Naturalistic pantheist Baruch Spinoza would be upset with Noah. Oh God himself. Spinoza, a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin is considered one of the great rationalists of all time. Spinoza believed (and many of his followers still do) that the Universe, although unconscious and irresponsible as a whole, behaves as a single, interrelated, and solely natural substance. Accordingly, Nature is seen as being what religions call "God" only in a non-traditional, impersonal sense, where the terms Nature and God are synonymous.
Spinoza’s ideology has no room left for a God that splits from creation and acts on his own “be”-half. How can the other half claim to be the whole? Does God need marriage counseling? The two shall become one flesh, you know? I support Spinoza in every form and shape. I believe that what destroys nature cannot be one with it. Either God is an independent contractor who does not care about the total organization, or he is just foreign matter that does not subscribe to the laws of nature. Either way, looking through Spinoza’s glasses, God cannot be one with nature.
If God is not one with nature, the so-called Acts of God cannot be one with nature either- unless such destruction has the ability to give life. The destruction of nature by nature is a difficult subject. I am talking about trees falling in thunderstorms and small species dying from man-made global warming.
God gets even more divisive when he hands Noah the Flood Survival Handbook. First Noah is saving just a handful of living things, but even more divisive than that, Noah is not commanded to take plants with him in the ark (Read Genesis 7 and 8).
God, Noah, the surviving animals, the dying animals, the dying plants. Where is Spinoza’s oneness in the flood story? And who is picking his nose after the floods? Not God. Even after hundreds of days, the dove is able to find life in the plants. And when surviving animals and humanity exit the ark, life comes back to normal.
So who is this God who can give and destroy life? And how can he be one with nature if he holds nature’s existence in his hands.
Sorry Spinoza but I am not following.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Building the Ark: Baruch Spinoza Vs. Noah No-last-name
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