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Spinoza's Religion
- robg 4y agoThanks for sharing this, great read, love this analysis: “Spinoza and Kierkegaard are very different thinkers in many ways, but I see them as connected in this resistance to objectified religion. Spinoza’s insistence that religion is a virtue – as you put it, a way of life – resonates with Kierkegaard’s view that religion is a matter of “how” rather than “what.” It is a matter of how you orient your life; how to relate to yourself, to other people, and to God; how you think and feel and act.”
- markus_zhang 4y agoI recalled reading somewhere that Einstein's idea of "God" has its origin to Spinoza's. Can someone familiar with the topic please point me to a related book?
- amir 4y ago"Elements of Pantheism" perhaps? https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1920368.Elements_of_Pantheism https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1920368.Elements_of_P...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- randcraw 4y agoYes, or perhaps the merger of pantheism and deism (pandeism), a century after Spinoza. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandeism
- markus_zhang 4y agoThanks!
- mrandish 4y agoSorry I don't have a link but Einstein said in a personal letter to someone something to the effect that 'his god is the god of Spinoza'. Basically, his biographers believe Einstein didn't believe in a.ny kind of literal god as proposed by the major religions
- markus_zhang 4y agoThanks I got it with more Googling.
- dqpb 4y ago> The central goal of this series is to explore the evolving relationship among faith, science and philosophy Faith is the ultimate thought-terminating cliche. Its malware for the human brain. The good parts of religion/spirituality are the rich cultural traditions which have been the birthplace for many philosophical ideas. But the only way for those cultural traditions to continue evolving is to rid themselves of the malware of faith.
- lostcolony 4y agoHard disagree. Or rather, faith, in anything, can be as you describe (a non-religious example being politicians), but it doesn't have to be (and shouldn't be). Whether a person is optimistic or pessimistic in the face of unknown is a matter of faith. Values/morals, even outside of an organized religion, are still a matter of faith (not that they'll be rewarded, but that they're somehow better, even in situations you'd be advantaged by disregarding them). That there is value in life, in expression, etc, are all matters of faith, as for every bit of rational evidence that there is benefit in them, there is also rational evidence that there are issues in them. The fact philosophers don't end up in the same place indicates there are, at minimum, different axioms over what is valuable or necessary in the first place. Whether faith happens to also include a concept of god is immaterial; most if not all of us operate under concepts just as immaterial but which nevertheless we believe in.
- alexvoda 4y agodqpb, lostcolony, I believe you two are operating with different meanings of the word "faith". Let's ban the word for the sake of the argument. Care to reformulate your arguments without using it? Lostcolony, I believe you are using a far more nebulous and encompassing definition for the word compared to dqpb who I think operates with a more concrete and narrow definition.
- javert 4y agoIn my view they aren't using different definitions of faith.
- theplumber 4y ago>> a hope that his unique philosophy could help fill a void in our secular culture. What void? We have the science that you can explore to fill the "unknown/void".
- randcraw 4y agoScience can't answer 'why', only 'how'. I think a science-only-based culture (i.e. post-Enlightenment) respects only how some questions can be answered, those answers that can be known. But science disrespects the importance of questions that can't be answered, that which can't be known. Religion (a formal model for belief in and worship of what can't be known) can't fill this void, nor can science. But forms of spirituality that adopt less formal organizing principles might -- such as respecting the constructive power of myths and memes that seek to further humane principles, like justice or kindness, to shape a better world. Deism of the kinds that Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson (or Spinoza?) adopted venture into this space somewhat, in presuming a creator god who serves as a guide for humans to make a better world. But because such models of 'worship' are seldom systematic nor do they specify the regulations people crave to assure compliance (and their final reward), they tend not to attract acolytes, and so are hard to sustain as a ongoing social movement. But such models of belief (and respect) may be needed nonetheless.
- layer8 4y agoI believe the real “why” can be fully explained by the needs and constraints of human psychology, which in turn is informed by its biological and socio-cultural evolution. Science is the correct tool to arrive at the real answers here. Whether most people can deal with those answers is a different matter. One aspect of those answers being that meaning and meaningfulness only exist as inner constructions of the mind. The general difficulties that humans have with understanding and accepting the inner workings of their minds are hard to resolve. Arguably it’s of evolutionary benefit to have a counterfactual model of one’s own mind and of the metaphysical and spiritual nature of reality. BTW I’m not disagreeing on the fact that some things are necessarily unknowable, but mostly in the sense of the incompleteness theorems and other inherent limitations of information processing and the physical laws of nature.
- mopeas908 4y agoWhat is the APA?
- FuriouslyAdrift 4y ago"The American Philosophical Association promotes the discipline and profession of philosophy, both within the academy and in the public arena. The APA supports the professional development of philosophers at all levels and works to foster greater understanding and appreciation of the value of philosophical inquiry."