Chaucer

Hmm........A while or so back, I already looked up Nadler and a few others on this question, all of whom argue similarly, and I've gone from a feeling of generally being neutral on this question to being highly suspicious, frankly, as to the integrity of such arguments. Spinoza just too often recurs to his avowed belief in God for me to conclude that his pantheism is not tied to a genuine belief both that God exists and that God really exists in the world around us and the world around us only. What appears to me a clear echo (or pre-echo) of his take can also be found, IMO, in the comment by his teacher, Van den Enden, concerning an ideal education on religion:

“a pure clear rational instruction in all necessary, useful, truly-Civil, and moral propositions that lead to the service of God, the proof of which should be inferred on the one hand from fixed, and infallible knowledge of Nature, and on the other from the very best experiences and probabilities”.

Here, the omission of Scripture as a component of teaching about God is conspicuous and has led some recent scholars to conclude that the whole school of thinkers to which both Spinoza and Van den Enden belonged eschewed the extra-physical and metaphysical in their take on God, while very much believing in a real God of a very tangible kind. Van den Enden also excoriates "all intractable People, such as obstinate Papists who blindly follow Rome, usurious Jews, stubborn English Quakers, Puritans, and insolent stupid Millenarians, as well as all incorrigible present-day Apocalypse-pretenders, etc.”. We may regret, from our end of history, the evident intolerance shown here toward a number of frequently oppressed peoples, but what binds these attitudes in Spinoza's teacher together remains fairly clear, IMO: a distrust of any zealous attachment to a God bred out of a preoccupation with things non-temporal, but not a skepticism toward God itself.

That is a sobering rejoinder and one I'm going to have to take seriously. I do indeed mean materialism. It's still theoretically possible that the kind of common sense that can lead to enlightened self-interest within a frame of reference that's entirely materialistic and biological (hence evolutionary?) could still be generated. But I can see how that could seem unlikely........ Now, is it entirely impossible altogether? Totally? I don't quite see that.

Best,

Chaucer

gurugeorge

Interesting post, but religion isn't ethics, it's religion. It's about ultimate things, and about one's own intimate relation to the world as it really, really is. All the social stuff flows from that. Ethics is a by-product of religion, a corollary of religion, if you will, not the be-all-and-end-all of religion.

Chaucer

Are you saying that some form of path-breaking ethics can never flow from the context of some brand new kind of secularism or overt nonbelief introduced into, say, a strongly theistic culture?

Chaucer

Doug Shaver

Right. And what was his message?

I see. Today, lots of people think "Love thy neighbor" is a good idea. Jesus allegedly said to his followers, "Love thy neighbor." Therefore, lots of people today are devoted to Jesus.

Sorry. That kind of reasoning doesn't work for me.

Chaucer

Showing you're evidently not a humanist <shrug>.

Cheers,

Chaucer

Toto

Do you have a private definition of humanism?

Humanism

No Robots

Allow me to suggest that you take a look at Constantin Brunner's Spinoza contra Kant.

Yeah, impossible. Brunner also strenously attacks the the theory of evolution, as you can see in his Spinoza contra Kant.

Yellum Notnef

Thanks for yet another reason why it would be worthless to read his books. I hope he doesn't send you checks for promoting him because your budget is going to be very tight this month. Seriously.

lpetrich

I read the document that No Robots linked to, or more precisely, looked for where it mentions "evolution" and "biology". It has no mention of "biology" and most of its mentions of "evolution" are in "evolutionism", which he denounces without bothering to define. Does he mean some abstract philosophical sort of "evolutionism"?

No Robots

In Spinoza contra Kant he is mapping out his opposition to evolutionism as it relates to philosophy proper. For critique specific to biology, you can read an extract here. The basic point is that the ToE is untenable both scientifically and philosophically.

I should point out that in Spinoza contra Kant, "evolutionism" is my translation of "Entwicklungslehre", which can also be translated as "evolutionary theory".