some ways–his big beef with the biblical portrayal of God. Spinoza would say that an infinite God can ONLY have infinite attributes to assign finite attributes to God, for Spinoza, would be a grave error.
Charlemagne_III said:
A loveless God should be thought of as a Force, all the more so because, for Spinoza, we have no free will; and what is Force but the absence of free will? 🤷
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Forces don’t have ideas, as I’ve mentioned. However, if you’re saying that “force” is something approaching the laws of physics, then yes, you’re perhaps getting warmer to what Spinoza is thinking.

No, Spinoza’s philosophy is incompatible with contingency because he would believe such a notion to be a limitation of God’s infinitude–as if God would forced to chose what to do, or not to do, based on what humans do or don’t do. For Spinoza, all things and states of affairs that can exist, do exist, otherwise God would be limited in some way. All things are as they are necessarily.
 
Noonan

Well, I guess you’ve made a brave effort to make sense of Spinoza.

I still don’t think that he makes sense.

The universe has no brain with which to think?

Then, as Pascal said, my thinking brain is superior to the universe. And if God is all that is, then God must be the universe, and I must be the Godhead?

Whew! :hypno:🍿
 
A philosopher’s God is usually more impersonal than the God of everyone else.

In the case of Spinoza, this is particularly true. Imagine how the average lay philosopher would approach Spinoza’s Ethics with complete befuddlement. Both as to the nature of God and the moral principles that Spinoza developed, it hardly seems that he had any feeling for how the vast numbers of humanity would find him anything other than a pretentious bore, dressing up his theology in mathematical definitions, axioms, and propositions.

Who has come away from reading Spinoza with any kind of agreement (never mind comprehension) of his thought? Einstein tipped his hat to Spinoza, but for what reason is anybody’s guess, since Einstein never explained why he liked Spinoza’s God other than that his God was about as impersonal as a God could be. Einstein and Spinoza may have been soul brothers, since Einstein also found a personal God to be a contemptible notion.
 
What is it called when someone believes in an impersonal life force as a God? I haven’t seen this refuted yet
 
thinkandmull said:
What is it called when someone believes in an impersonal life force as a God? I haven’t seen this refuted yet
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Deism is the belief in a an impersonal God. That philosophy became popular in the so-called Age of Reason when certain philosophers and scientists rebelled against the idea of a personal God as one loaded down with ancient mythological superstitions.

Reason was King then, and the great mythologies of religion seemed not only improbable but anti-rational to many thinkers of that era. Yet they were willing to acknowledge a principle that guides the laws in the universe and were willing to call it God for the lack, evidently, of anything else to call it.

In later centuries Deism devolved into full blown pantheism or atheism. But as we well know, there is no more proof for pantheism and atheism than there is for Deism.
 
Oh ye, Panentheism. How do we know that our souls aren’t eternal, and they were brought into life by this impersonal life force
 
Then what’s the whole point of trying to prove theirs a God if we can’t know he is Personal?
 
thinkandmull said:
Then what’s the whole point of trying to prove theirs a God if we can’t know he is Personal?
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This is why I suggest that Spinoza might have used “Force” instead of “God” as the thing he wanted to name for explaining infinite thought and extension.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
There is plenty of tangible proof, but one has to open one’s heart as well as one’s head to get at it. 👍
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So I’ve heard, but in 57 years I have yet to see it or hear it. I have sensed things in the middle of nowhere that I can’t explain, but that proves nothing.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
I’m not a Spinozist. But as to your question, the closest I can come to pinning Spinoza down is the following passage from Epistle 21.

“I take a totally different view of God and Nature from that which later Christians usually entertain, for I hold that God is the immanent, and not the extraneous, cause of all things. I say, All is in God; all lives and moves in God.”

Then he goes on to cite the apostle Paul. Acts 17:28

"For ‘In him we live and move and have our being,’

Not sure which later Christians he is talking about: Augustine? Aquinas?
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Thanks to this thread, I’ve be re-reading Spinoza. I now understand him better than before. Compared to Kant, etc., it’s actually quite easy reading.

My reaction to his God, firstly was, it seems reasonable- but leaves me totally indifferent.

In discussing our love for God- he argues it is impossible to hate God, because, insofar as we really conceptualize God (as this kind of perfect thing)- we are do not feel any pain. Therefore, we can’t hate him.

He gives the example of feeling pain. Now, insofar as we contemplate the cause of the pain, understand its causes, etc. we cease to feel pain, and therefore don’t hate God. IN other words, in contemplating the rational and perfect, we are drawn into happiness (or at least a state of non-pain).

Could we accept Spinoza’s ‘Deus sive Natura’ as simply the governing force of the Universe- and still have a totally transcendental God, in an ontologically different Heaven?
 
oldcelt said:
So I’ve heard, but in 57 years I have yet to see it or hear it. I have sensed things in the middle of nowhere that I can’t explain, but that proves nothing.
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But maybe you’re getting there? 😉
 
Nihilist said:
Could we accept Spinoza’s ‘Deus sive Natura’ as simply the governing force of the Universe- and still have a totally transcendental God, in an ontologically different Heaven?
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I’m struggling to understand the question.
 
Nihilist said:
Could we accept Spinoza’s ‘Deus sive Natura’ as simply the governing force of the Universe- and still have a totally transcendental God, in an ontologically different Heaven?
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I suppose we could, but I don’t think Spinoza could. But I could be wrong.

One in my life I was wrong. 😃
 
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