The Singular Substance

Spinoza believed that there is only one substance to reality, and that this singlular Substance is God/Nature, the immanent, not the transitive cause of all things’ and ‘absolutely infinite’.

Indian Advaita philosophy also posits that God and the world are one and the same. The Western mind has difficulty with the concept that God is immanent and not separate from world and Self, but Spinoza's Substance Monism gives Monotheism its true meaning: there is no being but God.

Baruch Spinoza

"The more you struggle to live, the less you live. 

Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. 

Instead, surrender to what is real within you,
for that alone is sure….
you are above everything distressing."

- Baruch Spinoza

The Givenness of Things

On September 14, 2015, in Des Moines, Iowa, President Obama and the writer Marilynne Robinson sat down to talk. They recorded a conversation that, in the president’s words, was designed to cover “some of the broader cultural forces that shape our democracy and shape our ideas, and shape how we feel about citizenship and the direction that the country should be going in.” The two had a warm and wide-ranging discussion, later published by The New York Review of Books and posted to iTunes, addressing Robinson’s writing life and Obama’s admiration of her novels; the democratic virtues expressed at Little League games, in emergency rooms, and in school buildings; and their shared sense that once upon a time democracy itself was considered an ongoing achievement. (The conversation has now been appended to the paperback edition of Robinson’s most recent essay collection, The Givenness of Things.) In the midst of some observations about American “goodness and decency and common sense on the ground,” the president arrived at a moment of synthesis, confronting an issue that, he said, “I’ve been struggling with throughout my political career.” continue reading

Barack Obama was the first American president to officially celebrate Diwali, the festival, observed by Hindus, Jains, Sikhs and some Buddhists, which marks the victory of light over darkness. Shri Mataji has said that this is the time of birth of Lord Jesus, the Light of the World. Although millions of people celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ on Dec. 25, most scholars agree that he wasn't born on that day, or even in the year 1 A.D.

Another Good Letter to NS

From Maggie Hamand:

"As someone with a first degree in biochemistry and an MA in theology. I am always fascinated by debates about religion and science. I was dismayed, however, to read [in New Scientist magazine] that belief in God is equated with belief in "supernatural beings". In Christian theology God is not seen as an object of our consciousness, and therefore cannot be described as a "being" or as a "thing". God is held to be both beyond being (transcendent) and being itself (immanent). As far as I am aware Judaism, Islam and indeed Buddhism and Hinduism have similar doctrines. It is human to constantly reify things which are abstract - as scientists do when talking about particles and black holes - or which are divine: but this should be resisted if we are to truly understand things."

London, UK.

Similarly, the Self is not a thing. Reification (also known as hypostatisation, concretism, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea. The habit of thinking about abstractions in terms of concrete objects is probably an inborn tendency in human beings. The word 'real' is quite vague, philosophers can't even agree on what the word 'existence' means. To say that God/Self should not be reified does not necessarily mean It does not 'exist'.

Einstein and God

For a long time there has been a debate about whether or not Einstein believed in God (whatever that word means). Many years ago, when I was a student, I attended a lecture by a famous physicist who had been an associate of Einstein. A Christian student asked him if he knew what Einstein's opinion was on the existence of God. The physicist replied, with a great deal of irritation at what he obviously thought was an irrelevant question, that Einstein did not believe in God. A rather biased recent article in New Scientist magazine came to much the same conclusion. But to say that Einstein did not believe in 'God' is simplistic, and ignors the many statements made by Einstein that evince a deep and lasting conviction that the Universe has a Self. The physicist who gave the lecture was an extremely dry, 'left-brain', individual; probably Einstein felt it was a waste of time sharing his pantheistic ideas about God, or a universal Self, with those who were unable to go beyond very limited definitions. Attempts to categorize his convictions, or to appropriate them for conventional theistic or atheistic purposes, miss their subtlety and their apophatic resonances. (Apophatic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_theology)

Here's a letter New Scientist published in reply to their article:

The interesting thing about Einstein's take on God and religion is not that he considered god to be impersonal, but that he recognised the vast and intense intelligence inherent in the universe. Perhaps in the first half of the 20th century it was easier to think of personhood as a separate thing to physicality, and to associate the idea of a personal god only with the abuses of that concept perpetuated by those in power. But compartmentalisation has broken down and the disciplines of physics, biology, psychology and philosophy are more integrated than ever before. Just as we ascribe personhood to the complex animated system of energy, mass and chemistry we call the human body, it is not unscientific to ascribe personhood to the universe. Science is at a crucial point, where we are finding that most of the mass in the universe is something we know nothing about and where we can look so closely at subatomic matter that it disappears before our eyes. At the same time, our ability to reconcile ethics with scientific capability is being challenged in many areas, from genetic design to space exploration. This is no time to write off god as an impersonal force of nature, nor to write off our fellow human beings as expendable units. Einstein, genius as he was, may have thrown out the baby (a personal god) with the bath water (abuses of religion), but he didn't get rid of the bath.
- Andy Smith, Ashford, Kent UK