Here, have an ontological argument from Spinoza's Ethics:
Proposition 11. God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists.
Demonstration. If this be denied, conceive, if it be possible, that God does not exist. Then it follows that His essence does not involve existence. But this is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists. Q.E.D.
For newbies, an ontological argument is taken to be a statement purporting to "prove" the existence of God. (Think of a geometrical "proof" and you've got the idea.) And on some level, that's exactly what it is. But the other purpose for the ontological argument is that it serves as the foundation for a specific theology. It's the statement of a worldview, usually with God at the center.
The basis of Spinoza's theology is not God's existence; it's that God is existence. The proof of God's existence is that existence, well, exists. At the same time, it's a statement about the divine nature of existence.
***
One of the basic premises of pantheism, especially as constructed by the Stoics, is that one of God's attributes (even the main one, depending on who you ask) is Reason. Justin Martyr, a Stoic of the Christian tradition, decided that since Christ was the embodiment of Logos, anyone who ruled their life through the use of Reason was a good Christian. This even included pre-Christian philosophers like Heraclitus and Socrates. (A popular theory among Jewish and Christian philosophers of the time was that the early Greeks had somehow gotten their hands on the Torah, and that's why Greek philosophy made so much sense!)
Spinoza developed this further by explaining (in his usual convoluted way) that Reason and reality are just two sides of the same coin.
From part 2 of the Ethics:
Proposition 7. the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.
... [E]verything which can be perceived by the infinite intellect as constituting the essence of substance pertains entirely to the one sole substance only, and consequently that substance thinking and substance extended are one and the same substance, which is now comprehended under this attribute and now under that. Thus, also, a mode of extension and the idea of that mode are one and the same thing expressed in two different ways ... .
[Gesundheit.]
Spinoza, of course, lived shortly after Descartes, who (in)famously decided that mind and body were completely separate--thus creating a paradox that philosophy wasted hundreds of years trying to solve (a guy named Malebranche, for instance, turned God into a phone switch operator between mind and body). Spinoza's two-sided coin doesn't say that mind and matter coincide, or are connected, or are best buddies. They're the same sentence, spoken in two different languages.
Unlike in classical theism, Logos doesn't come in to redeem the world; Logos is the world.
Marcus Aurelius says, "Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."
***
In the Appendix to the first part of his Ethics, Spinoza has this to say:
...[I]t is commonly supposed that all things in nature, like men, work to some end; and indeed it is thought to be certain that God Himself directs all things to some sure end, for it is said that God has made all things for man, and man that he may worship God. ... This is the reason why each man has devised for himself, out of his own brain, a different mode of worshiping God, so that God might love him above others, and direct all nature to the service of his blind cupidity and insatiable avarice.
Thus has this prejudice been turned into a superstition and has driven deep roots into the mind--a prejudice which was the reason why everyone has so eagerly tried to discover and explain the final causes of things. The attempt, however, to show that nature does nothing in vain (that is to say, nothing which is not profitable to man), seems to end in showing that nature, the gods, and man are alike mad.
[Pause for three cheers!]
To broaden/deepen/support that, a verse from the Tao te Ching:
Nature is not kind;
It treats all things impartially.
The Sage is not kind,
And treats all people impartially.
Nature is like a bellows,
Empty, yet never ceasing its supply.
The more it moves, the more it yields;
So the sage draws upon experience
And cannot be exhausted.
The most important part of pantheist theology: God is not a Person.
As a last, rather funny note, here's what Spinoza thought about the devil, from his Short Treatise on God:
If the devil is a thing which is entirely opposed to God and has nothing from Him, he is absolutely indistinguishable from the Nothing of which we have already spoken. But, if we suppose with some that the devil is a thinking thing, who neither wills nor does anything whatever that is good, he is certainly most miserable, and if prayers could help him we ought to pray for his conversion.
Monday, March 22, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
They had time-traveling email!
There's this... thread... line of thinking?... idea that keeps popping up?... that runs through a series of philosophers.
Start with the Greeks, before Socrates. Everyone wanted the complexity of the world around them to be reduced to something simple. Either everything really was simple (and the complexity was an illusion), or everything came out of a simple First Cause.
Supposedly Greek philosophy started with a guy named Thales, who managed to accurately predict a solar eclipse using math rather than magic. Everyone gasped and was amazed and got in on the fun. And then Parmenides came along.
Parmenides said that either something exists, or nothing exists; no in between. But if existence is, y'know, existence, then change is impossible. After all, once things start changing, then the things in existence will eventually no longer exist--but nonexistence is impossible, if existence exists. (Or something like that.) Everyone else either said, "Holy crap, he's right!" or "No way in Hades!" and frantically tried to explain how things could exist while changing (or change could exist without things). Some of 'em decided (along with Parmenides) that the world around us is an illusion; others (like Heraclitus) decided that change is itself the only thing that exists. Meanwhile, the proto-science nerds were busy trying to figure out what the primal element was that gave rise to everything else.
For instant, Empedocles, my favorite early philosopher, invented the dark and light sides of the Force. He developed a complex system of change/existence, in which four elements--earth, air, fire, water--and two forces--Love and Strife--keep the cosmos going in a constantly changing cycle, eerily similar to early Big Bang/Big Crunch theories.
This kept going until Plato jumped in. He took all these simple-to-complex ideas and codified them into one theory: God Did It. God is the simple; from him comes the complex. In a rather complex system of its own. Everything we see around us--people, cats and dogs, trees, tables, etc.--all resemble other members of their species/class of objects because all of them are simply echoes of the Idea of Man, the Idea of Cat, the Idea of Dog, the Idea of Tree, the Idea of Table. (You get the idea.) These ideas--or Forms--exist in the mind of God, and only there are they perfect. All this ridiculous complexity, change, death, disease--everything unpleasant takes place because this world is an imperfect reflection of the perfect existence in the Intellect of God.
[If this sounds awfully Christian, it's because Aquinas jumped on the Neo-Platonic bandwagon and introduced Catholicism to Plato. First they called him a heretic; then when they finally figured out what he was saying, they called him the Doctor of the Church.]
Then comes Plotinus. He liked Plato so much that in the process of passing on, illuminating, and expanding Plato's ideas, he turned the system into something all his own. God, the First Cause, he called the One. Nothing simpler than One-ness, right? He thought that through a series of "emanations," everything came into being. This wasn't a creation event that happened through time, though; it's more like a reality ladder. You've got the One, which organizes itself into Intellect and Spirit. Intellect is the realm of ideas, similar to the Forms of Plato. Intellect contemplates the One, and creates Forms. Spirit is what the Forms do. Spirit contemplates Intellect, and produces the world of the senses. Our job as sensory beings is to turn back through Spirit and Intellect and eventually return to the One.
[Plotinus was used by, and fought against, both Gnostic and Orthodox Christians. He had a helluva time walking a fine line between them, while owing allegiance to neither.]
This philosophy seems to disappear (or else I'm just not reading widely enough) until Maester Eckhart. He was a German mystic theologian who was tried for heresy, but died before the verdict came down. He also believed in a source similar to Plotinus' One, from which all creation proceeded (but this time in a Christian package). All people shared in the divine soul, since everyone was descended from this single source. By turning inward and contemplating one's own soul, a person could meet God. No priests necessary.
[Gee, I wonder why he was tried as a heretic...]
Then enter Benedict Spinoza. He's like Plotinus' little brother. He's a philosophical descendent in the Greek tradition, all the way down from Parmenides. Spinoza, of course, says that the only thing in existence is God--which in accordance with Parmenides is unchanging. He then proceeds to rewrite Plotinus, using attributes and modes instead of Intellect and Spirit. Only one thing exists--because if more than one thing existed, both things would be limited by each other, and would in effect cancel each other out. (Or something like that.) This one thing has attributes of existence, infinity, mind, motion, and extension (it's the eternal adjective club). These attributes in turn embody themselves in modes, which is basically Idea condensed into what we would call reality (a cluster of deterministic nouns).
[Oddly enough, Spinoza was kicked out of his synagogue for talking about this stuff.]
A few more centuries down the line, we run headfirst into Fichte, and then Schelling. Fichte was the reincarnation of Spinoza, in the same way that Kant was the reincarnation of Parmenides. However, Fichte turned Spinoza's determinism on its head by saying that, since you have to start with a first principle, then human freedom (the existential kind) makes a dandy one. Not surprisingly, he ran into all sorts of trouble. No matter how many iterations of his system he published (last count was two million three hundred thousand and one), no one could understand what he was saying. Then they accused him of atheism (not quite a capital offense any more, but you'd lose your job, your paycheck, and your reputation over it), then he almost single-handedly invented German National Socialism by characterizing the German people as the best embodiment of the divine (thereby committing the worst theological error a pantheist can), and everyone conveniently forgot about him.
...Except for his student, Schelling. Schelling was to Fichte what Jung was to Freud. Everything starts out flowers and chocolate, then they start fighting over money, and pretty soon they're sleeping in separate bedrooms and not speaking to each other.
In another desperate attempt to remove Spinoza's uncomfortable determinism from the budding idealism, Schelling wound up reinventing Empedocles. Instead of Love and Strife, though, he made all existence a push-pull between the unconscious and the conscious, the objective and subjective, deterministic nature and existentially free mind. This muddy dualism hid an underlying monism that said that determinism and free will were, yet again, just two sides of the same coin. (So much for trying to get rid of Spinoza.)
All of which is to say, there really are no new ideas. Every new genius philosophy is the reincarnation of somebody else a thousand years or so ago. Schelling was Empedocles. Kant was Parmenides. Avatar was Dances With Wolves.
But for the real mind-bending stuff, read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations right next to the Tao te Ching. Somehow these two guys, inhabiting different eras, cultures, languages, and sides of the planet, wrote down almost the exact same ideas about religion, government, and human nature.
Start with the Greeks, before Socrates. Everyone wanted the complexity of the world around them to be reduced to something simple. Either everything really was simple (and the complexity was an illusion), or everything came out of a simple First Cause.
Supposedly Greek philosophy started with a guy named Thales, who managed to accurately predict a solar eclipse using math rather than magic. Everyone gasped and was amazed and got in on the fun. And then Parmenides came along.
Parmenides said that either something exists, or nothing exists; no in between. But if existence is, y'know, existence, then change is impossible. After all, once things start changing, then the things in existence will eventually no longer exist--but nonexistence is impossible, if existence exists. (Or something like that.) Everyone else either said, "Holy crap, he's right!" or "No way in Hades!" and frantically tried to explain how things could exist while changing (or change could exist without things). Some of 'em decided (along with Parmenides) that the world around us is an illusion; others (like Heraclitus) decided that change is itself the only thing that exists. Meanwhile, the proto-science nerds were busy trying to figure out what the primal element was that gave rise to everything else.
For instant, Empedocles, my favorite early philosopher, invented the dark and light sides of the Force. He developed a complex system of change/existence, in which four elements--earth, air, fire, water--and two forces--Love and Strife--keep the cosmos going in a constantly changing cycle, eerily similar to early Big Bang/Big Crunch theories.
This kept going until Plato jumped in. He took all these simple-to-complex ideas and codified them into one theory: God Did It. God is the simple; from him comes the complex. In a rather complex system of its own. Everything we see around us--people, cats and dogs, trees, tables, etc.--all resemble other members of their species/class of objects because all of them are simply echoes of the Idea of Man, the Idea of Cat, the Idea of Dog, the Idea of Tree, the Idea of Table. (You get the idea.) These ideas--or Forms--exist in the mind of God, and only there are they perfect. All this ridiculous complexity, change, death, disease--everything unpleasant takes place because this world is an imperfect reflection of the perfect existence in the Intellect of God.
[If this sounds awfully Christian, it's because Aquinas jumped on the Neo-Platonic bandwagon and introduced Catholicism to Plato. First they called him a heretic; then when they finally figured out what he was saying, they called him the Doctor of the Church.]
Then comes Plotinus. He liked Plato so much that in the process of passing on, illuminating, and expanding Plato's ideas, he turned the system into something all his own. God, the First Cause, he called the One. Nothing simpler than One-ness, right? He thought that through a series of "emanations," everything came into being. This wasn't a creation event that happened through time, though; it's more like a reality ladder. You've got the One, which organizes itself into Intellect and Spirit. Intellect is the realm of ideas, similar to the Forms of Plato. Intellect contemplates the One, and creates Forms. Spirit is what the Forms do. Spirit contemplates Intellect, and produces the world of the senses. Our job as sensory beings is to turn back through Spirit and Intellect and eventually return to the One.
[Plotinus was used by, and fought against, both Gnostic and Orthodox Christians. He had a helluva time walking a fine line between them, while owing allegiance to neither.]
This philosophy seems to disappear (or else I'm just not reading widely enough) until Maester Eckhart. He was a German mystic theologian who was tried for heresy, but died before the verdict came down. He also believed in a source similar to Plotinus' One, from which all creation proceeded (but this time in a Christian package). All people shared in the divine soul, since everyone was descended from this single source. By turning inward and contemplating one's own soul, a person could meet God. No priests necessary.
[Gee, I wonder why he was tried as a heretic...]
Then enter Benedict Spinoza. He's like Plotinus' little brother. He's a philosophical descendent in the Greek tradition, all the way down from Parmenides. Spinoza, of course, says that the only thing in existence is God--which in accordance with Parmenides is unchanging. He then proceeds to rewrite Plotinus, using attributes and modes instead of Intellect and Spirit. Only one thing exists--because if more than one thing existed, both things would be limited by each other, and would in effect cancel each other out. (Or something like that.) This one thing has attributes of existence, infinity, mind, motion, and extension (it's the eternal adjective club). These attributes in turn embody themselves in modes, which is basically Idea condensed into what we would call reality (a cluster of deterministic nouns).
[Oddly enough, Spinoza was kicked out of his synagogue for talking about this stuff.]
A few more centuries down the line, we run headfirst into Fichte, and then Schelling. Fichte was the reincarnation of Spinoza, in the same way that Kant was the reincarnation of Parmenides. However, Fichte turned Spinoza's determinism on its head by saying that, since you have to start with a first principle, then human freedom (the existential kind) makes a dandy one. Not surprisingly, he ran into all sorts of trouble. No matter how many iterations of his system he published (last count was two million three hundred thousand and one), no one could understand what he was saying. Then they accused him of atheism (not quite a capital offense any more, but you'd lose your job, your paycheck, and your reputation over it), then he almost single-handedly invented German National Socialism by characterizing the German people as the best embodiment of the divine (thereby committing the worst theological error a pantheist can), and everyone conveniently forgot about him.
...Except for his student, Schelling. Schelling was to Fichte what Jung was to Freud. Everything starts out flowers and chocolate, then they start fighting over money, and pretty soon they're sleeping in separate bedrooms and not speaking to each other.
In another desperate attempt to remove Spinoza's uncomfortable determinism from the budding idealism, Schelling wound up reinventing Empedocles. Instead of Love and Strife, though, he made all existence a push-pull between the unconscious and the conscious, the objective and subjective, deterministic nature and existentially free mind. This muddy dualism hid an underlying monism that said that determinism and free will were, yet again, just two sides of the same coin. (So much for trying to get rid of Spinoza.)
All of which is to say, there really are no new ideas. Every new genius philosophy is the reincarnation of somebody else a thousand years or so ago. Schelling was Empedocles. Kant was Parmenides. Avatar was Dances With Wolves.
But for the real mind-bending stuff, read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations right next to the Tao te Ching. Somehow these two guys, inhabiting different eras, cultures, languages, and sides of the planet, wrote down almost the exact same ideas about religion, government, and human nature.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Ishtar, Parmenides, and Kant (oh my!)
Since comparative religion/mythology has become popular, a lot of folks are familiar nowadays with the myth of Ishtar traveling through the gates of Death.
Ishtar, the goddess of love, goes to visit her sister Ereshkigal, the goddess of death. This is not a simple jaunt across town, though. Ishtar has to go through a series of gates; to pass through each one, she's got to give up one of her garments--the last being her crown. Figures that a myth about a sex goddess would incorporate a striptease... Anyway, it turns out that Ereshikigal is kind of a bitch (who'da thunk it?), and since Ishtar's nekkid, she's also powerless.
Everyone on Earth stops having sex.
This is where it gets a little confusing. In some versions of the story, she's there to rescue her dead husband, Tammuz; in others, Tammuz comes to pry her from Ereshkigal's evil clutches. Either way, Ishtar manages to get out, but either she or Tammuz wind up having to spend half the year with Death from that point on. Hence the seasons, and later on we get Ceres quasi-rescuing Persephone from Hades, and Orpheus' failure to rescue Eurydice.
The important part of this myth, of course, is the striptease. (No, really.) As Ishtar goes further and further into the realm of Death, she gradually loses all of her power. In other words, Love is powerless over Death. (A new religion later developed which had some verses about God being love, and the gates of death being broken. Same themes, radically different message.)
***
Fast forward a thousand years or so to a guy named Parmenides.
Parmenides lived right at the hairy edge when explanatory myth was beginning to give way to natural philosophy. People started investigating the causes of natural events, instead of just writing stories about gods to explain where winter came from. Sometimes these philosophers had rather weird explanations, but they were kind of the first scientists, in that they wanted to explain things as natural, rather than supernatural.
Parmenides wrote a rather strange poem in which hegets kidnapped by aliens receives an invitation to visit the realm of Night. But instead of having to strip at each gate, the guardians of each gate bow down to him, the gates opening (with trumpets blaring and lions roaring and stars dancing and all sorts of CGI effects). And instead of being captured by the goddess, he is bestowed with the light of reason.
Love may have no power over Death, but Reason trumps Ignorance every time.
Night tells Parmenides that there are two ways to go about gaining knowledge of things. You can study the things which exist, or you can study the things which do not exist. Unfortunately, knowledge of that which does not exist is reserved for the gods. But humans can study what does exist, and gain knowledge that way.
In essence, Parmenides is using a myth to knock over mythology, by having Night (who hides all knowledge) show him how to gain understanding. It's a primer for a philosophical method, buried in mythological verse. The most important thing this method said is that appearances can be deceiving. The whole thing about "what exists" and "what does not exist" is just as deceiving, because the idea of existence he's talking about isn't what we normally think of. When Night says that humans can only study what exists, she means that humans can only study what we perceive to exist.
Parmenides was a monist who declared that time, death, change, and everything around us--including us--are all illusion. Many of the natural philosophers who followed him scrambled to either prove him right or prove him wrong. Except Empedocles, who got to have it both ways.
***
Fast forward another two and a half thousand years to a gentleman named Immanuel Kant. Kant distinguished between phenomena and numena--our sensory experiences of things, and things as they exist in themselves. He was basically saying the same thing as Parmenides: We can study what we can perceive, but there is an existence beyond what we can perceive which we will never reach--not even through Parmenides' much-vaunted Reason.
Because we can't experience the numenal world, we essentially take it on faith that our sensory world mirrors reality. All our science, all our reason, all our physical understanding, is based on a leap of faith. We've come back full circle to Ishtar at the gates of Death.
Parmenides' monism was based on faith. Everyone's philosophy is based on faith of some sort. We all start at the gates of Death.
Ishtar, the goddess of love, goes to visit her sister Ereshkigal, the goddess of death. This is not a simple jaunt across town, though. Ishtar has to go through a series of gates; to pass through each one, she's got to give up one of her garments--the last being her crown. Figures that a myth about a sex goddess would incorporate a striptease... Anyway, it turns out that Ereshikigal is kind of a bitch (who'da thunk it?), and since Ishtar's nekkid, she's also powerless.
Everyone on Earth stops having sex.
This is where it gets a little confusing. In some versions of the story, she's there to rescue her dead husband, Tammuz; in others, Tammuz comes to pry her from Ereshkigal's evil clutches. Either way, Ishtar manages to get out, but either she or Tammuz wind up having to spend half the year with Death from that point on. Hence the seasons, and later on we get Ceres quasi-rescuing Persephone from Hades, and Orpheus' failure to rescue Eurydice.
The important part of this myth, of course, is the striptease. (No, really.) As Ishtar goes further and further into the realm of Death, she gradually loses all of her power. In other words, Love is powerless over Death. (A new religion later developed which had some verses about God being love, and the gates of death being broken. Same themes, radically different message.)
***
Fast forward a thousand years or so to a guy named Parmenides.
Parmenides lived right at the hairy edge when explanatory myth was beginning to give way to natural philosophy. People started investigating the causes of natural events, instead of just writing stories about gods to explain where winter came from. Sometimes these philosophers had rather weird explanations, but they were kind of the first scientists, in that they wanted to explain things as natural, rather than supernatural.
Parmenides wrote a rather strange poem in which he
Love may have no power over Death, but Reason trumps Ignorance every time.
Night tells Parmenides that there are two ways to go about gaining knowledge of things. You can study the things which exist, or you can study the things which do not exist. Unfortunately, knowledge of that which does not exist is reserved for the gods. But humans can study what does exist, and gain knowledge that way.
In essence, Parmenides is using a myth to knock over mythology, by having Night (who hides all knowledge) show him how to gain understanding. It's a primer for a philosophical method, buried in mythological verse. The most important thing this method said is that appearances can be deceiving. The whole thing about "what exists" and "what does not exist" is just as deceiving, because the idea of existence he's talking about isn't what we normally think of. When Night says that humans can only study what exists, she means that humans can only study what we perceive to exist.
Parmenides was a monist who declared that time, death, change, and everything around us--including us--are all illusion. Many of the natural philosophers who followed him scrambled to either prove him right or prove him wrong. Except Empedocles, who got to have it both ways.
***
Fast forward another two and a half thousand years to a gentleman named Immanuel Kant. Kant distinguished between phenomena and numena--our sensory experiences of things, and things as they exist in themselves. He was basically saying the same thing as Parmenides: We can study what we can perceive, but there is an existence beyond what we can perceive which we will never reach--not even through Parmenides' much-vaunted Reason.
Because we can't experience the numenal world, we essentially take it on faith that our sensory world mirrors reality. All our science, all our reason, all our physical understanding, is based on a leap of faith. We've come back full circle to Ishtar at the gates of Death.
Parmenides' monism was based on faith. Everyone's philosophy is based on faith of some sort. We all start at the gates of Death.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Pantheism vs. Pantheism vs. Pantheism
If one of the things that makes a religion a "real" religion is schism, then I guess pantheism is a "real" religion. There are three types of pantheism--at least three, but these are the three major denominations (?) that I'm familiar with.
***
The first I'll call ecological pantheism. I don't know if it has an "official" name or not, but this name suits. Most people these days calling themselves pantheists are probably ecological pantheists. (There are also a lot of scientific pantheists; more on that below.) Ecological pantheism is based on feelings of awe and reverence before the beauty and splendor of nature, coupled with the desire to preserve and protect that which inspires those feelings. It's easy to agree with people who revere nature, as these feelings seem to have been an intrinsic part of human spirituality since the era of cave paintings.
Ecological pantheism is a close cousin of animism, in which everything, living and inanimate, is seen as having a soul. When my daughter was (for a time) an animist, she explained an important part of her beliefs: Everything natural has a soul, from sun and moon to rock and tree. A fallen tree retains its soul--but when humans use a tree to make a table, or transform iron ore into steel cookware, the soul of the original object is destroyed. In changing a natural object into a "man-made" one, we destroy something intrinsically sacred about it.
Again, easy to understand the idea, certainly at least on an aesthetic level.
The same sentiment is at work in ecological pantheism. In some sense, humans are intruders upon the landscape and in the natural ecosystem. Perhaps we were once part of nature, but somewhere during our cultural development, something went awry. We fell from grace. Often the biblical passage about man's dominion over nature is cited as evidence of our un-Natural perversion.
This idea is hard at work in the recent James Cameron film Avatar.
[Spoilers!]
In the final scene of the movie, the protagonist Jake Sully has his consciousness permanently transferred into his Na'Vi avatar. On the one hand, it's a triumph over his disability, and it allows him to truly find a new home with the woman he's fallen in love with and the tribe who adopted him. But there's a subtle message here: Sully cannot gain salvation without fully giving up his humanity. His injured legs are a symbol of humanity's ecological original sin, with the only way to natural salvation being to refute that humanity. (Of course, it was that very humanity that led him to fall in love with Neytiri and her tribe.)
[End spoilers.]
Though many ecological pantheists may be refugees from Christianity, the same anti-human idea about our inherent spiritual depravity is a shared concept. And in extreme ecological pantheism (just like extreme Christianity) the only way to overcome our original sin is to turn away from our own humanity, becoming Christlike or returning to some idealized noble savage state.
I believe this sort of extreme ecological pantheism carries a dangerous and nihilistic message about the future of humanity. Religion, if it and we are to survive and improve, must take into account--even rely on--our humanity, including all our flaws. Our salvation lies in our own humanity; paradoxically, of course, so does the possibility of our self-extermination.
Of course, there's a lot to be said for revering the divinity of nature. If care for the natural world around us was as strong as care for our families and our society, a lot of our resource- and pollution-based problems wouldn't be anywhere near so pressing. The popular message of ecological pantheism is an important (maybe even vital) one. And it's one that can make itself at home in most, if not all, major religions. For example, Christianity has slowly but steadily been building up ideas about stewardship of the earth as a religious duty. Ecological pantheism will continue to be an important movement in Western society, provided it doesn't fall into the trap of extremism.
***
The second form of pantheism I want to talk about is called (officially) scientific pantheism. You can find it espoused by the World Pantheist Movement and the Universal Pantheist Society. (How do they know the rest of the universe belongs to their society...?)
When people talk about science becoming a new religion, this is often what they're talking about. The scientific method has nothing religious about it, of course: it's nothing more (and nothing less) than the best way we have to improve our understanding of physical reality, relying on research, experimentation and peer review.
Scientific pantheism is sometimes called "atheism with a handlebar mustache." It's a combination of poetic atheism and soft theism. You can find literature expressing the pantheist need to form a "personal relationship" with the Universe--in short, replacing a personal God with the awe-inspiring, beautiful aspects of nature. (Does a scientific pantheist really wish to form a personal relationship with ebola, though?)
Scientific pantheism has the problem of encouraging people to view science as its own religion. Although science and religion often talk about the same subjects--not least the origin and possible destinies of our species--and although they both produce similar feelings of awe and wonder, they should not be confused. Science is a source of information; often this is information that can be used to help us create a better world. But it says nothing about how we should behave towards one another. Even the young science of evolutionary psychology can only tell us why our morals have developed the way they have; it can't tell us whether our morals are good.
It does, however, share the same advantages of ecological pantheism. The universe is a holy place, and we're part of it. Learning about it can be seen as a sacred duty, both to ourselves and to the divinity we participate in. It also avoids the problem area of ecological pantheism, as it sees humanity as part of nature. Being part of nature is, for the scientific pantheist, the very reason we must take care of it.
***
Finally, I want to talk about my type of pantheism. I've decided a good name for it (because I don't know if it's already been named) is philosophical pantheism. This is sort of an "original" pantheism, in that it existed well before either modern science or the Transcendentalist movement that helped spawn Western ecological awareness. Like both ecological and scientific pantheism, philosophical pantheism begins with reverence for nature, the idea that nature is in some way divine.
Philosophical pantheism is less overtly theistic than ecological pantheism (which often views "Mother Nature" quite literally), but more theistic than scientific pantheism, with its handlebar mustache.
To understand philosophical pantheism, you have to begin with Lao Tzu and Marcus Aurelius. Of course pantheism was a part of religion before them, but the Tao te Ching and the Meditations are both seminal works. They are startlingly similar in tone and content--almost like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls in Japan!
Philosophical pantheism--while it does rely on emotional nature reverence--is a thinking religion. Spinoza's Ethics (which I still haven't finished, after over two years of reading) requires a lot of brain power (which is why I still haven't finished, after over two years of reading). It lays out its ideas in a geometrical procession--axioms, postulates, propositions, corollaries, and a whole lot of Q.E.D.'s. But being a thinking religion is apt, because Mind is one of its essential concepts.
Where philosophical pantheism differs the most with its ecological and scientific siblings is the idea that the universe is a thinking Being. This is not some quasi-mystical New Age panpsychism, though. The universe is an orderly place because Mind creates its order. Human consciousness is the way it is because the universe is the way it is. God orders itself from Being, to Mind (or Spirit), to the material universe--which is again ordered in our minds to create the experiential world we live in. Nature is fractal, recursive, and holographic: divine Logos creates the human mind.
This version of pantheism (unfortunately?) lacks the urgent ecological message. Determinism (but not fatalism) is a big factor. Although I'm responsible for my own behavior, I can't change anyone--or anything--else. Things happen because they must, because it's turtles all the way down. No matter what we do or do not do ecologically, the state of the planet is ultimately out of our hands. Our responsibility is not to "save the planet"--the Earth will take care of itself--our responsibility is to adapt ourselves to our changing environment, and support our neighbors in doing the same.
There's nothing inherently good or evil in the universe. Nature--God--is amoral, at least as far as human morality is concerned. We can't rely on divine revelations; all we have is the morality that our evolution has provided us with. Fortunately, we're still working out our social morality, and physical and cultural evolution will keep the best systems going, as long as our species lasts. Our humanity is essential to our salvation.
***
The first I'll call ecological pantheism. I don't know if it has an "official" name or not, but this name suits. Most people these days calling themselves pantheists are probably ecological pantheists. (There are also a lot of scientific pantheists; more on that below.) Ecological pantheism is based on feelings of awe and reverence before the beauty and splendor of nature, coupled with the desire to preserve and protect that which inspires those feelings. It's easy to agree with people who revere nature, as these feelings seem to have been an intrinsic part of human spirituality since the era of cave paintings.
Ecological pantheism is a close cousin of animism, in which everything, living and inanimate, is seen as having a soul. When my daughter was (for a time) an animist, she explained an important part of her beliefs: Everything natural has a soul, from sun and moon to rock and tree. A fallen tree retains its soul--but when humans use a tree to make a table, or transform iron ore into steel cookware, the soul of the original object is destroyed. In changing a natural object into a "man-made" one, we destroy something intrinsically sacred about it.
Again, easy to understand the idea, certainly at least on an aesthetic level.
The same sentiment is at work in ecological pantheism. In some sense, humans are intruders upon the landscape and in the natural ecosystem. Perhaps we were once part of nature, but somewhere during our cultural development, something went awry. We fell from grace. Often the biblical passage about man's dominion over nature is cited as evidence of our un-Natural perversion.
This idea is hard at work in the recent James Cameron film Avatar.
[Spoilers!]
In the final scene of the movie, the protagonist Jake Sully has his consciousness permanently transferred into his Na'Vi avatar. On the one hand, it's a triumph over his disability, and it allows him to truly find a new home with the woman he's fallen in love with and the tribe who adopted him. But there's a subtle message here: Sully cannot gain salvation without fully giving up his humanity. His injured legs are a symbol of humanity's ecological original sin, with the only way to natural salvation being to refute that humanity. (Of course, it was that very humanity that led him to fall in love with Neytiri and her tribe.)
[End spoilers.]
Though many ecological pantheists may be refugees from Christianity, the same anti-human idea about our inherent spiritual depravity is a shared concept. And in extreme ecological pantheism (just like extreme Christianity) the only way to overcome our original sin is to turn away from our own humanity, becoming Christlike or returning to some idealized noble savage state.
I believe this sort of extreme ecological pantheism carries a dangerous and nihilistic message about the future of humanity. Religion, if it and we are to survive and improve, must take into account--even rely on--our humanity, including all our flaws. Our salvation lies in our own humanity; paradoxically, of course, so does the possibility of our self-extermination.
Of course, there's a lot to be said for revering the divinity of nature. If care for the natural world around us was as strong as care for our families and our society, a lot of our resource- and pollution-based problems wouldn't be anywhere near so pressing. The popular message of ecological pantheism is an important (maybe even vital) one. And it's one that can make itself at home in most, if not all, major religions. For example, Christianity has slowly but steadily been building up ideas about stewardship of the earth as a religious duty. Ecological pantheism will continue to be an important movement in Western society, provided it doesn't fall into the trap of extremism.
***
The second form of pantheism I want to talk about is called (officially) scientific pantheism. You can find it espoused by the World Pantheist Movement and the Universal Pantheist Society. (How do they know the rest of the universe belongs to their society...?)
When people talk about science becoming a new religion, this is often what they're talking about. The scientific method has nothing religious about it, of course: it's nothing more (and nothing less) than the best way we have to improve our understanding of physical reality, relying on research, experimentation and peer review.
Scientific pantheism is sometimes called "atheism with a handlebar mustache." It's a combination of poetic atheism and soft theism. You can find literature expressing the pantheist need to form a "personal relationship" with the Universe--in short, replacing a personal God with the awe-inspiring, beautiful aspects of nature. (Does a scientific pantheist really wish to form a personal relationship with ebola, though?)
Scientific pantheism has the problem of encouraging people to view science as its own religion. Although science and religion often talk about the same subjects--not least the origin and possible destinies of our species--and although they both produce similar feelings of awe and wonder, they should not be confused. Science is a source of information; often this is information that can be used to help us create a better world. But it says nothing about how we should behave towards one another. Even the young science of evolutionary psychology can only tell us why our morals have developed the way they have; it can't tell us whether our morals are good.
It does, however, share the same advantages of ecological pantheism. The universe is a holy place, and we're part of it. Learning about it can be seen as a sacred duty, both to ourselves and to the divinity we participate in. It also avoids the problem area of ecological pantheism, as it sees humanity as part of nature. Being part of nature is, for the scientific pantheist, the very reason we must take care of it.
***
Finally, I want to talk about my type of pantheism. I've decided a good name for it (because I don't know if it's already been named) is philosophical pantheism. This is sort of an "original" pantheism, in that it existed well before either modern science or the Transcendentalist movement that helped spawn Western ecological awareness. Like both ecological and scientific pantheism, philosophical pantheism begins with reverence for nature, the idea that nature is in some way divine.
Philosophical pantheism is less overtly theistic than ecological pantheism (which often views "Mother Nature" quite literally), but more theistic than scientific pantheism, with its handlebar mustache.
To understand philosophical pantheism, you have to begin with Lao Tzu and Marcus Aurelius. Of course pantheism was a part of religion before them, but the Tao te Ching and the Meditations are both seminal works. They are startlingly similar in tone and content--almost like finding the Dead Sea Scrolls in Japan!
Philosophical pantheism--while it does rely on emotional nature reverence--is a thinking religion. Spinoza's Ethics (which I still haven't finished, after over two years of reading) requires a lot of brain power (which is why I still haven't finished, after over two years of reading). It lays out its ideas in a geometrical procession--axioms, postulates, propositions, corollaries, and a whole lot of Q.E.D.'s. But being a thinking religion is apt, because Mind is one of its essential concepts.
Where philosophical pantheism differs the most with its ecological and scientific siblings is the idea that the universe is a thinking Being. This is not some quasi-mystical New Age panpsychism, though. The universe is an orderly place because Mind creates its order. Human consciousness is the way it is because the universe is the way it is. God orders itself from Being, to Mind (or Spirit), to the material universe--which is again ordered in our minds to create the experiential world we live in. Nature is fractal, recursive, and holographic: divine Logos creates the human mind.
This version of pantheism (unfortunately?) lacks the urgent ecological message. Determinism (but not fatalism) is a big factor. Although I'm responsible for my own behavior, I can't change anyone--or anything--else. Things happen because they must, because it's turtles all the way down. No matter what we do or do not do ecologically, the state of the planet is ultimately out of our hands. Our responsibility is not to "save the planet"--the Earth will take care of itself--our responsibility is to adapt ourselves to our changing environment, and support our neighbors in doing the same.
There's nothing inherently good or evil in the universe. Nature--God--is amoral, at least as far as human morality is concerned. We can't rely on divine revelations; all we have is the morality that our evolution has provided us with. Fortunately, we're still working out our social morality, and physical and cultural evolution will keep the best systems going, as long as our species lasts. Our humanity is essential to our salvation.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
The Creator of persons must be a Person...
One of the ideas supporting the theology of a personal God is that the Creator of person must be a Person. It's an argument from essence that, philosophically speaking, is pretty easy to agree with. After all, a person--or people as a whole--must have come from something which is is the essence of personhood.
--Except that it's awfully limited.
If the creator of people must be a person, then the creator of trees must be a tree; the creator of ants must be an ant: tree-ness and ant-ness have their own essences, which must come from somewhere. (Is the creator of hydrogen a hydrogen atom?)
Here's an alternative: The creator of persons is a person. The creator of trees is a tree. The creator of ants is an ant. A jillion separate creators, all working together to make this wildly varying world. Of course, that flies in the face of the monotheism that produced the idea in the first place.
Here's another alternative: The creator of persons also created trees and ants and everything else. Therefore the creator of persons contains the essence of all of those things, in equal measure. God is person, and tree, and ant, and hydrogen, and snow, and sand, and parrotfish, and blue jay, and most definitely puppy dog.
Behind all these essences, or substances, there must be a single essence/substance. It would have to be something inseparable from everything else, something that everything shares in.
Pantheists call it God.
--Except that it's awfully limited.
If the creator of people must be a person, then the creator of trees must be a tree; the creator of ants must be an ant: tree-ness and ant-ness have their own essences, which must come from somewhere. (Is the creator of hydrogen a hydrogen atom?)
Here's an alternative: The creator of persons is a person. The creator of trees is a tree. The creator of ants is an ant. A jillion separate creators, all working together to make this wildly varying world. Of course, that flies in the face of the monotheism that produced the idea in the first place.
Here's another alternative: The creator of persons also created trees and ants and everything else. Therefore the creator of persons contains the essence of all of those things, in equal measure. God is person, and tree, and ant, and hydrogen, and snow, and sand, and parrotfish, and blue jay, and most definitely puppy dog.
Behind all these essences, or substances, there must be a single essence/substance. It would have to be something inseparable from everything else, something that everything shares in.
Pantheists call it God.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Intellect, Soul, and Emergent Consciousness
The stages of emanation in Plotinus' thought go like this:
- The One. This is what Paul Tillich calls the "ground of being," or Substance if you ask Spinoza. The One (or the Good) precedes everything else, and (in a way) contains everything else. From it, all of reality and matter are formed in various stages of emanation, starting with:
- Intellect. Intellect contemplates--that's what it does, what the nature of Intellect is. It contemplates the One, and from this contemplation are produced the Forms. These Forms can be thought of as the ideas behind everything we see. Plato thought of the Forms as being the Ideal Man, Ideal Horse, etc. (because men and horses belong to their own classes--so the Ideal is what each class follows). In Spinoza, the Forms had evolved into modes and attributes, which included not only Ideals, but also what he called the laws of motion and rest.
- Soul. Soul follows Intellect. Just as the nature of Intellect is contemplation, the nature of Soul is desire; and just as Intellect contemplates the One, Soul desires the Intellect (and thereby the Forms). By this desire, experiential reality is created. In a way, the universe is created both from the outside in and from the inside out, at the same time. Intellect and Spirit are two sides of the One; contemplation and desire are two methods of creation; the objective and the subjective are two sides of the same reality.
***
A couple thousand years later, we get Paola Zizzi's "Emergent Consciousness" theory (also called the "Big Wow" theory). In it, she talks about the idea that the early universe may have attained consciousness of a sort similar to what we humans experience.
The math behind the theory is beyond me, but the basic idea is this:
The early universe was composed of (or had in it) a certain amount of "quantum gravity registers." As far as I can tell, these quantum gravity registers are bits of self-replicating information packets (like zeroes and ones). They also function under the holographic principle, where every bit contains all of the information all the bits together contain.
The magic number of quantum gravity registers in this early universe (10^9) is the same number of tubulins in the human brain. Like quantum gravity registers, tubulins (which make up the cell walls of our neurons) also function both holographically and binarily.
Based on some other theories of consciousness, Zizzi implies that this magic number (n = 10^9) is what is needed for collapse from a quantum state into classical consciousness. She also implies that this early consciousness is the source of the laws of nature, and the reason consciousness as we experience it was able to arise.
The conscious universe self-organized, producing the logical structure we know in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Through the appearance of this early consciousness, consciousness as a necessary occurrence was "programmed" in a way into the nature of reality: because of the "conscious event" in the early universe, it became inevitable that a similar type of consciousness would eventually evolve.
***
This is where I start playing:
It's easy to see how Intellect and emergent consciousness could be thought of as the same thing. If something like the One produced the Big Bang (or perhaps was the Big Bang), then Intellect/emergent consciousness followed, producing the Forms (the laws of nature). The collapse of the quantum universe into classical matter/energy could be thought of as Soul at work, eventually producing the universe that we know.
In her paper, Zizzi mentions Democritus, Spinoza, Liebniz, and Whitehead, all of whom were affected in one way or another by neoplatonic thought (which Plotinus founded). It's fascinating and exciting and, well, just plain wonderful that a two-thousand-year-old idea could make its way into today's scientific frontier.
- The One. This is what Paul Tillich calls the "ground of being," or Substance if you ask Spinoza. The One (or the Good) precedes everything else, and (in a way) contains everything else. From it, all of reality and matter are formed in various stages of emanation, starting with:
- Intellect. Intellect contemplates--that's what it does, what the nature of Intellect is. It contemplates the One, and from this contemplation are produced the Forms. These Forms can be thought of as the ideas behind everything we see. Plato thought of the Forms as being the Ideal Man, Ideal Horse, etc. (because men and horses belong to their own classes--so the Ideal is what each class follows). In Spinoza, the Forms had evolved into modes and attributes, which included not only Ideals, but also what he called the laws of motion and rest.
- Soul. Soul follows Intellect. Just as the nature of Intellect is contemplation, the nature of Soul is desire; and just as Intellect contemplates the One, Soul desires the Intellect (and thereby the Forms). By this desire, experiential reality is created. In a way, the universe is created both from the outside in and from the inside out, at the same time. Intellect and Spirit are two sides of the One; contemplation and desire are two methods of creation; the objective and the subjective are two sides of the same reality.
***
A couple thousand years later, we get Paola Zizzi's "Emergent Consciousness" theory (also called the "Big Wow" theory). In it, she talks about the idea that the early universe may have attained consciousness of a sort similar to what we humans experience.
The math behind the theory is beyond me, but the basic idea is this:
The early universe was composed of (or had in it) a certain amount of "quantum gravity registers." As far as I can tell, these quantum gravity registers are bits of self-replicating information packets (like zeroes and ones). They also function under the holographic principle, where every bit contains all of the information all the bits together contain.
The magic number of quantum gravity registers in this early universe (10^9) is the same number of tubulins in the human brain. Like quantum gravity registers, tubulins (which make up the cell walls of our neurons) also function both holographically and binarily.
Based on some other theories of consciousness, Zizzi implies that this magic number (n = 10^9) is what is needed for collapse from a quantum state into classical consciousness. She also implies that this early consciousness is the source of the laws of nature, and the reason consciousness as we experience it was able to arise.
The conscious universe self-organized, producing the logical structure we know in physics, chemistry, biology, etc. Through the appearance of this early consciousness, consciousness as a necessary occurrence was "programmed" in a way into the nature of reality: because of the "conscious event" in the early universe, it became inevitable that a similar type of consciousness would eventually evolve.
***
This is where I start playing:
It's easy to see how Intellect and emergent consciousness could be thought of as the same thing. If something like the One produced the Big Bang (or perhaps was the Big Bang), then Intellect/emergent consciousness followed, producing the Forms (the laws of nature). The collapse of the quantum universe into classical matter/energy could be thought of as Soul at work, eventually producing the universe that we know.
In her paper, Zizzi mentions Democritus, Spinoza, Liebniz, and Whitehead, all of whom were affected in one way or another by neoplatonic thought (which Plotinus founded). It's fascinating and exciting and, well, just plain wonderful that a two-thousand-year-old idea could make its way into today's scientific frontier.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Stoic vs. Spinozan Pantheism
Stoicism is a religious philosophy that concentrates more on how to live your life than on a metaphysical system. However, it does have a metaphysical system, just not one as deeply developed as, say, Plato's.
In the Stoic view, the Greek concept of Logos (divine Reason) is identical with what we think of as the laws of nature. We can puzzle out these laws through the use of our own reason; therefore Reason must be the creator of (or, in the Stoic view, identical with) natural laws.
Because God was identified with the course of nature, the "good life" was one lived in accordance with nature. You didn't try to accumulate more than you needed for a healthy life, nor did you try to prolong your life beyond its natural limits. In fact, good and evil could never happen to you, as all externals were considered valueless. The only good or evil thing was how the Stoic behaved, and how s/he accepted life.
What that means is that, if someone injures or insults me, that's neither good nor evil, because it's external to me. What would be evil is if I fought back through injury or insult in turn--but not necessarily because it would be wrong to injure or insult another person. I would be doing wrong by letting my emotions override my reason; that's the true evil in the human world.
Reason was the driving force behind the Stoic understanding of right and wrong. The Stoic determined right and wrong based on reality (i.e., nature), but also had to filter ideas about nature through reason, rather than emotion. Thus the Stoic would find that, since death is natural, death is not bad--but being overcome with sorrow or fear is. The passions (strong emotions that could cloud judgment, such as anger or lust) were not to be trusted; there were appropriate emotions, such as joy, doubt, or hope. The difference between the two (passions vs. appropriate feelings) is that the passions are not reasonable, whereas appropriate emotion comes out of reasoned thought.
Spinoza similarly identified the laws of nature with divine necessity. Coming out of a Jewish background, he saw the Biblical accounts of God's relationship with Israel as the natural actions of a divine will in connection with a people who understood God in a specific way.
Spinoza, like the Stoics, was a determinist. He may have been an even harder determinist than the original Stoics, since they believed that you were free in your own actions (but you could not affect the actions of others). Spinoza believed that happiness only came to the person who understood that his/her actions were determined by other factors. The greatest good was in understanding God/nature, understanding that events did not happen in a vacuum or by pure chance, and that even your own feelings/thoughts were affected (limited) by things out of human control.
So Spinoza's concept of the "good life" was very similar to the Stoic one, though with some differences.
First, the Stoics allowed for a limited free will--but only those who were truly wise (in the Stoic sense of the morality of reason) had free will. Freedom only came with the mastery of the passions and the proper use of reason. Even then, the only thing you had control of was your own physical and emotional actions and reactions in the world.
Spinoza, on the other hand, declared that only God had free will. Only God was unlimited by externals; everything a human does is limited by the things and events around him/her, so the human can never have true free will. Because God is the only thing which exists, God cannot be affected by something external; therefore, God's actions are truly free.
Both the Stoics and Spinoza did have very similar concepts of the path to happiness. They both believed that the acceptance of life and the realization of the value-neutrality of externals led to inner peace. For both, this acceptance depended on true knowledge of nature, natural law, and the place we have in it.
All of this is quite similar to the Buddhist doctrine of nonattachment. Unlike Buddhism, though, neither Spinoza nor the Stoics acknowledged much in the way of after-death consequences (such as transmigration of souls) of behavior in this life.
In the Stoic view, the Greek concept of Logos (divine Reason) is identical with what we think of as the laws of nature. We can puzzle out these laws through the use of our own reason; therefore Reason must be the creator of (or, in the Stoic view, identical with) natural laws.
Because God was identified with the course of nature, the "good life" was one lived in accordance with nature. You didn't try to accumulate more than you needed for a healthy life, nor did you try to prolong your life beyond its natural limits. In fact, good and evil could never happen to you, as all externals were considered valueless. The only good or evil thing was how the Stoic behaved, and how s/he accepted life.
What that means is that, if someone injures or insults me, that's neither good nor evil, because it's external to me. What would be evil is if I fought back through injury or insult in turn--but not necessarily because it would be wrong to injure or insult another person. I would be doing wrong by letting my emotions override my reason; that's the true evil in the human world.
Reason was the driving force behind the Stoic understanding of right and wrong. The Stoic determined right and wrong based on reality (i.e., nature), but also had to filter ideas about nature through reason, rather than emotion. Thus the Stoic would find that, since death is natural, death is not bad--but being overcome with sorrow or fear is. The passions (strong emotions that could cloud judgment, such as anger or lust) were not to be trusted; there were appropriate emotions, such as joy, doubt, or hope. The difference between the two (passions vs. appropriate feelings) is that the passions are not reasonable, whereas appropriate emotion comes out of reasoned thought.
Spinoza similarly identified the laws of nature with divine necessity. Coming out of a Jewish background, he saw the Biblical accounts of God's relationship with Israel as the natural actions of a divine will in connection with a people who understood God in a specific way.
Spinoza, like the Stoics, was a determinist. He may have been an even harder determinist than the original Stoics, since they believed that you were free in your own actions (but you could not affect the actions of others). Spinoza believed that happiness only came to the person who understood that his/her actions were determined by other factors. The greatest good was in understanding God/nature, understanding that events did not happen in a vacuum or by pure chance, and that even your own feelings/thoughts were affected (limited) by things out of human control.
So Spinoza's concept of the "good life" was very similar to the Stoic one, though with some differences.
First, the Stoics allowed for a limited free will--but only those who were truly wise (in the Stoic sense of the morality of reason) had free will. Freedom only came with the mastery of the passions and the proper use of reason. Even then, the only thing you had control of was your own physical and emotional actions and reactions in the world.
Spinoza, on the other hand, declared that only God had free will. Only God was unlimited by externals; everything a human does is limited by the things and events around him/her, so the human can never have true free will. Because God is the only thing which exists, God cannot be affected by something external; therefore, God's actions are truly free.
Both the Stoics and Spinoza did have very similar concepts of the path to happiness. They both believed that the acceptance of life and the realization of the value-neutrality of externals led to inner peace. For both, this acceptance depended on true knowledge of nature, natural law, and the place we have in it.
All of this is quite similar to the Buddhist doctrine of nonattachment. Unlike Buddhism, though, neither Spinoza nor the Stoics acknowledged much in the way of after-death consequences (such as transmigration of souls) of behavior in this life.
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