What Are You, a God or a Mouse?

The difficulty, you see, in writing about something called "Spinoza's God" is trying to convince your readers that you're actually talking about God. Spinoza so completely destroyed supernaturalism that it's almost impossible to fit what he repeatedly called "God" into any of the currently held understandings of God. God is supposed to be someone who looks out for the human race, who dictates the difference between right and wrong, who created the heavens and the earth, who's actually "up there" somewhere. Spinoza's God, being everywhere, being ambivalent toward humanity, and who, if he does create, creates something out of something else, not from "nothing," is none of those things. At first glance, the only thing Spinoza's God has going for him is the fact that you don't have to pretend to believe in her -- whatever that means -- for your life to start working. You just have to catch on to it that you're the most highly evolved species that ever existed on the earth, then find out what there is about you that makes that so, and act accordingly. Simple.

Well, OK. Maybe not so simple. Real simple would make it a matter of just choosing between the opposing thumb or the big brain that has become aware of itself. Just because we humans have figured out more of the world than, say, a chipmunk has, and just because we see our ability to manipulate things with our hands better than, say, a whale can, that doesn't make a featureless God any easier to respect as the God.

[I had come back here for the purpose of deleting the last blog, which was, after all, a reprint of someone else's work. While here, I discovered the above fragment of what was to be my next blog, if I had finished it. But it was this scrap that reminded me of what I was supposed to be doing with the time I have left of my life: writing a book called "Spinoza's God." And that's what I'm doing. I may blog again after the book is finished.]