The Free Will Cycle

Okay, here we go.

I have been planning, since I started this blog, to write out my five arguments showing that free will is possible. I have been putting this off because of the last semester, which was crazy-busy . . . Which you can tell from my utter dearth of posts throughout April. So, to make up for it, over the next few days I am going to write my long-awaited Free Will Cycle.

In this post, I am just going to lay some groundwork concerning the issue of free will. There is no doubt that free will is a big deal, whether it exists or not. Whether we should be held accountable for our actions is a huge, fuzzy bear-question grumbling over the heads of our judicial system every day. Do we see people as in control, and therefore punishable for what they do? Or do we see them as programmed by society, genetics, chance, whatever . . . and if not, therefore, in control of the persons they are, then do we find some means other than punishment, or notions of responsibility? If there is free will, there is responsibility. If there is no free will, we must figure out how to preserve justice without it.

This political dilemma is not my goal to solve. As I see it, to err on the side of caution we should probably always treat people as if they are badly-caused when they do something wrong, and not assume they are freely acting badly - and that when someone does something good, we should treat them as freely acting well. This may seem paradoxical, but I believe this not because of my direct beliefs about free will. I believe this because I think it promotes a healthy social environment. For running a society, the question of free will offers little in terms of personal satisfaction or whatever; the problem of free will for society is basically, how do we mete out justice fairly? For me, we should always treat mistakes as if they were resulting from bad causation (or at least almost always), and we should probably always treat people as accountable for the good they do. This seems reasonable. But I am not offering a real, solid philosophical argument here - just what I think will be practical and less likely to cause problems in the grander scheme of things.

Instead, my question of free will is not starting at the social level, but the intensely personal level. Do I have free will? I am asking this for all of us, in a sense. Do all of us, personally, privately, have free will? Is this concept possible? We must admit that as humans, it doesn't seem that we are completely free. Things seem to impinge our "wills" all the time - whatever a "will" is. If what we want is so often difficult to obtain, even sometimes against ourselves, then we can't possibly be completely free. So, we must decide whether we think free will is at all possible.

Personally, I find individual responsibility to be extremely important. I feel very responsible, and it seems too deeply rooted, to common sensical a position to relinquish on the grounds of any philosophical argument. The feeling of responsibility I get at having made a mistake is simply too overwhelming for me to dismiss as an illusion of poorly understood causation. I will assume, therefore, that my feeling of responsibility is pointing towards something real. If responsibility is real, then I can be held accountable; if I can be held accountable, then somehow I am acting in a way determined by me, not by outside forces, bad upbringing, bad circumstances, etc. Somehow, some way, I act freely.

Here is the argument against free will:

1. If we are completely caused, we cannot be free. If one hundred million different factors go into causing my actions, then all of those different variables make me act. It is not me who acts, as it were, but my causes which form me into myself. My genetics, my environment, my imbedded beliefs, and so forth. Therefore, to be wholly caused is to be wholly unfree.

2. If we are partially random, we are still not free. The part of us that is caused is not free because it was determined by circumstances prior; the part of us that is not caused and happens sporadically is not free because by definition randomness means 'lack of control.' If I act randomly, without my own consent, I am not responsible. Imagine, for example, if suddenly your body started ignoring your mental commands and started killing people against your will. This would be random, perhaps, but not free in any sense. Therefore, randomness is in no sense more free than causation.

This, I admit, is a forceful, amazingly succinct argument, probably the cleanest philosophical point ever made. But, it stands so diametrically opposed to our experience. Whenever I act according to my will, I feel that I am doing so freely. Sometimes, I act against my will; sometimes I act because of forces within me I that make me feel unfree, but I feel as if my freedom is being impinged by my own nature, not that I do not have freedom in those moments. Somehow, we must reconcile our intense perception of freedom with our rational argument above. Our options are to either say that "free will" is an illusion caused by our lack of understanding of causation, and perhaps randomness, which goes into our behavior, or that somehow, inspite of our understanding of causation and randomness, we are still free.

Our challenge, then, is to, somehow, show that free will is neither caused nor random. This is an almost ridiculous challenge. How can anything, at all, be neither caused nor random? I believe I have an answer, though it will come later. All I will do in this blog is list, in order, the arguments for free will I will be presenting here.

1. The Nature of Experience Argument: "That hurt!" "No, it didn't!"

2. The Nature of Qualia Argument: "This is what blue feels like."

3. The Romantic Argument: Coleridge's Imagination

4. The God Argument (Not what you think, I promise!)

5. The Metaphysical Argument: Possibility, Probability, Actuality

With these five arguments, I hope to prove that the case against free will has been weakened. I feel that all of these arguments have valid points and make it so that the idea of hard determinism is perhaps less certain than it is usually presented as. Generally forms of #1 and #4 are highlighted by Free Will Defenders, though my form is slightly different than what you're probably used to. Anyway, I hope they will be enjoyable.

Quickly, I want to mention that there are other kinds of arguments for free will. None of them satisfy me, and so I will not be going into depth on them here. The most interesting, perhaps, is the "cognitively closed" argument: that perhaps our minds can't graps HOW we are free, even though we can grasp that we ARE free, just like we can't grasp the WHOLE of infinity, but we can grasp the IDEA of infinity. Another is the idea that it is impossible to, while making a choice, also believe that we are not free: "Hmm, what choice shall I make? Butter, or margarine? Of course, what I will choose is determined by causal forces, but, still . . . Hmmm . . . Which shall I choose?" These arguments are interesting, so far as they go, but they are really only variants of #1 and do not at all tackle the main argument presented by hard determinists. My five arguments, at least some of them, intend to do so, or at least to prove that such a thing is not necessary to defend free will.

I will be posting #1 soon, probably in the next day or so. Take care!

The Four-Lettered Word

Should you smilingly tell even a casual friend to f-off, he will probably smirk and let it slide. Flip a co-worker the bird in a joking context, as long as no manager sees you, you're fine. But if you have made a good friend, and you use this four-lettered word, watch out.

The word is "love." I do not understand why a word so essential to the human experience, to who we are and what we do, has become anathema. I believe ardently in the Greek word for love among all humans, "agape." And yet, it is more acceptable to swear in public than to tell a friend that you love him or her. This seems like a heinous crime to me.

I spend my days reading the words of the greatest minds in the world, who in many cases ostensibly wrote out of love. The sole purpose for their agonistic endeavors, I would imagine, even if they wouldn't phrase it in such a way, is that they loved humanity and felt they should share what insights they had found. To be a student of literature is to dedicate yourself to the echoes of love; to be an academic is to try and peer into the hearts of brilliant minds. That love that should be shared between all people, that should warm us inside, that should make us feel connected even to the random stranger on the other side of the world, that is a love we all acknowledge in private, when we sit and watch people walking on a sunny day.

But to actually say it, to form the words to another person, is maybe "too intimate" for them to handle. Why? I just want to know: Why can't humans express that basic, unmotivated compassion without it being turned into something grotesque? I remember once telling my stepfather over the phone that I loved him, and my coworker acted as if I had done something bizarre, even wrong. It's an attitude that catches me off guard because, well, isn't that the point of being on this planet? Aren't we supposed to seek a sort of intimacy with our human family? Isn't that what makes us beautiful, more than just animals, that makes the dark and painful halls of life bearable, worth it?

Emersonian discourse demands that we be open, that we speak ourselves. I've found it dangerous to be Emersonian in my lifetime. Being open leaves you vulnerable, and when people get a good glimpse into an open person, they are scared that they, too, might have to be open. I could take one route, and stop being Emersonian, stop being open to others with my honest perceptions. I could. But "the doctrine of hate must counteract the doctrine of love, when that pules and whines." Well, the doctrine of love is puling and whining: Love, it is saying, just don't have the balls to say it.

Well, screw that. I will not be a coward. I will not be afraid to tell someone I care about them. This is not a sin, not a travesty. This is why we're here. This is part and parcel of the reason God made us, I believe, and if you don't believe in God, well, all the more reason to find sanctity in love. Real love, not eros, not familia, but agape: the love for each other's humanity, that is the key to a better world. If you're reading this, I challenge you: let others know you care. They might not like it at first, but if they're willing to be brave and open up, take them by the hand and show them a world that isn't calloused and cold, but real and filled with compassion.

Love is not a swear word.

The Past

We recreate the past as something new: in novels, plays, video games. Sometimes it is a literal recreation of the past, sometimes it is an imagined future modeled on the past. We judge today against a pretended yesterday, and wish for good old days. Spenser took his world, one of Calvinists and Catholics, dressed it up in knights and dragons and casltes, and called it history. Virgil looked to a fallen nation to tell the story of a rising empire. One myth about human creation wasn't enough for ovid; he needed two.

The past is not a thing that once was, and its stories are not inflexible because they've already happened. The past is the newest, most important news, and going backwards in time is the smartest place to look for the next step forward. We don't dream up the past arbitrarily; we grow it, water it. The present is not a point on a line, but a branch on a living tree. The roots then bring the substance to flowers now.

Our age is one which mistrusts tradition. It is suspicious of the old and rooted. There is some good to that, for progression cannot have a fixation on the past. But institutions of the past link us to the soil of history that feeds new thought. Look at the most creative, original minds: their brains are fevered, more often than not, with something brilliantly ancient. We cannot discard the past or its influences anymore than our heads can discard our feet and knees. We mustn't stare dumbly at our feet, though, in wonderment of their design. We get new shoes, we go to foot doctors, so that we can better use our body's foundation. Just as we don't ignore our limbs for the sake of better movement, we must never ignore the stories of history, tradition and imagination with the illusion that this will better humanity.

Mythic Echoes and Disassociation

Mythic Echoes and Disassociation:
The Tower of Babel and the Achaean Wall

“The Deluge and the Golden Age are myth; it is doubtless through an extensive series of modifications that echoes of the myths have become poetry.” Ruth Scodel 50

Opening with this closing remark from Scodel, I hope to highlight the fact that myth is by no means static, but a fluid, ongoing human production still in discourse today. The works of Homer have often been called the “Greek Bible.” Considering the historical importance of these texts, the analogy is not a bad one. However, they are not merely cultural counterparts. Each work has its own unique poise, and while both function as conveyers of myth, they are not identical or wholly equivocal. Through one story of The Iliad, specifically the destruction of the Achaean fortifications, and one of Genesis, the destruction of the tower of Babel. I want to examine this relationship. While these bear thematic relevance to one another, I believe they hint at something crucial to the disparity of the texts. They share a moral impetus: human pride gets no divine favor. They share the perceived result of such pride: their efforts will be scattered. What they do not share, however, is the explanatory impulse more peculiar to, though certainly not isolated to, the Bible. The analogous dialogue of myths with each other is dealt extensively in Laura Slatkin’s The Power of Thetis, a theme highly relevant not only to studies of Homer but also to the Bible: “As with rearrangements of formulas or themes, alternative combinations of the features of a myth are possible and equally legitimate, the choices serving to reveal the framework imposed on its subject matter by traditional genre requirements of heroic epics” (Slatkin 3). Just as myths cognate to Homer within his own culture can be useful to enriching a reading of Homer, Slatkin’s impetus to cross-examine myths thematically can be equally useful when considering mythopoesis across cultures. This premise is a driving factor of the following analysis.

The process of drawing these two bodies of myth together is, of course, already underway. In “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction,” Ruth Scodel examines the very same place in Homer that I am; that is, the anger of Poseidon at the building of the Achaean fortifications. She argues that “The Trojan War functions as a myth of destruction,” tying this to the deluge in Genesis, but also to other myths, such as the flood alluded to in The Epic of Gilgamesh, and some Babylonian myths (Scodel 39-42). She traces nicely this theme of destruction, discussing how the mythic map of Homer fills out and is supplemented by that of the Bible. Of course, her work is not exhaustive, nor is it meant to be; much like Slatkin’s short book, it merely seeks to flesh out similarities and relations of thought between two mythic bodies, in my opinion to encourage further exploration of both texts. Scodel herself notes that while the story of the Achaean wall resonates with the tale of the flood in Genesis, it is not a perfect correlation because “A war, no matter how long and how bitter, does not seem calamitous enough to have been an original form of the myth of destruction; it is, moreover, a normally human and local activity, to be explained historically, rather than a divine visitation. It therefore seems likely that this mythic aspect of the Trojan War is secondary, and that the theme has actually been borrowed from the Deluge” (Scodel 42-43).

I agree entirely that the Deluge myth reverberates strongly in the background of the story; it is the god of the ocean who threatens the wall, after all, and just as Jehovah threatens his world with destruction for its wickedness, so Poseidon is wrathful over the Achaeans’ shortcomings. However, there is a locality, as Scodel notes, which somewhat diminishes the scene in Homer from that in Genesis, so that while the Achaean wall is an echo of the Deluge myth tradition, it is a descendent myth rather than a contemporary one, in terms of mythological narrative. I think that the story of the Tower of Babel, therefore, is a somewhat more analogous story to the invective against the Achaean wall. It, in an even more explicit way, follows after a Deluge myth (indeed, is only a few pages later) and contains echoes of the myth it follows (a similar theme of destruction and punishment). Yet, like the story in Homer, the Tower of Babel’s recounting is given a locality, circumscribing it to a more specific mythic space, whereas the Deluge in both texts is an overwhelming, almost universal presence. In short, I believe that these two stories are in equal debt to Scodel’s conception of the “myth of destruction.”

There is one other, brief point of departure between my aims here and Scodel’s. Her purpose is more exclusively to trace the way in which Biblical myth resonates and echoes with Homer’s. Of course, that interest is very much a driving force in this discussion. She also briefly discusses a disassociation of Homeric myth from Near Eastern roots near the end of her essay, though she does not take this theme very far. It is my hope, however, to take it a step further. Just as cross-examining the myths for relationships of thoughts and themes is important, comprehending disparities in cultural poise is also important. For this reason, I will be concluding with an analysis of where the myths in question seem to come apart.

Doubtlessly, the action of these scenes is easily drawn together. In book seven of The Iliad, the Achaeans build a funeral pyre, and then construct fortifications around it. Poseidon is angered by this, and goes to Zeus demanding to know, “is there any mortal left on the wide earth who will still declare to the immortals his mind and his purpose?” (180). Zeus partially rebukes him for being so concerned about his station as a god, but agrees that the wall must go. And indeed, later in the story this happens. Similarly, in chapter 11 of Genesis we are told that people of Shinar began constructing a wall together. Their rationale for this tower partially has its roots in defense; they build it for fear that “we may be scattered over all the surface of the earth,” but interestingly the primary one they voice is not pragmatic at all: “Let us build ourselves a city and also a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a celebrated name for ourselves” (New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures, Gen. 11:4). The degree to which this echoes the words of Poseidon is astounding: “Now the fame of this will last as long as dawnlight is scattered” (Iliad 180). It is the fame of their tower that eggs on the people of Shinar, and the potential fame of the Achaeans’ wall which angers Poseidon. Indeed, it is not mere vanity which invokes divine wrath, but the forgetting of one’s place on the part of the humans. The Achaians have not sacrificed to Poseidon, and their work rivals that of the sea god and Apollo. The people of Shinar wish to “reach the heavens,” and as Jehovah says, they think there “is nothing that they may have in mind to do that will be unattainable for them” (Genesis 11:6).

The punishment for this transgression of hubris is very similar. Zeus tells Poseidon to “break their wall to pieces and scatter it into the salt sea and pile again the beach deep under the sands and cover it; so let the great wall of the Achaeans go down to destruction” (Iliad 180). Jehovah does not scatter the Tower in the passage in Genesis, but scatters its builders. And his scattering is far deeper: he scatters their ideas by causing their language to become mixed up. It may seem that the Biblical punishment is more severe than the Homeric one, but we must remember too that the people of Shinar were transgressing on a much grander scale, and intentionally, while the act of the Achaians could very well have been mere oversight. Indeed, if we doubt that Zeus would not respond with equal ferocity to mortal transgressions into divine jurisdiction to Jehovah’s, we need only remember his words to the gods during the Trojan battle:
“And anyone I perceive against the gods’ will attempting to go among the Trojans and help them, or among the Danaans, he shall go whipped against his dignity back to Olympos; or I shall take him and dash him down to the murk of Tartaros, far below, where the uttermost depth of the pit lies under earth, where there are gates of iron and a brazen doorstone, as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies. Then he will see how far I am the strongest of all the immortals.” (Iliad 182) Certainly, Zeus does not take kindly to insubordination, and in fact this aggressive assertion of his will follows directly after the transgression of the Achaeans and the supplication of Poseidon.

The similarities and contrasts of these scenes could likely fill many volumes, but I wish to focus on only one disparity. This is the fact that the two gods are in dialogue with each other, whereas Jehovah speaks in dialogue, but seems alone in the text. He uses words like “Look!” and “us”! That the writer chose to use God’s words as dialogue implies a listener: but who is that listener? Angels? Himself? It cannot be another “god” in the Homeric sense. Now, scholars have dealt with this theologically, but in terms of literary analysis, the effect is singular. It brings the reader into the text: God is, in fact, talking to us. The action of the text becomes, therefore, present. And indeed, we get explanations from the story which are pertinent to the present: how we came to be a race of many languages, and the name of the place where it happened, ‘Babel.’ The action of Homer’s tale does not do this. We are told nothing about what effect Zeus’ decree against the wall did to change our lives. The action of Homer’s story, therefore, at least in this moment, serves to further only the action of Homer’s story. This is not to say that his story is not pertinent to the audience; certainly, the moral content could be of great interest either to his contemporaries or to us. And yet, the moral concerns are cast as specific to the moment. Their present-day value is left for the reader or listener to consider, if they do so at all. But for readers of Genesis, the connection of the text to their present day is unavoidable.

Works Cited
Homer. The Iliad. Trans. Richard Lattimoore. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1951.
New World Bible Translation Committee. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures. Pennsylvania: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1984.
Slatkin, Laura. The Power of Thetis. California: University of California Press, 1994.
Scodel, Ruth. “The Achaean Wall and the Myth of Destruction.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology. Vol. 86, pp. 33-50. Massachusetts: Harvard University, 1982.

Clarification of the Problem of Good

It has been mentioned to me that my argument that an atheist cannot assert objective morality in order to disprove God does not seem to hold water. I want to quickly elucidate this point.

Let's look at the Problem of Evil as usually presented.

1. There is evil.

2. God exists.

3. God is all-good.

4. God is all-powerful.

5. These premises imply a contradiction because a good being tries to end evil. Therefore, God cannot be all good and all powerful, because obviously he has not eliminated evil.

There are two problems if this is the argument the atheist is using. First of all, this does not disprove God. It only disproves his being both all-good and all-powerful, or attempts to do so. There are pantheons in certain religions which certainly have such gods. This, however, is not my point.

The Problem of Good is as follows.

1. There is evil in the world.

2. Either evil is objective or subjective.

3. If evil is subjective, then the atheist cannot use it to disprove God's goodness or power. The very nature of subjective is to say that it is specific to human experience and response; if evil is only a matter of subjective experience and no objective morality gives rise to it, then it is not a 'fact' in the way the atheist needs it to be. In short, the Problem of Evil needs evil to be an objective fact. Because objective claims cannot be made against the postulated objective good and powerful qualities of God from a subjective experience. Put another way, we cannot say that the sun is not bright based on the fact that I am not looking at it. Even if we say it is the experience of human vision which makes the sun bright, then we can say that the sun is subjectively bright. We can not say anything from it of the objective brightness if we argue that the experience of brightness is merely subjective. Similarly, if we say that evil is subjective, then we cannot use it to postulate about the objective nature of God.

4. If evil is objectively true, then so is the good. For I take evil to mean either "that which fails to be good in some way" or "that which opposes the good in some way." Evil necessarily implies good, because the first is defined in terms of the second. Good is a standard, evil is a type of deviation from that standard.

5. If this is the case, then good must also objectively exist. We cannot say now that good is a subjective truth and evil an objective one, because one is derived from the other. Either morality is subjective or not. We are following the thread of not.

6. If it can be said that the good exists, then we can say that the unexplainable exists. By the very nature of the atheist's invective, it is the unexplainable aspect of evil which stands against the power and goodness of God. Often it is said by these thinkers that "Such senseless evil denies the existence of God." But by their admission, evil is outside of logic. In this way, good is also outside of logic. By outside I do not necessarily mean that we cannot understand what is good and evil through logic, but only that the existence of good and evil cannot be explained by it. How individual cases come to be are one thing; it is the objective reality of both which is unexplainable.

7. If we hold that good is as senseless as evil, in the sense that we cannot understand it, then we cannot logically connect the senseless evil to the senseless good in such a way to disprove the existence of the good. In this case, the good is God. Senseless evil cannot be used against senseless good by the very fact that both are senseless.

8. Should we say, however, that good and evil are not senseless but entirely apprehendable, we stil must contend with the fact that the good exists. If it does exist objectively, then we must see that it exists outside of subjective humanity. In what sense does the good exist? Does it exist like a number or a philosophical point? In what senses do these things exist? These are difficult questions, but I don't think we need to answer them to see why now the problem of evil fails. If the good indeed exists objectively, then it exists objectively regardless of evil's existence.

9. In short, we can say: Objective evil implies objective good. Objective good is outside of human subjectvity, and so cannot be contained or limited by evil, for this is what it means to exist. Just as evil implies good, it is good from which evil is understood, so the objective good is seen to be higher. Based on the reality of any evil, the reality of any good cannot be disproved; in fact, belief in its existence should only be made stronger.

10. By objective good, I mean God. As I see it, there is no difference whatsoever between these terms. Whatever the objective good is, that is God. We may not understand goodness, and so we may not understand God, but these terms are identical. Whatever goodness is in its purest form, that is God. Of course this does not clarify what God looks like, but that is not the issue here. We do not need to know anything further than that God is the good.

Another point: the argument that objective good does not need God fails. The morality we articulate is a subjective attempt to capture the objective. Utilitarianism makes happiness God; but utilitarianism is itself cannot create the happiness nor deny that happiness is God. If happiness is the greatest good, then happiness is God. The idea that there can be an ethics without God is simply a misunderstanding of what 'ethics' and 'God' mean.

The Problem of Good

This is the style most of these blogs will take. They are rants, not formulaic arguments. I hope my ideas are helpful to you.

It is an odd turn of the argument that people would use unexplainable evil as a proof against unexplainable good. A vision of true evil, of something wrong, can never disprove God, because if ‘wrong’ is a real thing, then so is ‘right,’ and so, the good exists. And only by admitting an objective morality can the atheist use the problem of Evil against God. But objective morality is, no more and no less, the stuff of God. You might as well disprove the sun by saying that it is too bright to look upon.

Evil, therefore, exists because of good. To remove evil, so must good be removed. But goodness is the point. Goodness is why we are here. So we cannot strike at the good, even if it seems it might remove the evil. Because no matter how terrible evil might get, if we let it destroy the good that created it, then it will win. This happens, you see, in religion. The aim of religion is the good, which is why, of course, it causes, or helps to cause, so much evil. Religion is the art of loving God; but once you have taught someone the highest love, they can then learn the lowest hatred.

To a man dying of cancer, having a needle pierce his skin is very little trouble. To a healthy man, it is a pain he would fight if he believed he did not need it. A very evil man does little good, but a very good man gone a little wrong will do very evil things. Just as a healthy body feels a little pain more acutely than a sickly one, so a good soul is more corrupted by a little evil than a wretched one. If you turn the strength of a strong man to evil things, he will kill many more than a weak man. But strength is a goodness, not an evil. It is only with the increased goodness of strength that it might become so deadly.

So it is the very goodness of religion which makes it so powerful a tool of evil. The key then is not to take away goodness to prevent evil, but to teach it. A strong man, a smart woman, these are good things. We do not kill them to stop the evil they might produce, but teach them better ways so that they can use their powers for marvelous things. Tolerance, humility and free discourse must be taught in every religion, even the secular ones which claim not to be religions (but they are, for they are interested in promoting their vision of good, which is another way of saying “religion), knowing that those will rise who will preach intolerance, arrogance and tyranny.

Let the tyrants speak, but do not let them fool you into thinking that their evil would have any strength without the goodness they attack. They will blame goodness for evil and strength for weakness, and their attack on religious freedom will be a crusade, their invective against spirituality will be a homily. Persecution is an evil whose strength will only be lost when the religious and the secular realize that God does not want us to be right at the expense of love. Any truth which promotes hatred is a lie, and mistakes the evil for the good which gives it power.

Discussing Spanozian Pantheism possibly reconciled with Christianity

The Possibility of a Spinozian Christianity

Baruch Spinoza writes to prove a total pantheism in which God is the universe. His argument attempts to eliminate a supernatural creator of the world, and instead assert that the universe results from God’s necessary principles, manifested in cause and effect. This eliminates the possibility of anthropomorphizing God, and destroys the notion of worship. However, I will argue that Spinoza’s scheme leaves room for the possibility of a special mode which operates as the more traditional sense of “God,” and that this special mode is not only compatible with Spinoza’s overall argument, but also with the Christian worldview, as well as other religions which anthropomorphize God.
These are the premises of Spinoza’s argument. First, he argues that two separate substances can have no attributes in common. This is because he defines a substance as that which can be thought of on its own: “each substance must be in itself and be conceived through itself; that is, the conception of the one does not involve the conception of the other” (Spinoza 32). Take, for example, an ice cube. What makes it a separate substance (we will see this is wrong, but for the sake of argument) is the fact that it can be imagined as existing with nothing else in the universe. However, if two objects share an attribute, then to imagine one object a person must also imagine the other object sharing that attribute. As a result, these two objects are actually one substance, because if they were two they would not share any attributes.
Furthermore, separate substances can have no interaction. This follows from the fact that if there are to be really two substances, they could have nothing in common, and for if there were anything in common they would share an attribute. It is only by sharing this common attribute that one can affect the other; but if they are separate attributes they can have nothing common between them Therefore, there can be no interaction between separate substances. One can think of here the problem of Descartes’ substance dualism. If the mind is really distinct from the body, many materialists argue, then how can it affect the body? The mind/body problem thus becomes a great example of the sort of strange incomprehensibility in the idea of two separate substances interacting.
Spinoza continues on to argue that there can only be a single substance in the universe, since there can not be multiple substances of the same attribute (you could not tell them apart) and one substance cannot create another substance (after all, creation is interaction of a sort, and one substance creating another would be interaction. But interaction between separate substances has been disproven) ( 33). Spinoza argues that by substance, we mean that which exists, and therefore substances must exist. And he argues that the substance would have to be infinite, for if a substance is to be somehow limited it would have to be by another substance. But since separate substances cannot interact, all substances must be infinite, and since there is only one substance, it must be an infinite one.
Traditionally, God has been defined by Medievalists as an infinite substance possessing the greatest attributes. As has been argued above, from Spinoza, the one substance is infinite, and since it is the only substance, it must necessarily possess all attributes in the universe, since there are no substances to hold other attributes. This definition of substance is the same definition of God. Therefore, substance is God, and God is the universe. Stated another way, God is the infinite substance of the universe which possesses all possible attributes.
The question, of course, is how the universe looks so complicated if there is only one substance. He begins to answer this by positing that the infinite substance of God has all attributes. His next step is to explain that there are, in a sense, two levels to the attributes of God. There is first the basic, eternal nature of God which never changes, and which underlies the entire universe. “All things, I repeat, are in God, and all things that follow from the necessity of his essence (as I shall later show)” (43). There are then the laws of cause and effect, which come from God’s second level, the necessity of cause and effect: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinite things in infinite ways (modis), (that is, everything that can come within the scope of infinite intellect).” So there is the highest level of necessity, where attributes of God cannot change. Then there are secondary attributes of God, modes, which change and manifest every possible thought of the “infinite intellect.” All of these modes are the single substance, but they are simply shaped, one could say, in a different way. So God is everything in the universe; each mode is part of the same substance, manifesting a different set of secondary attributes. This is, as I understand it, Baruch Spinoza’s pantheism.
Importantly, during all of this Spinoza is dismissing the idea of a supernatural being which can change the flow of cause and effect. After all, if God is the universe, then it does not make sense to think of God as poking the universe with his divine power. God does not cause the earth to rotate; the earth is part of God, and that part of God must necessarily rotate. This calls into question the Medieval assumption that God orders the universe: “Indeed, they hold it as certain that God himself directs everything to a fixed end; for they say that God has made everything for man’s sake and has made man so that he should worship God” (57). It does not make sense, according to Spinoza, to anthropomorphize God as actively ordering the universe in a Leibnizian way, because God simply is God, and if the universe is God, then God does not need to change the universe; in fact, God cannot change the universe. All God does is be the infinite substance, the eternal qualities which manifest as temporal modes.
There is a second reason why anthropomorphizing no longer makes sense in Spinoza’s world view. Humans are only one possible mode of God; there is an infinite possibility of other modes. Humanity is not an essential attribute of God, but only a secondary, temporal mode. It would then be wrong to ascribe human traits to God because the only part of God that is human is humanity itself. It would be like describing an entire car in terms of its steering wheel, and whenever a new part of the car is discussed, one tries to use terms which arise from studying the steering wheel, or depicting the car itself as one large steering wheel. This obviously makes no sense. Similarly, describing humanity does not describe many other possible modes of God, and it also does not describe the eternal, essential, necessary attributes of God. For these two reasons, God as Spinoza defines it should not be anthropomorphized.
However, Spinoza overlooks a possibility which his system could allow for: God is not the eternal attributes, but could be a special mode which shapes the substance into other modes. This argument could defend any version of theism, from monotheistic traditions to polytheistic ones. Zeus, Odin, and Thor could be especially juiced up modes which are filled with more attributes of greatness, power, and temporal existence than other modes. It seems logically possible, at least, that the essential attributes could somehow manifest themselves into such modes, which are greater than ordinary modes. Perhaps this is all that could be meant by the word “god”: modes which are notably more powerful or influential than ordinary modes. After all, the heat of the sun is simply a greater mode of fire than the heat in my electric fireplace. I can imagine quite easily a humanlike mode which is vastly more powerful than the ordinary human mode, and could in fact imagine that mode desiring to hurt me, protect me, save me, etc.
Of all religions, this is especially compatible with Hinduism. Hinduism, as taught in the Upanishads, teaches that there are many gods which are actually manifestations of the essential powerhouse of the universe, Brahma. Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna and so forth are indeed gods; they are modes of Brahma that proceed out of, and yet are a piece of, that energy source. Similar ideas could be applied to paganism, to the Greek, Norse, or Roman pantheons.
In a moment, I will turn to discussing this idea in terms of Christianity. First, I want to mention the fact that Spinoza attempts to give no account of how the eternal attributes of God are moved into modes. In other words, why is it that the substance of God starts a chain of cause and effect which manifests itself in different temporal modes? A possible answer is that within the substance, there was a mode that already existed. This could be a sort of special mode, which began the chain of cause and effect, and perhaps has the power to interact with those modes later on. This special mode would be very different from the other modes. First of all, to explain its uniqueness, it would have to be the first mode to exist, and would have to exist forever, in order to actively create new modes out of its substance. This would not necessarily have to be eternal existence. Medievalists make a distinction between eternal and everlasting. Eternal is always existing because it is outside of time; everlasting is always existing, but within time. Perhaps this special mode which causes and interacts with the lesser modes is such a thing. It could be a mode which always existed, always manifested its attributes, but also has temporal existence.
We don’t have to stop here in describing this possible mode. Not only could it be an everlasting mode, it could be the best mode. Like with the sun and the fireplace example, which are according to Spinoza modes, I can imagine modes having degrees of goodness, power, and so forth. If that is the case, I can also imagine a “best” mode of the eternal substance. I can imagine a mode which has always existed, a mode which is stronger than all other modes, a mode which is smarter than all others, and in general has more and better perfections than any other modes. These could all be secondary attributes, manifesting out of the essential attributes into this imaginable “best” mode.
This can perhaps reinstate the traditional notion of God, though in a pantheist sense. What we mean by God could be the best mode of a single substance, and we are modes of the same substance, but simply manifested at a lower level of greatness. We are lesser because unlike this initial mode, we do not have the secondary attribute of being everlasting, nor that of omnipotence, omniscience, and the rest.
This could reinstate many of the traditional conceptions of God which Spinoza had first rejected. Spinoza admits that when we have the mode of God food, we are thankful that this mode of God is here for our advantage. To a greater degree, we are thankful for the mode of God we call the sun, because that mode is even more to our advantage than any food in particular. So the more good a mode does for us, the more thankful we are that God manifests in this way.
But it is possible that this special, initial mode, what I will call the Demiurge, to take a term from Plato, could be responsible for the existence of all other modes. It is a principle of logic that one thing which causes another is at least equal to, and is probably greater than, what it produces. So if a tree, a mode of God, produces a seed, also a mode of God, that seed is a lesser mode of God. In a sense, the seed owes its existence to the tree. Ultimately they both owe their existence to the essential attributes of God, but the seed seems to be also dependent upon the tree. Similarly, one can think of the Demiurge as the first, everlasting tree of God’s essential attributes, which produces the cause and effect “seeds” of the universe. It is, at the very least, logically possible that, within Spinoza’s system, such a mode as the Demiurge exists. Like the first tree, this Demiurge would be a greater mode than all modes which proceed it, and in fact, if it is the first and greatest of the modes, then the universe could in fact depend on it in a causal sense. The essential attributes of God, the essential attributes of the one substance, would still be more essential than the Demiurge, but just as the tree is essential to the seed, so the Demiurge could be essential to the universe in terms of causal necessity.
In effect, the theory of a Spinozian Demiurge saves Christianity, while retaining Spinoza’s pantheism. It is possible that the Yahweh, or Jehovah, is the Spinozian Demiurge of the Scriptures. After all, it says “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” There is nothing stating either way how this was done, nor exactly what was meant by “God.” It could have meant that there was this prime, greatest mode which proceeded to create all other modes in causal necessity, according to the essential attributes. This restores a great portion of Christian theology without destroying the pantheism. It may refute the notion of creation ex nihilo, but that doctrine is post-Scripture. God can still order the universe; he’s only doing it within the essential attributes which are both a part of him and the modes he is helping to create. This retains the notion of God as the greatest possible thing; he is greater than all other modes. Also, God can be worshipped, because he can still be the cause of all other modes, including humanity. For as has been mentioned, if we can be thankful that food is edible, we can be thankful that the Demiurge has shaped us into the modes that we are, and shaped many other modes to be beneficial to us.
Finally, this restores the ability to anthropomorphize “God.” Perhaps, as has been argued earlier, we cannot anthropomorphize “God” in the sense of “the essential attributes of the infinite substance,” or in the sense of “all the modes which comprise the infinite substance.” However, perhaps the Demiurge can be anthropomorphized. After all, as C.S. Lewis argues, humanlike personality is a great making attribute, intuitively, not a lessening one. He points out: “they say that God is beyond personality, [but] really think of Him as impersonal: that is, something less than personal” (160). That is to say, removing personality hardly makes God “beyond” personality.
We could take for an example a triangle. A triangle is a more complicated notion than a line. However, one will not say that since lines are less complicated than triangles, that triangles must not be made of lines. To the contrary, what makes a triangle greater is its inclusion of the line. Similarly, a pyramid is greater than a triangle because it includes many triangles, and a square, and lines, and other attributes. So, the Demiurge would in fact be greater if among its secondary attributes it also contained something like human personality, because it would have an added dimension, which would make it greater, not lesser. This vindicates the Scriptural notion that God “made man in his image,” and makes possible a certain degree of anthropomorphization, if by God we mean this notion of a Spinozian Demiurge.
I have summarized the argument of Spinoza, which argues that there is only one substance and that all things are modes of that individual substance. Then I have argued that his system overlooks the possibility of a greatest mode, which could be what we mean when we say “God.” This permits a connectedness between all modes through a single substance, while making possible reconciliation between pantheism and Christianity, insofar as Spinoza’s system is constructed.
Works Cited
Spinoza, Baruch. Ethics: An Emendation of the Human Intellect.

Lewis. C.S. Mere Christianity. Ed. Kathleen Norris. San Francisco: HarperSanFransisco, 1952.