brain storming for spinoza final (20pg)

The idea of the supernatural is an inadequate understanding of the nature of God. God, being the infinite essence of which all things are attributes and modes, there is necessarily nothing in existence throughout eternity that does not receive its essence from God’s nature. Therefore, because God is Nature and all things originate in God, all things are natural.

In the Ethics the foundation of inadequate ideas is an ignorance of the ultimate and proximate causes of effects. This is essentially the same argument he makes negating the reality of miracles. Miracles are nothing more than natural phenomena which surpass the observer's understanding of the forces of nature which could have cooperated to produce such phenomena. In the same way that God has no choice but to infinitely express his essence through his attributes as realized in finite modes of existence, humans have no choice but to be acted upon by external causes. The only freedom that humans have is to employ reason to understand what the causes are that determine their actions, and amend their understanding of them so that the awareness of causes helps to increase ones power to preserve ones existence, which is ones inalienable sovereign natural right.







p.s. Stooges, Fun House = probably the best album ever in the history of rock music.

"Man has free will to the extent that he knows who he is."

Since Spring Break I have been suffering through a slump, otherwise known as a crisis of motivation. Researching for my senior work proposal sapped all my intellectual energy and after the break I just stopped doing my work. As you can imagine, this had negative consequences, both in my academic and personal lives. Fortunately, the gravity of the situation finally sunk in. This happened largely due to a debilitating case of bronchitis, which forced me to stop drinking, needlessly socializing, and generally wasting time. Instead, for the past week I have done little besides sleep and try to read for class. This weekend I finally picked up (three weeks late) my copy of Spinoza's Ethics. I am presently still in the first section, "Of God", which is fascinating and less difficult, or so it seems, than I was led to believe. I'm not only reading it because I was supposed to for class, but also because I intend to write my final paper on God, as conceived by Spinoza (a conception which I find very attractive).

Yesterday, my professor emailed this to us, a lecture by Alan Watts pertaining to our classroom discussion, which you should find interesting regardless.

Spring Broke

I haven't been giving Spinoza enough attention over Break. I am a bad philosopher. I will try to make it up to him eventually.

Yesterday I went to the opening of an exhibit at a warehouse in Williamsburg. Tara and I drank free beer, took a few laps around the exhibit, then met some awesome artists. Then we went to Alligaytor Lounge, scavenged some pizza tickets, had a beer then bailed. Tres weak.

On my way to sit in a cafe, binge on coffee, and read Dante, I was stopped by a pair of individuals. One was South Korean woman and the other was a darkhaired guy who didn't say a word. They wanted to know if I had heard of "the female image of God" in the Bible. Being a religious studies student (I hate the redundancy of saying that), I was skeptical, but I was having trouble figuring out what this woman was trying to say thanks to her accent. I was genuinely interested in what they were saying until she started to say that it was the "end times", and alluding to apocalyptic prophecy in the Bible. Now, I have read the bible, even Revelations. But I read it in an academic setting, as literature not Truth. As soon as they brought in the end of days, Heaven, the one True God, I couldn't take them seriously. If I'd been in less of a hurry, perhaps I would have asked them to show me just where in the Bible WWII is explicitly prophesied. I remarked that prophecy is written so generally that it is easily misinterpreted. People have "seen the signs of the end times as prophesied in the Bible" since the Bible was written! So, I mentioned my studies, and that was when her partner finally jumped in, asking "May I ask what religion you practice?" There was something in the way he intoned his question that made me defensive, so I replied, "I don't practice a religion. I'm a religious studies student." Then he asked me if I'd ever been Catholic in the past. I don't think he meant past lives, but if he had I probably would have answered yes. But I told him no. It was at this point I started backing away. They were desperate to keep me on the hook but I had better things to do than debate with people who seemed to have less understanding of Christian theology than I do. And that is saying something, not being Christian and everything. To get them to finally back off I told them I would need direct revelation to believe in whatever it was they were trying to tell me about. The guy said, "But it says that you have to come to it for salvation, it won't come to you." I said, "It's already coming to me. Don't worry about my salvation," and walked away. About twenty feet later another pair of people approached me, and said, "Excuse me, may we talk to you for a moment?" I answered him with another question. "Are you with those people over there?" and pointed in the direction I'd just come from. "I don't know. Have you heard about the female image of God? We're with the something or other Elohim blah blah blah." "Yep, that's what they said, too." "So you're not interested?" "Nope, thanks!" Then I waved and walked away.

For the rest of the afternoon I ascended the mountain of Purgation, passed through the cleansing fire of realization, entered the Garden of Earthly delights and was baptised in the rivers of oblivion and good memory. Afterward, I went grocery shopping. Trader Joe's is a godsend. I told them not to worry about my salvation. I can find it on my own, thanks.