Σὺ λέγεις

Spinoza does not believe that worshipful awe or religious reverence is an appropriate attitude to take before God or Nature. There is nothing holy or sacred about Nature, and it is certainly not the object of a religious experience. Instead, one should strive to understand God or Nature, with the kind of adequate or clear and distinct intellectual knowledge that reveals Nature’s most important truths and shows how everything depends essentially and existentially on higher natural causes. The key to discovering and experiencing God, for Spinoza, is philosophy and science, not religious awe and worshipful submission.

What can be said, but “Amen!”

Spinoza’s thinking, like Jefferson’s Deism was a waystation on the road to Naturalism, merely a hop, skip and a jump from atheism.

Spinoza, praise be upon him, was a pivot point in the thinking of the West.

Not worship but wonder! Not creed but curiosity!

Why hold on to a hollow God concept?

“God” is a Dead Metaphor.

All who make idols are nothing, and the things they delight in do not profit; their witnesses neither see nor know, and so they will be put to shame. Who would fashion a god or cast an image that can do no good? All its devotees shall be put to shame; the artisans, too, are merely human. Let them all assemble; let them stand up; they shall be terrified; they shall all be put to shame.

The blacksmith works it with a tool over the coals, shaping it with hammers and forging it with his strong arm; he becomes hungry, and his strength fails; he drinks no water and is faint. The carpenter stretches a line, marks it out with a stylus, fashions it with planes, and marks it with a compass; he makes it in human form, with human beauty, to be set up in a shrine. He cuts down cedars or chooses a holm tree or an oak and lets it grow strong among the trees of the forest. He plants a cedar and the rain nourishes it. Then it can be used as fuel. Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it. Half of it he burns in the fire; over this half he roasts meat, eats it, and is satisfied. He also warms himself and says, “Ah, I am warm by the fire!” The rest of it he makes into a god, his idol, bows down to it and worships it; he prays to it and says, “Save me, for you are my god!”

They do not know, nor do they comprehend, for their eyes are shut, so that they cannot see, and their minds as well, so that they cannot understand. No one considers, nor is there knowledge or discernment to say, “Half of it I burned in the fire; I also baked bread on its coals; I roasted meat and have eaten. Now shall I make the rest of it an abomination? Shall I fall down before a block of wood?” He feeds on ashes; a deluded mind has led him astray, and he cannot save himself or say, “Is not this thing in my right hand a fraud?”

Isaiah 44:9-20 NRSV

Stephen, what is the difference between “worshipful awe” and plain old regular awe at a mysterious immensity we cannot understand or comprehend? Is there an attitude toward the mysterious that can be called reverential without it being called “religious reverence”? Set aside “religious experience,” is there something we might simply call an experience of the numinous?

Of course one can have an experience of awe and wonder and even terror in the face of the mystery of being alive in the universe. I hope everyone has an overwhelming “WTF?” experience at some time in their life, where you are thrown back on your heels and all your bright ideas are swept away. The measure is in our response to these human experiences. Do we extract the best of what we are, project it onto the universe, then fall on our knees and luxuriate in our ignorance? Or do we reach out to touch that which lies beyond us? There may be that which cannot be known. Certainly there are limits. But let’s not stop until we reach them.

Do we have an adequate or clear and distinct intellectual knowledge of these things? Who is to decide which ones are Nature’s most important truths?

We are building a bridge while crossing it. Nature reveals her truths to anyone who shows due diligence. We have to be open to whatever happens. Mistakes will be made. Disasters, failures. Of course we can get off the road at any time. Build a nice little paradise and rest. Perhaps it’ll all be too much for us. And yet…

Was Spinoza wrong to deny that he was an atheist?

No, not within the intellectual framework available to him. Once again I compare him to Jefferson. For them God was a metaphor for the mystery of creation. They had no way of conceptualizing a non-creation. And a creation requires a creator. But even at that point all that was left for God to do was get the whole thing started.

That, of course, is not what I am proposing.

Of course. I merely point out that it is always an option.

Frankly I’m not optimistic. I have little confidence that people will be able to absorb the frequently appalling “revelations” of scientific inquiry. Even someone like myself who loves science and the thrill of finding out a new thing can occasionally feel the queasiness of the floor slipping out from under my feet. I expect we will shrink back. The current mass denialism about climate change is surely a sign of this. We love the toys science provides. When it reveals the need for substantial change, less so. Our descendants, the ones who will actually suffer for our foolishness, will look back on us with astonishment at our purblindness.

But Spinoza did not believe in creation and did precisely conceptualize a non-creation, nature as an eternal and infinite substance. So we must dig deeper if we want to understand better understand Spinoza’s thought and why it was important for him to insist that he was not an atheist. And when Einstein said he believed in Spinoza’s God, I wonder how well he understood the thought of Spinoza.

Spinoza’s thought is complex. He did not believe that nature was identical to God. He was more panentheist than pantheist. God in some sense still transcended Nature. Spinoza was not an atheist.

Einstein wanted to have it both ways. He knew his popular audience would translate his God-talk into their own language. When pressed he admitted he did not believe in Yahweh. Whether Einstein properly appreciated Spinoza is a valid question. I suspect he was primarily responding to Spinoza’s privileging of science and philosophy.

I don’t pretend to know if if there really is something that is, in itself, incomprehensible. Incomprehensible to me? Sure. Incomprehensible to itself?

Well as individuals we have limits. It doesn’t seem to impossible that as a species Homo Sap itself has limits. There might still be aspects of the cosmos beyond even the smartest person on earth. I’ve always wondered how we will respond when we finally create a self-teaching AI possessing all the worlds information. We ask it, “Do you understand the secret of the universe? The why and wherefore of it all?” It responds, “Yes, but I can’t explain it to you because you wouldn’t understand.”

Can you refer me to where Spinoza says God transcends Nature? I would love to better understand his thought.

Ha! I once asked a question about Spinoza to a professor and he threw a copy of Ethics on my desk and told me to have at it! It’s indeed possible to read scholars who consider Spinoza a classical pantheist. What I can find quickly is a comment from a letter he wrote to German theologian Henry Oldenburg, “…as to the view of certain people that I identify god with nature (taken as a kind of mass or corporeal matter), they are quite mistaken.” This from letter 73 of his collected letters, Wilder Press, 2009.

The problem is that there is no shallow end of this here pool. I’ve been helped (!?!) by philosophers Karl Jaspers and Martial Guéroult. God has infinite attributes, some but only some, are identical with Nature. I suspect the real problem here is not God but Nature. For Spinoza Nature has a metaphysical aspect that is not at all obvious. Nature is that aspect of the divine substance which we can penetrate.

One should not completely discount the possibility that Spinoza is internally inconsistent, or simply messing with people’s minds.