Spinoza & Einstein on Will of God

[Guest guest]

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Einstein says: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the

orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself

with fates and actions of human beings" NY Times, April 25, 1929 from

Shermer's Skeptic article, page 25 Vo.l 9 #2, 2002. The following is

from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (the utm.edu website,

first on Google list for Baruch Spinoza entry:

 

God does not Willfully direct the Course of Nature

 

 

To make his case that God does not willfully direct the course of

nature, he first explains why people think that God acts with a

purpose. First, he notes that individual humans do not act freely,

but are under the illusion that they do We are ignorant of the true

causes of things, but only aware of our own desire to pursue what is

useful us. Thus, we think we are free and that all our actions are

guided by what is useful to us. Given this tendency to see human

behavior as willful and purposeful, we continue by imposing willful

purposes on events outside of us. We conclude that God willfully

guides external events for our benefit (since we cannot guide it

ourselves). Religious superstitions arose as humans found their own

ways of worshipping God. Problems of consistency also arose as people

insisted that everything in nature is done by God for a purpose.

Since natural disasters conflict with the view that God acts with a

purpose, we then say that God's judgment transcends human

understanding. For Spinoza, mathematics offers a standard of truth

which refutes the view that God acts with a purpose.

 

Spinoza next argues that God does not act from a purpose. He first

argues that the concept of a perfect final goal is flawed. For

Spinoza, the most perfect of God's acts are those closest to him.

Succeeding events further down the chain are more imperfect. Thus if

a given chain of events culminated in sunny weather, for example,

that would be less perfect than the initial events in the chain.

Belief in final causes compromizes God's perfection since it implies

that he desires something which he lacks. For Spinoza, the

theologian's contention that God willfully directs all natural events

amounts to a reduction to ignorance. That is, all natural events

trace back to God's will, and we are all ignorant of God's will.

Theologians insist on this path of ignorance since it preserves their

authority

 

Finally, Spinoza maintains that belief in God's willful guidance of

nature gives rise to an erroneous notion of value judgments, such as

goodness, order, and beauty. These values are presumed to be

objective abstract notions imposed on nature by God for our benefit.

For example, objective foundation of goodness is that which is

conducive to the worship of God. However, Spinoza contends that all

of these value judgments in fact arise out of our own human

construction and human preferences. For example, things are well-

ordered when they require little imagination and are easily

remembered. He sees that this is also the case with beauty,

fragrance, and harmony. The variety of controversies we have on these

topics arise from our differing human constructions. Why is it, we

may ask, that God created us in such a way that values are based on

human construction, rather than reason? Spinoza's answer is that God

figure out an alternative way and had the material to do it.

 

 

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