Spinoza - Tumblr Posts
Or “Nature”. In other words, everything is an attribute or has the attributes that tie it directly to the necessity and infiniteness of the universe, whether that be Nature (like Mother Nature or just the most massive governing law of the universe) or God; however this is not a God in the traditional Judeo-Christian or Islamic sense, not even close.
For example (and to elaborate on this post’s meaning), God can not be any other way than what it is, because God is perfect. To be any other way would imply that it isn’t perfect as it is now then. So, since everything is God, everything happens for “a reason”, not because God wills it but because, in everything being an extension of God, it is caused by God (because it is God) and thus has to be that way; if it were any other way then it wouldn’t have been necessary for it to happen the way it did and it would go against the necessity and perfection of existence itself, i.e., God. This would make God, or, again, Nature, imperfect, which contradicts the whole power and extension of God/Nature itself. God is omnipresent, but god is not omnipotent or omniscient; God has no consciousness, no will. God just is out of necessity for being, like the laws of universe.
I’m not sure what any of the figures on the right have to do with this or Spinoza, though. I don’t recognize all of them, but I do know that at least three of them are atheists.
“The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure....you are above everything distressing.”
—Spinoza
“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”
—Baruch Spinoza
“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”
—Spinoza
that all things are in God and move in God "Benedictus de Spinoza"♥
I would like to point out, though-- this image can be misleading. It can be simultaneously be referring to many very different models of theism. It could be pantheism, but it could very well be panENtheism as well. And I think this is an important distinction to be made when discussing Spinoza and the process theologians like Whitehead and Hartshorne that they influenced.
I’m in this sort of mood tonight