Isn’t pantheism the same thing as atheism?

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps you should research the subject in detail.

[vulcanlogician]

Yes. Research Spinoza in detail.

Jaspers' interpretation of Spinoza is by no means final. The thing about attributes being infinite is related to Cartesian thinking. Descartes imagined that there were two attributes (thought and extension) which comprised different substances. Spinoza, on the other hand, postulated one substance with two different attributes. But not only two... an infinite number of them.

Spinoza took an infinite number of attributes thing to be axiomatically true, and it's puzzling as to why. At least for me, anyway. It is almost impossible for a human being to conceive of a thing that doesn't have thought OR extension. Maybe Spinoza was just covering his bases here: whatever exists is part of this one substance, even if it does not fall under the headers of thought or extension. Or maybe he saw thought and extension as merely two of an infinite number of ways to categorize that "one substance."

I happen to disagree with Jaspers' reading that Nature does not equate with God in Spinoza's philosophy. I find it hard to interpret most of what Spinoza says unless God and Nature mean the same thing.

We should also take into account what The Grand Nudger said about freedom of expression those days. The only "pantheistic" work of Spinoza, the Ethics... where he identifies the whole of nature as God was published posthumously. Any guesses as to why? It is his Magnum Opus, the greatest of all his works. You'd think he'd want to be alive when the academic world read and responded to it. (If only to clarify things.) But nope. He waited until he died to have it published.

And seeing how the Catholic Church and other Christian entities (including Protestants) had his previous works banned throughout much of Europe, it is no surprise that he clothed his ideas about the natural world in divine raiment. (Even while he ridiculed the idea of an anthropomorphic god between the lines).

But it isn't that simple either. There is Spinoza's notion that we ought to love God (in order to attain what he called "inner freedom"). This is a seeming departure from pure materialism. But it makes sense in his broader philosophy. Whatever the case, it is a departure from a pure scientific assessment of the world. And maybe (in this one particular nugget) we find a true "pantheistic" notion in Spinoza's work.

But even this is overestimated by many of Spinoza's readers. First and foremost, he saw the world in causal terms. Causes lead to effects. There is no "humanlike intention" going on anywhere in it. After you understand THAT, then (in order to attain inner freedom) you need to love THAT. And so, in the end, there is no mysticism or classical theism present in Spinoza's ideas at all. But there is a concern for human wellbeing, which, strictly speaking, is unscientific... but par for the course when we're talking about philosophers, atheist or otherwise.

[Ferrocyanide]

[Belacqua]

Also, before science came along, no one (or should I give some leeway here?) claimed that those were allegories. If I am wrong, they are free to show me a church claimed that those were allegories. I want to see an original print, coming from a top guy at a church.

When did science "come along"? When Aristotle went to do research at the Kolpos Kalloni on Lesbos? That would be before the Christian church was founded. 

Jesus spoke in parables, which he explained in private as allegory. He was kind of an important guy in the church. Paul interpreted Old Testament stories as allegory. He is also considered a "top guy."

Augustine wrote a whole book on not taking the book of Genesis literally. This was about 400 AD.

[The Grand Nudger]

Just goes to show that even the earliest christian authorities knew they were bullshitting the plebes.

[Belacqua]

The Pagan Greeks saw lust, hunger, pride, ect. as natural healthy impulses which could get out of hand, and believed that good lay in healthy exercise of them; between the extremes of wantonness and total denial. Moderation and selfcontrol; enjoying food without overeating, sex without becoming a letcher, wine without overdrinking, feeling anger without becoming a slave to rage; this was the Pagan ideal. 

It might be a tad too simple to attribute this to all the pagan Greeks. Greek culture lasted a long time, after all, and wasn't monolithic. But what you say is certainly true of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which was extremely influential. Plato advocates something similar -- called sophrosyne -- but never quite defines it. It's when your rational soul keeps the appetitive and sensible souls in balance.

The Christian view is that these impulses are inherently sinful and wicked, and that while moderating them is fine and well, avoiding them completely is even better. The Christian God is thus opposed to nature, and Christianity sees nature as base, if not outright evil. 

No doubt there are Christians that agree with this description. But there are a lot of important ones who don't. 

Dante, for example (following Thomas Aquinas), explicitly models his moral thought on Aristotle. He would agree with everything you attribute here about the pagan Greeks. Dante might cite some special exceptions -- some kind of ascetic saint, for example -- but for the vast majority the natural appetites are made by God and therefore good. He even sees lust as the least bad of all the sins, because it is the most intense love. And sexual desire only becomes sinful lust when you overdo it -- when it causes you to lie or cheat or damage your health.

---

==The problem with that is, how do you measure overeating, lascivity and so on?
It is subjective.

Just because something isn't quantifiable doesn't mean it's too subjective to think about. 

Aristotle says right at the beginning of the Ethics that complete precision isn't possible in every case. In ethics, we just have to do our best.

Basically you know you've gone too far when you've harmed yourself. If you're obese or anorexic, you have a problem with appetite. If you get angry at little things that's bad, but if you don't get angry at things you should get angry at, that's also bad. We have no absolute way of knowing what's best in each case. You just have to work on it.

[Seax]

[The Grand Nudger]

If we thought of a bus as all the people and the metal - BusGod....would one person on the bus wanting to fry cabbage on the bus...be the Will of the Bus....?

[Seax]

If we thought of a bus as all the people and the metal - BusGod....would one person on the bus wanting to fry cabbage on the bus...be the Will of the Bus....?

A bus is merely one small part of nature, your analogy, while amusing, is ridiculous. You can't compare a bus with reality itself.

---

Also, before science came along, no one (or should I give some leeway here?) claimed that those were allegories. If I am wrong, they are free to show me a church claimed that those were allegories. I want to see an original print, coming from a top guy at a church.

When did science "come along"? When Aristotle went to do research at the Kolpos Kalloni on Lesbos? That would be before the Christian church was founded. 

Jesus spoke in parables, which he explained in private as allegory. He was kind of an important guy in the church. Paul interpreted Old Testament stories as allegory. He is also considered a "top guy."

Augustine wrote a whole book on not taking the book of Genesis literally. This was about 400 AD.

I think generally most people count the Scientific Revolution as the start of science. I think that is Ferro's meaning.

[The Grand Nudger]

If we thought of a bus as all the people and the metal - BusGod....would one person on the bus wanting to fry cabbage on the bus...be the Will of the Bus....?

A bus is merely one small part of nature, your analogy, while amusing, is ridiculous. You can't compare a bus with reality itself.

Reality is an even bigger bus, gotcha.   So, same question..but now with a bigger bus. More metal, more people. All the metal, all the people.  BigBusGod. Is the will of one guy on the bus to fry cabbage on the bus..the Will of the Big Bus?

You mentioned to another poster that supposing god has a brain would be foolish..more or less so than supposing that it has a will?