Really need this so If you have any I would really appreciate it. Currently I only possibly have one for Baruch Spinoza: https://joaocamillopenna.files.wordpress.com/2019/08/spinoza-complete-works-2002.pdf
And I need one for Galen Strawson. Thanks!
The general theme for my paper is โwhat is mind?โ
So I use to be an atheist and I would dismiss any idea of God as being anthropocentric. I thought it was incredibly unlikely for a God to exist that was made in man's image and when I would talk about this with other Christians they had no answer. They had no answer for bertrand russell's flying teapot argument for the statistically unlikelihood of God not existing.
But the more I appreciated science and studied I realized that many incredibly influential scientists believed in the God that Baruch Spinoza believed in.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#GodNatu
So the people I seemed to idolized for being the best at logic, for participating in science, seemed to be religious and I didn't know how to reconcile these ideas.
I mean the Big Bang theory was discovered by a Catholic priest Georges Lemaรฎtre. The way I even understood the universe came from a practicing religious person.
So long story short I decided to take a leap of faith in believing in a God of Spinoza's understanding and my personal experience of it has been relentlessly rewarding. Believing in an all loving God that is more or less pantheistic gives me so much comfort that I don't even care I can't have a purely rational argument to prove that He is true. I mean I get it, there are so many holes in the argument for God but living with the believe is incredibly rewarding and that is reason enough. And there seems to be no contradiction between believing in Spinoza's God and learning anything and everything about science!
Anyway, wishing you all well. What do you think?
Truly I enjoyed talking to you all. Thank you for taking the time and regardless of what we agree or disagree on, I liked the discussion!
First of all, is this perhaps an 'irrelevant' question, like the "14 Questions the Buddha remained silent on"? Is the question relevant, will it have any impact on my life? I'm contemplating that. If a coin is flipped, of course it's the laws of physics, but to such an extent that it is unknowable to me, so in effect it is random. Is there something bigger at play, karma maybe?
Spinoza presents the basic elements of his picture of God. God is the infinite, necessarily existing (that is, self-caused), unique substance of the universe. There is only one substance in the universe; it is God; and everything else that is, is in God.
Havenโt seen any posts here on Spinoza before. I think his Ethics is amongst the most mind blowing piece of philosophy ever written and I think it goes right to the heart of what SR is all about. Is there anyone here who has thoughts on this? Would love to hear them.
โProp. XLII. Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself ; neither do we rejoice therein, because we control our lusts, but, contrariwise, because we rejoice therein, we are able to control our lusts.โ
โProp. XXX. Our mind, in so far as it knows itself and the body under the form of eternity, has to that extent necessarily a knowledge of Nature, and knows that it is in Nature, and is conceived through Nature.โ
โI have thus completed all I wished to set forth touching the mind's power over the emotions and the mind's freedom. Whence it appears, how potent is the wise man, and how much he surpasses the ignorant man, who is driven only by his lusts. For the ignorant man is not only distracted in various ways by external causes without ever gaining the true acquiescence of his spirit, but moreover lives, as it were unwitting of himself, and of Nature, and of things, and as soon as he ceases to suffer, ceases also to be.โ
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baruch_Spinoza
He may not have been an unbeliever (he was most likely a pantheist), but for believing different than the majority of his time, he was called an atheist. His philosophy laid the groundwork for the enlightenment and modern biblical criticism.
In the eyes of most philosophers that came after him, he sealed the deal on separating morality from religion. In the 17th century!
He argued for morality from reason and it pains me to see, that most of the religious arguments he destroyed in 17th century netherlands, are still beeing repeated today.
This is from a letter he wrote to a former student of his, who turned roman catholic:
> โBut assume that all the reasons you bring forward tell in favour solely of [your] Church. Do you think that you can thereby prove mathematically the authority of that Church? As the case is far otherwise, why do you wish me to believe that my demonstrations are inspired by the prince of evil spirits, while your own are inspired by God, especially as I see, and as your letter clearly shows, that you have been led to become a devotee of this Church not by your love of God, but by your fear of hell, the single cause of superstition? Is this your humility, that you trust nothing to yourself, but everything to others, who are condemned by many of their fellow men? Do you set it down to pride and arrogance, that I employ reason and acquiesce in this true Word of God, which is in the mind and can never be depraved or corrupted?โ
