Spinoza's God: what is his model and why don't we hear about it more commonly?

In the **Ask the Atheist **thread over in MPSIMS, some folks reference philosopher Baruch Spinoza and his view on God/his “model” for reality. **Einstein **famously said that he believes in Spinoza’s God.

Ask the Atheist thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=775323&highlight=atheist
Wiki entry on Spinoza: Baruch Spinoza - Wikipedia
I have been trying to consider this. For starters, is this a reasonable summary of Spinoza’s “model”:

  • God is whatever can be described about the core/system from which Reality emanates, i.e., if Einstein’s Relativistic Model is the best we have to date to frame the underpinnings of our Reality, then that is “God.” The point is: God is not personal, and not influential - Reality will never be modified or engaged by a personal God. This core system was established and continues - God will not behave as a personal actor to change anything.
  • What Humans perceive as Reality emanates from God, but that may or may not be the totality of God’s emanations. I.e., there is stuff we can’t know.
  • There is no mind/body duality; both are emanations of God.
  • The Spinoza “meme” of God = Nature is too simple; it is more that Spinoza believes that Nature/Reality emerges from God.

??

My questions:

  1. Does this summary reasonably describe Spinoza’s model?
  2. If so, why don’t I feel like I hear about it much? There is Einstein’s quote and Spinoza’s prominence in philosophy. But with so much writing against organized religion, e.g., the New Atheism, I am surprised that a Spinoza-esque model isn’t a more prominent option being discussed. It accepts the findings of science while retaining room for mystery/the unknowable, and refers to it as God. Am I right that it doesn’t get discussed much?
  3. Stripping away the naming of the “core” as God, Spinoza’s model still calls for mystery/unknowability. So a person believing in Spinoza’s model would NOT think of themselves as an Atheist - ? It is interesting because Spinoza has been referred to as a Deist or a Pantheist because he uses the term God to describe what he sees as the underlying “core” of our reality, but he also rejects most/all of the attributes that monotheists attribute to God.

I think it is not talked about much because it does not communicate the idea clearly, since most conceptions of God are personal and influential, or at least influential.

And what’s worse, many people who would want you to admit to this conception of “God” would then do a jazz-hand dance and then talk about “God loves you” or “God wants you to do so and so”.

Well, it all depends on who you listen to. Didn’t Thomas Jefferson believe in an impersonal deity which permeated throughout reality and could not be conceived? Both organized religious fanatics and New Atheists are threatened by equating reality as unknowable or conscious. Both groups believe that language and labeling bits and pieces of reality somehow make it known and controllable.

It is unfortunate that people get offended by the word “God”. It is just a placeholder word for the nature of reality, the interconnections of all things via the molecular level, the self-sustaining system of the universe with stars creating elements and solar systems, etc.

However, if you have been exposed to Alan Watts, Eastern Philosophies, come forms of Gnosticism, Alan Moore, or even biocentrism than you would see parts of Spinoza. He may be rooted in his time and place, like all of us are, but he seems to be an open-minded Western philosopher who incorporated non-literal interpretations of the Holy books.

“God” as commonly understood in the Americas and Europe is not a placeholder for reality. It’s understood to be a personal, supernatural agent that both created and currently influences reality.

As for “New Atheists” being threatened by a Spinoza like god that only partially extends into this physical universe…I’d like to see some backing to that. Dawkins’ objection to “god” is more along the lines of objecting to mindless submission and uncritical review of evidence free texts.

All good and thanks for the post. As for your comment on God, yes, that is a key distinction. Many folks equate God with “a Personal God, in the Judeo/Christian/Islamic concept” where as Spinoza seems to step back and use it more conceptually.

What is interesting is that, near as I can tell, the meme that “Spinoza declared that ‘God = Nature’ as a way to kinda-sorta ‘get one past’ his Jewish community” isn’t really where he was coming from.

Yes, I very much see Spinoza in the places you cite and Moore ;). His pov is represented in modern discourse on this type of topic - I guess I just don’t hear him invoked as often as I might expect ??? and am starting this thread to check that thinking…

Yeah, I would agree with this. I’d say my own notion of God is decently compatible with Spinoza’s.

I think what we are getting at here is the non-dual perspective, which does indeed seem to be the highest and most inclusive perspective that we have found, and it does actually solve the body/mind duality rather elegantly.

The most modern version of it that can be taught rationally (I would classify non-duality as trans-rational) would probably be integral holism. The basis of that is basically as follows (very, very simplified obviously):

EVERYTHING can be viewed as a “holon”.

A holon is simultaneously a whole and a part. Thus we avoid the pitfall of atomism (everything is just “stuff”, gross reductionism) and system theory (everything is just systems or wholes, subtle reductionism). An atom is (or can be) part of a molecule (while still being an atom) and is itself made up by sub-atomic parts. Every new level of the hierarchy adds novelty, meaning that molecules can do things that atoms can’t, and cells can do things that molecules can’t etc etc. This solved the modernist problem of “flatland” where everything is reduced to either/or. According to this perspective it’s both/and.

The other problem that needs to be solved is the post-modern issue of relativism, which basically ends up saying that since there are endless perspectives and contexts available, they are all equally valid. According to integral holism that is solved since something lower in the hierarchy is more fundamental (you need the lower levels in order to get the higher but not vice versa, we can have molecules without cells but not cells without molecules, hence cells are “higher”), and higher levels are more significant (or valuable). This way you get qualitative value as well as quantative. Matter is more fundamental than life, and has a bigger span (there is more of it), but life has more depth/height because it contains (and transcends) matter, and such has more qualities. Everything that matter can do, life can do, because matter is a part of life (all life has matter) but life is not a part of matter (you can take away all life in the universe and it would not influence matter at all).

This way you basically get three realms that build on each other but that also transcend each other. The physiosphere enables the biosphere that enables the noosphere. This hierarchy is clearly not arbitrary and gives us the ability to assign both span and depth, or quality and quantity, in a logical way that is backed up by both subjective experience and objective verification. It also becomes very obvious that the separation between spheres are vital. Biological life can not be reduced to matter because it has completely new properties. Physics does not explain biological behavior. And the mental realm can not be reduced to the biological, since thoughts, ideas and concepts can not be explained by neither physics not biology.

The problem for rationalists is that this is as far as they can go, and it still leaves us with the mind/body problem. How does the nonphysical mind interact with the physical? The non-dual sages clearly say that it is not possible for the rational mind to understand it, you have to develop your mind to a higher level in order to see it. Basically the psychological term for “rational mind” is “formal operational”, which is pretty much as high as “normal” people develop today in civilized countries. The collective evolution of formal operational cognitive functions was the evolutionary perquisite for western enlightenment, and became the celebrated goal, which is great. It’s a much better operating system than the mythical “concrete operational” that precedes it. But in order to fully understand the nature of the Kosmos, the sages say, you have to go one step further into what is today called “vision logic” or “network logic”. Then you need to use this new cognitive ability to investigate consciousness itself.

What they are getting at here is the basic subject/object split. There is an awareness/consciousness in you that is not an object, in fact it can not be experienced at all because it is what is experiencing. The sages basically instructs us to turn our attention inwards in an attempt to first identify the subject/object split (to firmly understand that you are not what you are experiencing, you are the awareness/consciousness where the experience is happening). Then by resting with full focus in that awareness, ignoring all distractions (i.e. objects/experiences) awareness will finally become fully aware of itself and reveal it’s true nature. This true nature is then described usually by words like “emptiness/source” and breaks the dualist spell. As Buddha puts it in the Heart Sutra “Form is exactly emptiness, emptiness is exactly form”.

Or as Ramana Maharshi puts it:

The world is illusory
Only Brahman is real
The world is Brahman

Or as some Zen monk put it:

Still pond
A frog jumps in
Plop!

What is supremely interesting is that all the non-dual sages say exactly the same thing, but with different cultural context. The Buddha, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj from the East, Plato, Plotinus and Meister Eckhardt in the West, and Jesus in the middle. Everyone say the same thing. The world only appears dual (mind/body) but is essentially non-dual, and the key to understanding this is consciousness itself.

But since actually realizing the truth of this takes both a very high level of cognitive development (beyond rational) and specific methods (forms of meditation essentially) it is in reality not available to everyone, though in theory it is available to most people today. Today the main problem stopping people from realizing this is the confusion between pre-rational (conop) and trans-rational (vision logic). Basically the enlightenment in the West decided that everything that was not rational was pre-rational, throwing out the spiritual baby with the religious/mythic bathwater. The western enlightenment also created a “flat world” only consisting of matter, basically stating that everything is an object (or physical system) and consciousness is just an illusion or byproduct, or the “clockwork universe”. Then post-modernism comes along and says no, everything is subjective, which gets us out of materialism but still doesn’t solve the problem. The next step is integral holism which finally manages to unite the two, but you essentially need to enter the realm of the “mystical” in order to get the final answer. Which many rationalists don’t like because they confuse words like “spirit” or “mystical” in this context with a personal God or “magic” (which are actually pre-operational ideas). Because (usually) rationalists can not differentiate between the pre-rational and the trans-rational, choosing to believe that formal operational is the highest cognitive level available.

This is not really a dig at modernists or rationalists because they just do exactly what all the other operating systems have done before them, declare everyone below them as evil and everything above them as crazy. Those with mythical beliefs (organized religion) thinks that those with magical beliefs (pagans and shamans) are evil, and that rational atheists are crazy (or worse), and that holds true all the way up to and including post-modernism.

I think the most pedagogical explanation of this whole system is the AQAL map which clearly maps the different levels of cognition or development with their respective world views, and also explains the importance of differentiating between the internal subjective and the external objective.
Ps. Sorry if the post is rambling or incoherent, didn’t get any sleep last night, will be happy to clarify later if there are any questions.

As Keanu Reeves best put it: Whoa.

I read that and actually believe I understand it, but am not sure what to do with it. I believe you are basically explaining how Spinoza’s model works. Cool.

Then you frame the challenge for Rationalists, and the problem of the spiritual. Cool - I get the “throwing out the spiritual baby with the religious/mythic bath water” concept.

That’s my point: Spinoza’s approach appears to be an interesting “other choice” between organized religions and pure Materialism/Rationalism. Is it being discussed a lot, but referencing those other thinkers/philosophers/religious leaders (Jesus; really?) more often than Spinoza?

In everyday life, is he a sidebar curiosity because he solved a problem from a philosophical standpoint that was already understood and embraced by other people?

Philosophically and spiritually, postulating that there is an ineffable aspect of reality that no one will ever perceive or interact with is pretty empty. It doesn’t really add anything to one’s ability to understand the world.

It is also pretty presumptuous for anyone to make such a claim. We know what we know, but the only thing we cannot know(if anything)…is what we cannot know.

Except it turns out that in the English language the word “God” is not a placeholder word for the nature of reality.

If you try to use the word “God” the way you propose, you’re going to be confused by the way a lot of people talk about God, and you’re going to confuse a lot of people by the way you talk about God.

So for instance, in the Bible they talk about a character or concept that is translated into English as “God”. Are they talking about the laws of nature that sustain molecular interactions and the formation of elements? No, they’re talking about a personal transcedant being that created the world, that talks to people and wants them to behave in certain ways.

When you talk about God using your idiolect, people are going to assume that you’re talking about the regular meaning of God, the way most people use it.

And that’s the whole point of using God. You get to talk about God, and you get to have people agree with you, but they won’t understand what they’re agreeing to. The concept you have of God is not the same as the concept they have of God.

It is certainly possible for you to use words in particular ways that don’t mean what people think. But that seems to me a foolish way to communicate. If you want to talk about the nature of reality then it seems you should use a different word that doesn’t smuggle in a lot of assumptions about the nature of the nature of reality. I kind of like Olaf Stapledon’s term, “The Starmaker”. It refers to the whatever it is that resulted in the formation of the universe and the nature of the universe without implying anything in particular about whatever it is. Especially it doesn’t imply that the whatever it is is a person. Using “God” implies that the universe was created by a person of some kind.

I know that Einstein used “God” in the way you’re proposing, but I constantly see people who think that Einstein believed in God the way Christians or Jews believe in God. He provably didn’t.

Possible, sure. I guess I am thinking about it as alternative to Agnosticism. If Spinoza’s is “Science is a manifestation of God, and “God” is the “core stuff/system” of our Reality, but there is plenty about that we can’t know” it seems to occupy a different space vs. “I don’t know or am not sure.”

Well I am not trying to diminish Spinoza, I think he was a saint and a genius, but my understanding of his “personal” system is quite limited, as I have mainly been studying the non-dual teachings mentioned, but it’s basically the same take on things.

Another interesting thing that most people don’t know about is the technical differentiation between God and Godhead. Basically the Godhead is the non-dual unity of both emptiness and form, but splits into God and awareness when it creates the illusory dualistic universe (illusory in the sense that it is not what it seems, not that it does not exist). Plato is pointing at the same thing with his example of the prisoners in the cave. Basically he is saying that your perceived “reality” is only a “dance of shadows” (illusion) and in order to escape the prison you have to turn away from the shadows (the sensory world) and investigate the source of the light that is causing the shadows (consciousness).

Most people seem to think that the ideas of Plato, Plotonius, Buddha etc are “philosophical” but they are actually not. They are experiential and can be reproduced by developing your mind and using certain injunctions. Of course this takes time and effort, not to mention psychological work, but that’s the price you have to pay to understand what you are and how the universe works.

And even though it may be very controversial to someone who is Christian to hear, Christianity is a complete misunderstanding of Jesus realization. He was saying the exact same thing as Buddha and Plato, but was basically hijacked after his death and used to prop up a pre-rational mythological world view that very much went against everything he taught. And the controversial parts of his teachings were either edited out or banned altogether. But if you have understanding of the non-dual and trans-rational world view, you can see that it is exactly what he is saying in the unedited scripts found in the Dead Sea Scrolls, here are a few quotes from the Gospel of Thomas to clarify the split:

  • Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, ‘Look, the (Father’s) kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father’s) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.*

Christian dogma is exactly what Jesus warns against here. He’s saying don’t believe the priests, which should be welcomes by every rationalist. The “kingdom” is another word for the state of enlightenment (or non-dual realization) and he clearly agrees with the other sages. It is both within you and outside of you, the world is non-dual, the body/mind split is an illusion. He goes on to state this again and again in different ways:

*Jesus saw some babies nursing. He said to his disciples, “These nursing babies are like those who enter the (Father’s) kingdom.”

They said to him, “Then shall we enter the (Father’s) kingdom as babies?”

Jesus said to them, “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter [the kingdom].”*

This is about as clearly non-dual as you can get. And the most succinct:

Jesus said, “Be passersby.”

This is basically the method of buddhist vipassana explained in two words. Don’t engage, simply watch. Don’t attach to the material, simply realize the transitory nature of everything that is manifest.

And one more just because I like it when he disses the priests:

Jesus said, “The Pharisees and the scholars have taken the keys of knowledge and have hidden them. They have not entered nor have they allowed those who want to enter to do so.”

Here he is basically saying the priests don’t know what they are talking about and they are not interested in telling you the truth or allowing you to reach the higher levels of spirituality.
It’s incredibly interesting that everything he warned against came true, and that he was actually used to promote a lie that he very clearly warned against. No wonder these texts were burned and the followers (Gnostics) killed. The church basically says the complete opposite. Only Jesus is allowed to be enlightened in this life, you have to turn away from the material world but you’re not allowed to enter the spiritual one until after death (talk about a raw deal!). Instead of looking inwards you are supposed to respect and follow the rules of the priests (who have hidden the keys…) and if you actually do become enlightened, we will kill you as a heretic because… you know, enlightenment is only for jesus, because he was the only son of God.

They also forced people to take everything literally as a story, rather than interpret it allegorically, and they invented (or rather just stole) a bunch of classical magical myths (like virgin birth, walking on water… standard stuff for mythical figures) and basically turned Jesus message of “You are one with God, it is only a matter of perception, you can realize this right now if you follow my advice” into “If you believe literally that these magical things happened you will go to a magical place after you die”. So from my perspective, Christianity would be more aptly named anti-Christianity, and the “real” Christians are actually the buddhists and other non-dual spiritual traditions.

Maybe we should attempt to reclaim the word? Einstein said “I don’t believe in a personal god” and “God does not play dice” (i.e.: the universe is ordered, not random). That fits very well with the rational or trans-rational definition of God. Or we could just use the word Kosmos (with the original Greek spelling, to differentiate it from the materialistic cosmos). The Kosmos is basically everything that is manifest, and you just need the term Godhead to symbolize the unity of Kosmos (the manifest) and Consciousness or Emptiness (the unmanifest).

I’d suspect that a pretty large percentage of Dopers who believe in God believe in a Spinoza-like God.
Why is this god not talked about more? I think because it does not give the true believers what they need from religion. You can’t pray to it, not and expect it to listen, it won’t intercede on your behalf, and the purpose it gives the universe is very general. It is also not going to put you in heaven after you die.
Why don’t atheists care? The Spinoza god is unfalsifiable by definition, and adherents to this god seldom try to force others into their moral framework. For me at least, I’m happy with live and let live.
If a presidential candidate these days came out as a believer in a Spinoza God, he’d probably be labeled as an atheist. Tom Paine was.

There ya go - that sounds reasonable. Thanks. Stoneburg, yep I get that Jesus is different in many ways from many of the religions related to him.

We’ve been down this road before. There is no more reason to think that the Gospel of Thomas is anymore the accurate teachings of Jesus than are Mark, Luke, or Matthew. We simply can’t know how much of any record of the life and death of a wandering Jewish preacher is factually accurate. If the Gnostic Jesus sounds like Plato, it’s probably because the Gnostics were influenced by mystical NeoPlatonism.

Incidentally, the Gospel of Thomas came from the Nag Hammadi library, discovered in Egypt in 1943. The Dead Sea Scrolls say absolutely nothing about Jesus, for the simple reason that they were composed before his birth.

Why? How does that improve our understanding of the Universe, to name the ground of reality “God”? It doesn’t improve our understanding, in my belief it impedes understanding because it sneaks in various connotations of the word “God” into the discussion when they may or may not be applicable.

We’re not “re” claiming the word, since the English word has never meant the ultimate ground of reality. If you want to use a word which has a better denotation of the concept you want, use something like “Brahman”, which has some baggage attached but different sorts of baggage.

Or you could use a phrase that means exactly what you mean, like “ultimate ground of reality”, or “nature”, or “the sum of all natural laws of the universe” or some such. Calling it “God” is a silly idea, because whatever the nature of the universe is, it doesn’t have personhood as one of its attributes.

“God in the gaps” is a succint description of this, no?

When I was starting to realize my agnostic ways but was too afraid to acknowlege it, I defined God as Mystery–as whatever it is that seems unknowable. There wil always be things that are unknowable; thus, God must exist. At least, this is what I clung to for awhile.

But now I don’t really find this reasonable. Yes, there will always be the unknown/unknowable in our world, but that only means that we have limited awareness and understanding. But everyday our awareness and understanding grows (not inevitaby, of course, but only as a function of technological progress). Is the God of today the less awesome than the God of 2,000 years ago? After all, it was impossible for humans 2000 years ago to know about the nature of viruses or DNA or the processes governing the movement of celestial bodies. These things were unknowable back then, but they are knowable now.

In Spinoza’s time, there was a lot more Mystery than there is today. A “God in the gaps” approach made some sense, maybe. But at least for me, that is an intellectual cop-out. Why should we automatically assume that the vast realm of the “unknowable” is objectively unknowable? If another species inhabiting another galaxy far far away has figured out our “unknowable”, how would we know? It’s unknowable, but that don’t mean squat about the existence of God.

Hmm (and I mean that sincerely!), I am not sure. I was under the impression that Spinoza would be comfortable with ever evolving/improving scientific bases for “filling the gaps.” The whole point at the core of his model is that the “underlying system” - the rules that drive our Reality - are God.

I am very open to being wrong on this, but I thought “God in the Gaps” was a rationale for the proof of God used by evangelical Christians similar to Intelligent Design.

::checks Wikipedia:: yes, that appears right: God of the gaps - Wikipedia