Spinoza

A very common perspective of the Hebrew god is that this god possesses almost human like characteristics. These popular attributes is that the Judeo-Christian god is a male, was able to impregnate a female, has cognitive functioning much like humans but has a very high position of authority since he is the "creator" and therefore is able to gain the respect of thousands of people.

A famous philosopher who disagreed with this way of thinking of the widely worshiped God was Baruch Spinoza. He considered the one true God to be everything, or nature itself, also known as pantheism. His idea was rejected by many, not only by what he described to be god, but that his idea of God was very impersonal to humans and did not care about the lives of humans. Which makes sense because how can something inanimate care about the lives of humans? Many people considered Spinoza to be an atheist and that he was just covering for his nonbelief. Spinoza on the other hand, did in fact respect and admired the god that he believed in.

Another concept that grabbed Spinoza’s interest was the idea of freewill. Spinoza believed in something called determinism, meaning that he believed that every human action was the result of earlier causes. He did not really consider humans to be free though, more that we believe that we are free with the choices that we make, but in reality we don’t understand the ways in which we make them and they are therefore not fully under our control.

Spinoza was known to question many controversial ideas and many times had the more unpopular and different idea at the time. This though is one of the reasons his philosophy is still remembered and talked about.