God of Spinoza
Does God exist? Part 2
Now if you are looking at the picture of the handsome man beside here, it is of one of my favourite philosophers: Spinoza. He has been a big influence in my beliefs of what I understand to be the entity known as god is, he probably takes second place after Avicenna and to be honest I have still much to learn from both these philosophers but one thing I have come to understand that Avicenna and Spinoza had both a close conception of what they understood to be god.
First of all moving forward lets assume there is an entity called god: a pure mathematical genius, a creator and a sentient being. Even though to an atheist this is assuming too much but for the sake of argument we will assume they are wrong and the theists are on the right side of the debate. But even if there is a creator, sentient being and a mathematical genius after that isn’t assuming anything else assuming too much. Let’s look at the assumptions:
- The sentient being is aware of our existence: Why would we assume that this being is aware of our existence sure this being can be a creator but couldn’t that be its only role, isn’t assigning anything else too much?
- The senitent being still exists: Now why would we think this being is still around maybe it was powerful enough to just create the universe but not powerful enough for anything after or even be immortal as many religions like to claim?
- The senitent being is concerned with morality: Let’s also assume that this being is aware of our existence why would this being be concerned with morality per se. Why would this being have to fulfil our every petty desire or will, in fact why would you think that this being has anything to do with the laws or morality we live by and would ever bother contacting us?
Now these were some of the very assumptions that Spinoza dealt with and he unable to reach any satisfying answer for any of the assumptions reached a sort of compromise of what this being could be like. He surmised that such a being would have some conception of order since what he creates follows some order or another and hence would prefer laws that follow something resembling a cosmic order and by that he mean that this entity gave these laws but rather would have such a preference of laws. Now lets understand by what I mean by cosmic order because Spinoza never used the word himself, this entity would have a broad conception of what humans are like and would favour laws and rules that resembled something what his own creations follow, this entity otherwise would not be rigid about these since morality itself changes for humans from time to time for instance: it might be a good idea to kill my friend with a rock for food in stoneages but this defense could not be used today because morality shifted.
Also this being would have a generic idea of what god knows about us and this explained very well by Avicenna though I doubt either of them read each other. Avicenna said that everything god would know has be perfect knowledge, he maybe capable of acquiring imperfect knowledge but wouldn’t because the nature of being. Now let me simplify what I mean with all of the jargons such as imperfect and perfect knowledge: universal knowledge such as triangle is a three sided figure, parallel lines do not meet is perfect knowledge because given under any circumstances it would remain true but knowledge which changes overtime such as the president of USA is Donald Trump is not universal knowledge meaning this knowledge changes overtime and all observer dependent which means if all humans beings were to die now then this wouldn’t be true since there would be no president alive or anyone there to accept it, hence, as per Avicenna this is knowledge but of a lower kind unlike the universally true:two plus two is four or triangles are three sided figures and hence god due to his perfect being could not have imperfect knowledge but only universals.
But this would mean that this being may know the existence of humans but not you as an individual and hence is not concerned with you do anything with your life whatsoever. However, you must be asking where does the idea of perfection slip in? Afterall we began with just four assumptions it is a being, it is sentient and a pure mathematical genius and a creator: so who said it needs to be perfect. This a conception that was borrowed by Avicenna who said that since the idea and universe is perfect hence its creator should also follow the same charateristics because like causes have like effects.
Now if you are reading uptil now you are coming to a conclusion that this being resembles to what a deistic god looks like and yes in some sense that is what my conception could look like at first glance but this isn’t what I am striving for and this god that I am describing isn’t a deistic entity at least not by the literal sense.
Now even though this should have been a debate about whether god exists or not I wanted to show my conception of what god looks like to me and whenever in the future I refer to god I wanted people to understand my conception so there isn’t any doubts and in future when I am going to be tackling the question it will be to defend this type of an entity and not the god understood in the traditional sense.
