In one of his enlightening quoet, Albert Einstein said: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."
That made me interested to learn about Spinoza and his philosophy. In wikipedia i found something interesting. I'm not a student of philosophy, so i didn't know much about his ideas. But i enjoyed his view points while reading it for the first time.
Quoting some of his grand ideas:
Spinoza contended that God and Nature were two names for the same reality, namely the single substance (meaning "to stand beneath" rather than "matter") that underlies the universe and of which all lesser "entities" are actually modes or modifications.
Spinoza contended that "Deus sive Natura" ("God or Nature") was a being of infinitely many attributes, of which extension and thought were two.
Some of his views and philosophiacl positions are very much inline with Sufism or Mysticism that make me wonder. His ideas are:
- God is the natural world and has no personality.
- The natural world is infinite.
- There is no real difference between good and evil.
- Everything must necessarily happen the way that it does. Therefore, there is no free will.
Everything done by humans and other animals is excellent and divine. - All rights are derived from the State.
i believe Spinoza reflected the same tought that is stated in the Vedanta (Hindu) Philosophy about the impersonal mode of God, which also is reflected in the Quran and Taoism. The impersonal form of God is truly something we all need to grasp cause in the western religions such as Christianity and Judaism, God is made too much into a personal deity, while forgeting the impersonal side of Him.
Some of his quotes:
:: Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
:: God and all attributes of God are eternal.
:: So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long is he determined not to do it: and consequently, so long it is impossible to him that he should do it.
:: Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.
:: 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.
