What do religion leavers do with "God"?

Inside the mind of the world's greatest heretic

Let me ask you a strange question. Can an Atheist believe in God?

No, right? The very definition of “atheist” (‘a’ without + ‘theos’ God) is the absence of belief in God. There are a few things it seems one can be certain of. A dog can’t be a cat, a fruit can’t be a vegetable, a Red Sox fan can’t be a Yankees fan, and an Atheist can’t believe in God.

And then there was Baruch Spinoza.

Spinoza is arguably one of the most radical and controversial philosophers. He may not have the same name recognition as Socrates, Immanuel Kant or Friedrich Nietzsche, but Spinoza’s philosophical insights revolutionized metaphysics, the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental structure of reality.

Look out of your window and at the world. What exactly is all that? Once you penetrate through all the layers of how things appear, what exactly are they in their essence? When you look at the world are you looking at a bunch of different things, or is it really just one thing? Depending on which it is, your entire understanding of existence and your place in it, could be radically altered.

These are the kinds of questions Spinoza sought to answer.

It’s an odd fact that Baruch Spinoza is widely considered an Atheist, yet he insisted upon calling his central philosophical insight, “God”. By doing so, he confused the hell out of everyone! For a person considered a diehard unbeliever, no philosopher talked more about God than Spinoza.

Spinoza is my favorite heretic. He wrote, “I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.” He definitely disturbed quite a few people.

I relate to Spinoza in several ways. I still remember when I was informed by that largest Christian book distributer and bookstore chain that they would no longer carry my books in their stores or online. This was on the heels of the abrupt cancellation of my two-book publishing contract with a major Christian publisher. Upon submitting the manuscript for my first book, they concluded that my spiritual journey could no longer be considered “Christian” and accused me of heresy.

Being Jesus: New Edition

Likewise, Spinoza’s books were listed in the Catholic Church Index Librorum Prohibitorum (“Index of Forbidden Books”). The naughty list was established in 1557 by Pope Paul IV, and was a list of books that Catholics were prohibited from reading on pain of excommunication. The books were prohibited because they contained material considered dangerous or contrary to the Christian faith. Noteworthy figures on the Index include Simone de Beauvoir, who was the philosopher I covered in the second article in this series. It even got worse for Spinoza with an ex-communication, which makes you wonder why he ever bothered talking about “God” again.

Baruch Spinoza: An Introduction

In a letter to Rabbi Herbert Goldstein, who pressed Albert Einstein about his belief in God, Einstein wrote”

“I believe in Spinoza’s God, who is revealed in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind.”

Who was Baruch Spinoza and who was “Spinoza’s God”?

Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was a Jewish-Dutch philosopher. One of the early thinkers of the Enlightenment (the intellectual and philosophical movement that occurred in Europe in the 17th and the 18th centuries) and modern biblical criticism (the use of critical analysis to understand and explain the Bible without appealing to the supernatural). Spinoza had a monumental impact on the modern conceptions of the self and the universe. He came to be considered one of the great rationalists of 17th-century philosophy.

Rationalism regards reason, critical thinking, and evidence-based inquiry as the primary tools for understanding and explaining the world, and the chief source and test of knowledge. It’s a feature of some religious thinking to base one’s beliefs upon “faith” or deference to a perceived divine authority. Toxic, absurd or fundamentalist religious beliefs cannot stand the test of reason, rational thinking or even common sense, but are accepted on the basis of “faith” alone.

I’m not advocating making a religion out of rationalism. While valuing reason and logic, rationalism can lead to downsides like dismissing the role of emotions, intuition, tacit knowledge, spiritual insight and subjective experiences in understanding the world.

Spinoza was raised in a Portuguese-Jewish community in Amsterdam. He developed highly controversial ideas regarding the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible and the nature of the Divine. Jewish religious authorities issued a cherem (חרם) against him, causing him to be effectively expelled and shunned by Jewish society at age 23, including by his own family.

This religious expulsion and shunning still happens today. I addressed this dynamic in my recent article that discussed ex-Mormons.

As mentioned, Spinoza’s books were banished by the Catholic Church to the Index of Forbidden Books. Despite the label “atheist”, no philosopher spoke more about God and evoked the concept of God in his writings than Spinoza. I see many people who leave religion spin their wheels about what to believe about God. The issue comes up because many people who leave religion can no longer believe in the “God” they learned at church. I discuss at length the problem of Christian Theism for those who leave church or having a faith crisis. This also came up in my series: unChristian: Deconstruction for the rest of us. In my estimation, understanding Spinoza’s views could provide a meaningful pathway out of this dilemma.

I have published several articles about the post-religion God dilemma. A few you may be interested in are:

• The Either/Or Problem with God

• The Post-Religion "God" Dilemma

• Not Religious and Not Atheist

• Don't Throw the Baby Out With the Bathwater (or should you?)

• Unbeliever: The Post-Religion Move to Agnosticism and Atheism

• Why I Gave up "God" for Lent

• What if God disappeared?

Spinoza made significant contributions in virtually every area of philosophy, and his writings reveal the influence of such divergent sources as Stoicism, Jewish Rationalism, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, and a variety of heterodox religious thinkers of his day. By the way, “heterodox” means any opinions, views or doctrines at variance with official or orthodox religious positions.

Spinoza published little in his lifetime and most of his formal writings were in Latin, which would have reached only a small number of readers. He actively told supporters not to translate his works, but following his death, his supporters published his works posthumously, in Latin and Dutch and later into English.

Spinoza’s most known writings includes Ethics, a monumental work that presents an ethical vision unfolding out of a monistic metaphysics (we will discuss this later) in which “God” and “Nature” are identified as one phenomenon.

Spinoza’s Writings

Ethics

Ethics is a philosophical treatise written in Latin by Spinoza in 1664/65, and was first published posthumously in 1677. The first known translation of the Ethics into English was completed in 1856 by the novelist George Eliot.

The book has five main parts:

Part I: Of God

Part II: Of Nature & Its Origin

Part III: The Origin and Nature of Emotions

Part IV: Of the Servitude of Humanity, or the Strength of the Emotions

Part V: Of the Power of the Intellect, or the Liberty of Humanity

The main themes in Ethics include: God/Nature; structure of reality; and moral philosophy. Deus sive natura (translated “God or Nature”) was the slogan of Spinoza’s notion of “God”. Because of this, many think of Spinoza as a “pantheist”, the view that god and nature are interchangeable, or that there is no distinction between the creator and the creation.

Obviously, Spinoza is not a Theist. This is why he was condemned by his Jewish tradition and the Catholic Church. Spinoza’s God lacks all the psychological and moral characteristics of a transcendent, providential deity. The Deus/God of Spinoza’s philosophical thinking, is not any kind of a supernatural being. It has no beliefs, hopes, desires or emotions. Nor is Spinoza’s God a good, wise and just lawgiver who will reward those who obey its commands and punish those who go astray. For Spinoza, God is Nature, and this is all there is, hence his phrase Deus sive Natura.

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or Theologico-Political Treatise (TTP)

Tractatus Theologico-Politicus or Theologico-Political Treatise (TTP) was another monumental philosophical work by Spinoza. It was one of the most controversial texts of the early modern period.

Spinoza’s Theological-Political Treatise was a systematic critique of Judaism published in 1670. A follower of the Enlightenment, Spinoza believed that “revealed” religion should involve humanity’s capacity to reason, analyze and judge rather than followed by blind faith.

The TTP contains a good deal of what has come to be known as biblical criticism. Through careful linguistic and historical exegesis, Spinoza identifies numerous textual inconsistencies, which, with some philosophical buttressing, lead Spinoza to deny the exalted status of prophets, the objective reality of miracles, and ultimately the divine origin of the Pentateuch.

His study of the structure of the Old Testament led him to conclude that it was essentially a compiled text of many different authors with diverse backgrounds. He doubted the traditional claim of Judaism that the Torah were composed entirely by Moses. He argued that the Torah was something of a particular time and place, that it was essentially a political constitution of the ancient state of Israel.

He shocked many of his contemporaries with his view that the Torah embodied an inadequate conception of God insofar as the prophets attributed to God such emotions as jealousy and anger, love and mercy.

Spinoza did not believe in miracles and interpreted Torah descriptions of miracles as either misunderstandings of a natural event or deliberate falsifications.

In a nutshell, when Spinoza applied critical thinking to his religious beliefs, which he previously had taken by faith, he could no longer accept them. A person’s religious beliefs are often deeply personal and woven into a person’s culture and most cherished traditions and customs. It can be a shocking endeavor to apply “biblical criticism” or critical analysis to one’s beliefs if you’ve never done this before. I discuss this particularly as it relates to understanding the Bible in my article, Which Bible Should You Read?

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Princeton Philosophy PhD, is a contemporary philosopher who has done a lot of work on Spinoza. In this interview with Robert Wright, she discusses the nuances of Spinoza’s thinking about God. This also comes up in another interview she did with Antonio Damasio.

A few useful books for further exploration of Baruch Spinoza are:

• Betraying Spinoza by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein

• A Book Forged in Hell: Spinoza's Scandalous Treatise and the Birth of the Secular Age by Steven Nadler

• Spinoza: A Life by Steven Nadler

• Spinoza's Religion: A New Reading of the Ethics by Clare Carlisle

Spinoza’s God

In Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time, Hawking writes:

“If we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason — for then we would know the mind of God.”

It seems evident that Hawking believed that the path of rationality leads to a unified understanding of ultimate truth, even “God”.

This is very much a Spinozan idea.

Spinoza is an interesting character because, on the one hand, he was an atheist, denying the God of theism and the anthropomorphization of God. Many Christians take from the anthropomorphic depiction of God in the Bible that God is a supreme or supernatural being with human-like characteristics and relates to human beings in emotional, psychological and relational ways that any two people would. Over the years, I have worked with many people in religious deconstruction who felt great shame about failing to experience this relational aspect of God, which was asserted as the normative Christian experience. A common Christian adage is the, “Christianity is not a religion but a relationship with God.”

Telling people that one can relate and interact with God in the same way as two human beings, may be misleading and damaging. I cannot, for example, relate to or interact with animals, stars, flowers, music, or the sunset in the exact same way I relate to or interact with my best friend. It is patently obvious that two human beings interacting and relating could not be replicated by one human being interacting with a non-material reality. And yet this idea is prevalent in Christian theism as God is presented as a person-like being, particularly expressed through anthropomorphism in the Bible.

I previously wrote an extensive article on the problems related to Christian Theism’s claim that its normative for human beings to experience a “personal relationship with God.”

In contrast, Spinoza asserted that theism was a fictional construct or literary device.

And yet, Spinoza spoke often about God and evoked the concept of God in his writings. Spoiler Alert: You can believe in “God” and not be a theist. Some classify Spinoza as a Pantheist. Let me summarize a few of the main God options:

Atheism: there is no God.

Theism: God is a supreme or supernatural being, who created the universe and is intimately involved in history and humankind.

Deism: God is a supreme or supernatural being, who created the universe and does not intervene in history and humankind.

Pantheism: the belief that reality, the universe, and nature are identical to divinity or a supreme entity.

Panentheism: the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time.

Panpsychism: the view that the mind or a mind-like aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality.

Where does Spinoza land?

What is “Monism”?

What did Spinoza believe about God? It's complicated. We know he was not a Theist. We know, despite being considered by many to be an Atheist, that he never explicitly referred to himself this way. Those who want to put Spinoza's God into a clearly-defined box will be frustrated. For those who insist on doing so, Pantheism is the most common box for Spinoza, but I personally don’t view Spinoza as a pantheist.

A term commonly used to identify the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza is, “Spinozism”. Maybe we should add this to the God list: Spinozism.

Monism

At the root of Spinozism is “monism.” We often hear the term “oneness” bantered about, but the idea of “oneness” has a particular philosophical meaning.

In general terms, a philosophy is “monistic” if it postulates unity of origin of all things. More pointedly, monism not only asserts unity of origin but also unity of substance or essence. In layman’s terms - all things are really only one thing.

Monism has three main variations:

• Priority Monism - all existing things go back to a source - one thing that is ontologically basic or prior to everything else.

• Existence Monism - strictly speaking, there exists only a single thing, the Universe, which is manifested into many things.

• Substance Monism - asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance.

The concept of monism applies to religion and spirituality. For example, it’s a central notion in Pantheism, as well as many Eastern philosophies. To be clear, a common traditional view of the universe is infinite space with countless objects like planets floating around it. To easily fix this false understanding, watch Italian theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli’s lecture on the structure of reality. This confronts the traditional religious worldview or cosmology. For example, in Christian theism, “God” stands apart from the universe as the one who created it. This is why Christians cannot be Pantheists because they have to keep the Creator and the created separate.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the fundamental nature of reality. Spinoza’s metaphysics consists of one thing. Early in his book The Ethics, Spinoza argues that there is only one “Substance”, which is infinite, self-caused, and eternal. This “Substance” presents itself as an infinite number of “attributes” or “modes”.

Deus sive Natura

“Deus sive Natura” Artist: Shoshannah Brombacher

The controversy surrounding Spinoza is his using the term “God” to refer to this “Substance”. The Latin phrase Deus sive Natura translates as “God or nature”. To Spinoza the phrase means that “God” and “Nature” are synonymous. Spinoza’s use of the term “Nature” is not nature as mountains, rivers and trees, but “Nature” meaning the fundamental essence of everything. Spinoza argued that everything is a derivative of God, interconnected with all of existence. The argument for there only being one Substance (or, more colloquially, one kind of stuff) in the universe occurs in the first fourteen propositions of The Ethics. The following proposition expresses Spinoza’s commitment to substance monism:

Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.

During his time, Spinoza's statement - “Deus sive Natura” - was seen as literally equating the existing world with God, for which he was accused of atheism. Many people claim Spinoza was a pantheist, but it’s a little more complicated or nuanced than that. Spinoza asserted that the whole of the natural universe is made of one Substance – God or Nature – and is expressed in countless modifications or modes.

Spinoza identifying God as the one Substance was a sharp contrast to the “God” of Theism. Spinoza did not view God as a supreme being or personal God who managed human affairs with a plan or purpose, or had any personal connection or relationship with human beings.

Spinoza was considered to be an atheist because he used the word “God” (Deus) to signify a concept that was different from that of traditional Judeo–Christian monotheism. Spinoza expressly denies personality and consciousness to God. He wrote:

God neither intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law.

Thus, Spinoza's cool, indifferent God differs from the Christian concept of an anthropomorphic, fatherly God who cares about humanity.

Spinoza clarifies his understandings in statements such as:

“Whether we say that all things happen according to the laws of nature, or are ordered by the decree and direction of God, we say the same thing.”

“By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself.”

“By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence.”

“By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.”

To Spinoza, “God” is an infinite, necessary and uncaused, indivisible essence, which is the only substance of the universe, expressed in an infinity of attributes.

Both Hawking and Spinoza denied the idea of the personal God of theism but understood God as being synonymous with the laws of physics and the laws of nature, and the very structure, essence, process and expressions of being. Spinoza did not think of the universe as a reality of randomness but one of orderliness. He believed that through the use of reason we could know the true nature and fundamental structure of reality.

It should be noted that Spinoza’s monism has been adapted in various ways throughout the history of philosophy. For example, Alfred North Whitehead, popularized “process philosophy” in the West, which describes Spinoza’s “Substance” existing as dynamic processes, changes, or shifting relationships. Charles Hartshorne more vigorously applied process thinking to his work in the philosophy of religion. As an alternative to evangelical Christian theism, “Open Theism” and “Open and Relational Theology” offers a bridge to exvangelicals. I would be remiss not to mention that many of these ideas of the nature of reality have been present in Eastern philosophy for thousands of years. For example, in last weeks article on Buddha, I discussed the Buddhist cosmology referred to as “dependent arising”.

Loving God

Baruch Spinoza wrote, “He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.” Think of this quote as a rejection of Christian Theism and a personal God.

Spinoza is speaking of an intellectual love of God (amor dei intellectualis), which he believed was the highest endeavor to which humans can aspire. Spinoza’s conception of the intellectual love of God resonates with the long tradition of philosophical thinkers in the West, going back at least to Plato and the Neoplatonists, who celebrate the emotional satisfaction to be derived from reflective contemplation of what is ontologically ultimate—sometimes called “the God of the philosophers.”

This love is not a personal attachment to God as a separate being, but rather a deep appreciation and understanding of God's nature and the universe as a whole. This suggests to some that the ecstatic love that is said to characterize the mystical union with the divine, has a place in Spinoza’s metaphysical psychology and theory of emotions. A sublime conception that conjoins affective religiosity with rational understanding, the intellectual love of God has been an inspiration both to such romantic poets as Novalis and to hardheaded scientific rationalists such as Einstein and Bertrand Russell.

Spinoza wrote, “The mind’s intellectual love of God is the very love of God by which God loves himself.”

Despite the reference to “love of God”, Spinoza rejects all attribution of human-like emotions to his naturalistic God. Spinoza’s vision is that of a nonpersonal God, which individuals can come to love through understanding existence and the universe in accordance with natural laws. The pleasurably contented peace of mind (acquiescentia animi) that accompanies a naturalistic understanding of oneself and the world has led many natural scientists such as Russell and Einstein to endorse and identify with Spinoza’s vision of the intellectual love of God. Spinoza held that a deeply meaningful, affective and spiritual state arises from intellectual activity, specifically from understanding oneself and the world through reason.

Atheist neuroscientist, Sam Harris, writes about this idea of “intellectual love”. In a NPR article titled Awe, With and Without Gods, highlights these views of Harris. Sam Harris writes:

“There is nothing that prevents an atheist from experiencing love, ecstasy, rapture and awe; atheists can value these experiences and seek them regularly.”

What God IS NOT to Spinoza

Spinoza's book, Ethics, challenges traditional Judeo-Christian belief in God.

The view that Spinoza rejects is anthropomorphism, which is attributing human characteristics to something non-human – typically, to plants or animals, or to God. There are several important implications of Spinoza's denial of anthropomorphism.

First, he argues that it is wrong to think of God as possessing an intellect and a will. In fact, Spinoza’s God is an entirely impersonal power, and this means that he cannot respond to human beings’ requests, needs and demands. Such a God neither rewards nor punishes.

Second, God does not act according to reasons or purposes. In refusing this teleological conception of God, Spinoza challenged a fundamental tenet of western thought. The idea that a given phenomenon can be explained and understood with reference to a goal or purpose is a cornerstone of Aristotle's philosophy, and medieval theologians found this fitted very neatly with the biblical narrative of God's creation of the world. Aristotle's teleological account of nature was, then, adapted to the Christian doctrine of a God who made the world according to a certain plan, analogous to a human craftsman who makes artefacts to fulfil certain purposes. Typically, human values and aspirations played a prominent role in these interpretations of divine activity.

Despite all of this, it would be careless to right off Spinoza too quickly as an atheist. On the contrary, he places a certain conception of God at the heart of his philosophy, and he describes the ideal human life as one devoted to love of this God.

Spinoza's God in his own words:

All quotes are from Spinoza’s, Ethics, translated by R. H. Elwes.

• Nothing exists but God

God is one, that is, only one substance can be granted in the universe. [I.14]
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived. [I.15]
God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things. All things which are, are in God. Besides God there can be no substance, that is, nothing in itself external to God. [I.17]

• God is the force preserving things in existence

Although each particular thing be conditioned by another particular thing to exist in a given way, yet the force whereby each particular thing perseveres in existing follows from the eternal necessity of God's nature. [ii.45]

• Individual things are expressions or attributes of God

Individual things are nothing but modifications of the attributes of God, or modes by which the attributes of God are expressed in a fixed and definite manner. [i.25.]

• There is no evil

The perfection of things is to be reckoned only from their own nature and power; things are not more or less perfect, according as they delight or offend human senses, or according as they are serviceable or repugnant to mankind. [i. Appendix]

• Knowledge of God is the highest good

The intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself … The love of God towards men, and the intellectual love of the mind towards God, are identical. [v.36]

The mind's highest good is the knowledge of God, and the mind's highest virtue is to know God. [iv.28]

The human mind has ideas from which it perceives itself and its own body and external bodies as actually existing; therefore it has an adequate knowledge of the eternal and infinite essence of God. [ii.47]
Our highest happiness is in … the knowledge of god … We may thus clearly understand how far astray from a true estimate of virtue are those who expect to be decorated by God with high rewards for their virtue … ; as if virtue and the service of God were not in itself happiness and perfect freedom. [ii.49]

• Learning to see God in all things

The mind can bring it about, that all bodily modifications or images of things may be referred to the idea of God. [v.14]

The more we understand particular things, the more we understand God. [v.24]

He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions loves God, and so much the more in proportion as he more understands himself and his emotions. [v.15]

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 God, and knows that it is in God, and is conceived through God. [v.30]

• Acceptance of destiny

In so far as we understand the causes of pain, to that extent it ceases to be a passion, that is, it ceases to be pain; therefore, in so far as we understand God to be the cause of pain, we to that extent feel pleasure. [v.18]

The wise man is scarcely at all disturbed in spirit, but, being conscious of himself, and of God, and of things, by a certain eternal necessity, never ceases to be, but always possesses true acquiescence of his spirit. [v.52]

The mind has greater power over the emotions and is less subject thereto, in so far as it understands all things as necessary. Proof: The mind understands all things to be necessary and to be determined to existence and operation by an infinite chain of causes, therefore … it thus far brings it about, that it is less subject to the emotions arising

therefrom, and feels less emotion towards the things themselves. [v.6]

• Nature does not work with an end in view

Nature does not work with an end in view. For the eternal and infinite Being, which we call God or Nature, acts by the same necessity as that whereby it exists… . Therefore, as he does not exist for the sake of an end, so neither does he act for the sake of an end; of his existence and of his action there is neither origin nor end. [iv. Preface]

• God is indifferent to individuals

God is without passions, neither is he affected by any emotion of pleasure or pain . . . Strictly speaking, God does not love anyone. [V.17]

He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return. [V.19]

Could Jesus and Spinoza Get Along?

In his Letter to the Colossians, Paul spoke of God as the one who is “... before all things and in him all things hold together.” In his Letter to the Romans he makes a similar statement of God, “For from him and through him and to him are all things.”

If you were to strip these verses of Paul's Theism and supernaturalism, Spinoza might find them useful in describing God, in as much as they convey that God is the single essence of one substance before, in and through all things, and in which all things exist and hold together. Unlike Descartes, Spinoza did not make a distinction between mind and matter, and viewed them both as attributes of one essence or substance.

There are some who say that Jesus referring of God as “Father” should be taken figurately or metaphorically - that Jesus in fact did not believe in a Gandalf Sky-God, which I discuss in my book, Inner Anarchy.

Did Jesus believe in God? Answer: “Depends.” One could argue that Jesus was an atheist because he did not hold a belief in the God of religion. He was essentially accused of this - being a blasphemer and abomination to God.

You could also argue that Jesus was not a theist who believed in a sky-God separate from humankind and creation, managing existence from above. Rather, one could say that Jesus understood “God” as the ground of all being, which he most experienced as everything beautiful that could be imagined in the word “love”, which he identified with the relatable metaphor of his day, “father”.

Christian humanists assert one can follow the life and teaching of Jesus and not believe in God at all. Two books, oddly by the same name, discuss this:

Christianity without God by Lloyd Geering

Christianity without God by Daniel C. Maguire

Other books on the subject include, The New Gospel of Christian Atheism by Thomas Altizer. I have previously published several articles on the meaningful connection between Christianity and Atheism, perhaps most notably, Can Atheism save Christianity?

Like Spinoza, some people get frustrated with me because I speak of “God” but come off sounding more like an atheist than a theist. It’s true that I no longer believe in God as religion conceives it, which is some variation of the idea of Sky-God where God is a Herculean/Thor-like immortal being who rides the sky and rules the world from above.

It’s a little scary how ancient sun worship, Greek mythology and institutional Christianity are not all that different in how they conceive of a deity. Another part of the religious idea of “God” is that God is separate from everything and everyone else, and that there is some correct sets of beliefs, practices and behaviors that satisfies and curries favor from this God. Typically this religious notion of God includes punishing unbelievers with eternal conscious torment.

For Spinoza, one could feel a deep sense of awe, wonder, connection, harmony, meaning and even love for this nature, essence and substance at the heart of all things, as long as one did not expect it to love in return. As mentioned, Spinoza did not believe in a personal or theistic God or supreme being, which includes the denial of deism that posits the existence of a supreme being and creator but who does not interact with humankind.

Spinoza believed that the highest stage of knowledge (“intuitive knowledge”) is the mind apprehending all things as expressions of the eternal cosmos. Spinoza said of this knowledge:

“It sees all things in God, and God in all things. It feels itself as part of the eternal order, identifying its thoughts with cosmic thought and its interests with cosmic interests. Thereby it becomes eternal as one of the eternal ideas in which the Attribute Thought expresses itself, and attains to that blessedness which is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself, that is, the perfect joy which characterizes perfect self-activity.”

In Spinoza’s mind the path of seeking to understand the universe and the nature of reality through the powers of reason meant that all human beings could come to see the underlying essence of all things as one reality expressed in many different ways, which would be a basis for harmony among all human beings. Spinoza understood the world as a beautiful unity manifested in a rich diversity. This Spinozan idea could be captured in a well-known phrase, “All paths lead to God.”

Spinoza saw rationality as the basis for morality and freedom. In other words, you can be good without God. He wrote, “Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being by the guidance of reason.” And, “The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.” This view was more recently elucidated by Greg Epstein in his book, Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.

I can't possibly adequately cover Spinoza's views of God in one post. To dig further into the subject of Spinoza and God, give these two videos a listen:

• An Atheists God: The Paradox of Spinoza

• Spinoza's Nature and God Explained

You could say that Spinoza’s God was a secular God or the God of humanism. I've often wondered why Spinoza used the word “God” to identify what essentially amounts to his theory of everything. For surely, most people when they hear the word “God,” will likely think of theism. My only explanation for why he used this word is because Spinoza was genuinely convinced that this actually was what God is.

Resolving the God Question

Does God exist?

It’s complicated, right?

I previously published an extended article on this question, The Post-Religion "God" Dilemma: Is walking away from religion walking away from God?

First, the question implies that people have a shared understanding about what/who “God” is, as if “God” is a definable entity/reality, and you either believe that “God” exists or you don't. The question “Does God exist?” appears to be a “yes” or “no” question. But at the very least, the answer must be “it depends” - it depends on what you mean by “God”.

Typically the question - “Does God exist?” - is operating on a theistic concept of “God,” but there are many more conceptualizations of “God” than that. I mentioned a few earlier in the article, including Spinozism.

Secondly, the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven conclusively. Perhaps a better question might be: “What evidence or reasons do you believe support the idea or belief that God exists or doesn't exist?” You'd also have to decide what qualifies as “evidence.” Is it fair to require empirical evidence as the only credible means of substantiating the existence of God? Do religious experiences qualify as an area of evidence?

Thirdly, “God” is a word that has a history and evolution of meaning. Human beings created human language as a social technology for survival, which requires meaningful, expedient, constructive and useful communication and cooperation. We use the word “chair” to roughly identify that thing we sit in that holds us up. We use the word “God” to roughly identify ultimate or transcendent reality. Technically, there is no “chair” or “God” - these are terms we created to indicate something through human language. The word “God” itself is often problematic because people typically have been conditioned into a particular understanding of “God” and this dominates their views on the subject.

Perhaps it's useful to point out that many factors condition our ideas of “God”. It’s unlikely a person sits down and weighs all the options with critical thinking and choose their conception of “God”.

When you were a child and before you had even heard the word “God,” you had no defined conception of God. Theoretically, you could have been told that a tree was God or one of your stuffed animals, and you would have believed it, in much the same manner that a young child is conditioned into a certain belief about Santa Clause. The point is that we are conditioned into how we think of God and what God is. There are countless factors that are part of this conditioning, including:

• the period of history in which you were born and live

• the part of the world in which you were born and live

• the influences of family, culture and society

• the kind of religion you were exposed to

• the particular church you attended

• the view of God held by the pastor, Sunday school teachers, religious leaders, etc., based upon all their conditioning

Occasionally, I wonder if many people are referencing a similar reality but using different language:

When Monotheism puts language around it, it speaks of “God”.

When Hinduism puts language around it, it speaks of “Brahman”.

When Buddhism puts language around it, it speaks of “Śūnyatā”.

When philosophy puts language around it, it speaks of “Monism”.

When Native American Spirituality puts language around it, it speaks of “Great Spirit”.

When Advaita Vedanta puts language around it, it speaks of Non-Duality."

When psychology puts language around it, it speaks of ”Transcendence“.

When physics puts language around it, it speaks of “Quantum Field Theory“.

When Chinese philosophy puts language to it, it speaks of “Tao”.

When Dzogchen puts language around it, it speaks of "Rigpa".

When esotericism puts language around it, it speaks of "Source".

When Humanism puts language around it, it speaks of “Peak Experiences”.

When science puts language around it, it speaks of the “Consciousness”.

When non-religious spirituality puts language around it, it speaks of “Love”.

Leaving religion often involves rejecting the notion of “God” you were conditioned into believing. At this point a person could say “there is no God”, or they could say “my notion of God was inadequate, irrational, unfounded and absurd, and I no longer believe such a “God” is real."

I mention this because sometimes it seems that the God landscape is reduced to two options:

• Option A: The Fundamentalist View of God (Christian Theism)

• Option B: God is non-existent and meaningless (Atheism)

In my view, this is way too simplistic of a framework for considering the notion of “God.”

A rational thing to do would be to step back and question every single assumption you have about God, and forget everything you think you know about God. This would include all the ideas inside the God-container you were conditioned into believing.

People are not inclined to do this because they become attached and entrenched in a particular position" about God - either for it or against it - and their position becomes a central component of their sense of self, identity and security.

Does it really matter what a person believes about God because it’s essentially a personal choice?

What one believes about God has consequences. Right? Think the Crusades. Think Christian Nationalism. Think Jim Jones. For some, their belief about God can justify fear, hatred, injustice, violence and war. Every day I am having conversations with people who were traumatized by their involvement in toxic, fundamentalist, high-control religion. The cautionary tale here is: choose your idea of “God” very carefully.

I'm not advocating any particular belief in “God” or non-belief in “God.” The important thing is for you to explore the God-question for yourself if you are interested, and in light of your own life and journey.

Instead of asking, “Does God exist?” here are some related questions that I think would be more interesting to ask:

1. Why does the question of the existence of God weigh so heavily on people’s minds?

2. If you currently believe in the existence of God and it was discovered conclusively that God in fact does not exist, how would this change your life?

3. Is there a version of “God” that rings most true to you and why?

4. Is the existence of God necessary in order to experience meaning, purpose, peace, well-being, fulfillment and transcendence in life?

5. In your view, is it necessary that “God” be a personal being with human-like characteristics?

6. Are differing views on “God” or the existence of “God” something to be “right” or “wrong” about?

Spinoza’s Contribution to the God Question

In my view, we can appreciate at least the following contributions Baruch Spinoza made the the question of God:

You don’t have to be a Christian or religious person to believe in God.

Reason, rationality, awe and love can accompany a person’s experience of ultimate reality, even if its not associated with a theistic view of God.

“God” as philosophical monism seems consistent with our current scientific understanding of the universe and ancient Eastern philosophy.

You might be condemned, shunned and excommunicated for non-traditional or non-religious views of God but don’t let that stop you.

In Summary

• Sometimes it’s the heretic that pushes useful conversations about God forward.

• A reasonable answer to the question “Do you believe in God?” is, “It depends.”

• For better or for worse, Baruch Spinoza referred to his philosophical monism as “God”.

• Spinoza may have discovered the “theory of everything”, but if it doesn’t inspire goodness and compassion it might not add up to anything.

Postscript

21 Really Good Ideas Whatever You Happen to Believe About God:

1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.

2. In all things, strive to cause no harm.

3. Affirm the inherent and equal worth of every human being.

4. Treat your fellow human beings and all living things with love, compassion, honesty, kindness, and respect.

5. Build a world that works for everyone. Do not overlook evil or shrink from confronting injustice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing that is freely admitted and honestly regretted.

6. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.

7. Always seek to be learning something new.

8. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

9. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you. Agree to disagree.

10. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others. Give people the freedom to also think for themselves, and form their own views.

11. Do not blindly follow authority. Question everything.

12. Refuse the "us" and "them" mentality," and consider yourself and all others as members of one human family.

13. Whatever your religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs, views, or tradition, honor above all else the underlying and unifying values of love, compassion, and respect.

14. Affirm the goodness you see and experience in others.

15. Love yourself. Be kind, compassionate, patient and accepting with yourself. Give yourself permission to be a fully and authentically self-expressed person, and tdo what is necessary to take care of your physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational health.

16. Be mindful especially of those who are often overlooked, forgotten, and those who suffer in silence or languish in need. Be an advocate and friend to these.

17. Be aware of the world's children, and the difficulties and challenges of making their way in this life. Whenever it is in your power, do what will encourage, empower, and protect a child, and let them know that they are beautiful and loved.

18. Do not become forgetful of those who are near their journey's end. Honor your elders, love them, be with them, learn from them, care for them, and express gratitude for the lives they have lived.

19. Follow, honor, express, and share what you most deeply believe, but never allow this to become a source of pride, hatred, division, or the diminishment of other human beings.

20. Do your own personal work and address the root cause of your discontent, disharmony, and inner wounds.

21. Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.