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Thoughts on Spinoza and Locke (250+ word Essay)
Section 9

Spinoza was a philosopher in the late 1600's, and he thought outside the box of his Jewish culture. When he was thinking about God, he thought of him being in the form of the world around us. ,a nod at first I was thinking that he was of a similar mindset as myself, but as I continued reading I realized that he is coming from a very different thought process. I believe in a God that is everywhere at once, not who is everything. Spinoza believed that God is nature, and while I think the nature of his beauty is personified in the world around us, I believe he created nature and the world we live in, not is himself nature.

Another interesting thing that Spinoza brought up in his thinking about the world that we live in is that because we are part of this "nature", our entire lives are just the results of something that is outside of us that us controlling the day to day action of our lives. I think that this thought of the only thing that we can to is react to the external stimuli that we experience, is almost a cop out in my opinion. I believe in a God who yes, is omniscient, but who is personable, and wants us to succeed in our lives. Not to feel like we are just affected by nature as a rock would be affected by gravity as it falls to the earth. When I look in Genesis, I see a God create a world that he says is good, but then see him create man and woman in his own image to rule over it, to keep it, to take are of it, and to work it. I think that if man was created in the image of God and God is supposedly all of nature, then why do humans look so different than the rest of nature? It doesn't take a genius to realize that humans are different than all other animals on the planet, and I do not think that that is a coincidence.