In a discussion at Theology Unleashed, neuropsychologist Mark Solms admits that life is “miraculous” and sees Baruch Spinoza’s God, embedded in nature, as the ultimate explanation:
So the funny thing is that [you were] motivated, as I was, by puzzling about these profound questions. The particular one at issue being, how come I am a body? What is the relationship between me, this subjective being, and this object. I puzzled about it, pondering it, looking at the question in relation to neuroscientific observations and so on. I was eventually led in the mid 1990s — in fact I wrote a paper about it in ‘97 — to this view that I sketched in a very rough and ready way some minutes ago, which is that there are two appearances. [01:02:30]
The actual thing called “Mark Solms” is neither his subjective experience nor his body. He’s something that unites the two and lies behind both surfaces. And he is not just the appearance, he’s something deeper than that. I was then sort of surprised and disappointed to discover this was not some great insight that I had forged. It was an ancient philosophy that belongs to Spinoza or was articulated most clearly initially by Spinoza. And you will know better than anyone, Michael, Spinoza’s view on these theistic questions that you are touching on. I mean he was a deeply spiritual man. And he saw all of this as that this… We are of God, we are… All of us, the whole universe is the expression of God…
Michael Egnor: Sure. One of the things I really love about Thomism is that it rather nicely combines [that with] the profundity of Spinoza insights. And I have a lot of respect for Spinoza… he’s been the inspiration for a lot of scientists. I mean Einstein commented that the God he believed in was Spinoza’s God so Spinoza fits very nicely into natural science. Spinoza had a lot of very deep insights, the Thomistic view fits in with that, I think, in many very nice ways.
News, “Einstein believed in Spinoza’s God. Who is that God?” at Mind Matters News (December 5, 2021)
Takehome: In a discussion with Solms, neurosurgeon Michael Egnor argues that it makes more sense to see God as a Person than as a personification of nature.
So, double bill: Egnor and Solms: What does it mean to say God is a Person?
Mark Solms and Michael Egnor discuss and largely agree on what we can rationally know about God, using the tools of reason:
Michael Egnor: St. Thomas and Boethius said that there were some things that we could know about God, that God is not totally unknowable. The first thing we can know about God is what he is not. That is, God is not a piece of matter, he’s not finite, he’s not evil. He’s not mortal.
We can know about God by his effects, by what’s created in the world — with the assumption that whatever is created in the world is in some way an aspect of God that is reflected in his creation. And we can know about God by analogy that is that we can say for example, that God is infinitely powerful. Although the term “power” really can’t describe something that is transcendent, power is something that we understand in our universe. It’s like something infinitely powerful. [01:12:00]
When you look at the effects of God in the world, I think the most remarkable effect is our personhood, our subjectivity. The fact that we are persons leads me — and I think has led a lot of theologians — to say, “That’s because God is a Person.” That’s where our personhood comes from. We’re the small case I am and he is the big case I AM.
So I think Spinoza had a lot of things very right, and there’s a lot of consilience between his view of God as sort of being-in-everything and St. Augustine’s view that we are in God. But I think that the fact that we are persons means that God is a Person and that we are created in his image as persons.
News, “What does it mean to say God is a Person?” at Mind Matters News (December 5, 2021)
Takehome: Egnor argues that, if the most remarkable thing about us is our personhood (I am), it Makes sense to think of God as a Person (I AM).
Bonus: A neuropsychologist takes a crack at defining consciousness. Frustrated by reprimands for discussing Big Questions in neuroscience, Mark Solms decided to train as a psychoanalyst as well. As a neuropsychologist, he sees consciousness, in part, as the capacity to feel things, what philosophers call “qualia” — the redness of red.
The article says that Solms sees life as “miraculous.” The irony probably escapes Solms that one of the fundamental things about Spinoza’s thought is that he rejects miracles. The bedrock of both Spinoza’s pantheism and deism is rejection of (1) a personal God, (2) revealed truth or knowledge and (3) miracles.
There has been extensive debate for decades whether Spinoza was deist or pantheist. Part of the difficulty is historical; in Spinoza’s time, the universe was viewed as eternal, thus pantheism was perfectly consistent with that view of the universe, i.e., a “creator” was not necessary. It is argued that since acceptance of the Big Bang, pantheism has become less tenable in favor of deism. Either way, it is clear that Spinoza (and Einstein, if you look at his writings, some of which I believe I’ve posted at UD before) rejected the Judeo-Christian God (the ironic merger of Judaism and Christianity is not lost on me) and revealed biblical truth.
Spinoza was a very sensible person. I’m surprised more people here are not drawn to his thinking on these matters.
Meyer discusses pantheism in his book on the God Hypothesis.
Seversky
There actually has been a resurgence of interest in the last decade. One great book is:
The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World
by Matthew Stewart (2006)
It looks at the contrast between Leibniz who was a courtier of the House of Hanover (Germany) and advisor to Duke John Frederick of Brunswick. Leibniz had degrees out the wazoo and was the ultimate insider in the courts of Europe. He and Newton fought for years over who had actually invented calculus first.
Spinoza, was a Spanish Jew who grew up in Amsterdam, where he was issued a herem (excommunication) by the local Jewish leadership in his early 20s. Although the herem does not say, it is generally agreed that it resulted from his heretical views of the Hebrew God and Bible. He made his living as a lens maker and never had a formal education or position as a philosopher. After his death, his writings were banned by the Vatican.
Who he influenced reads like a who’s who of philosophers, scientists and intellectuals into the twentieth century. He had a huge influence on Thomas Jefferson who had most of Spinoza’s works in his library. Jefferson’s reference to “Nature’s God” in the Declaration of Independence is thought, by some, to be a hat-tip to Spinoza.
I hold that Einstein’s very own theories of relativity, especially his theory of Special Relativity, contradict Einstein’s non-belief about a personal God, and especially contradicts his non-belief about life after death.
But first a little background,
First off, “According to biographer Walter Isaacson, Einstein was more inclined to denigrate atheists than religious people.”
Secondly, although Einstein believed in Spinoza’s ‘abstract god’, who was ‘less than a person’,
And although Einstein also said that he “did not believe in life after death,,,, “one life is enough for me.””
… Although Einstein may not have personally believed in a personal God, nor believed in life after death, I hold that, besides the falsification of ‘realism’ in Quantum Mechanics contradicting Einstein’s non-belief in a personal God Who sustains this universe in its continual existence,,,
,,, besides the falsification of ‘realism’ in Quantum Mechanics contradicting Einstein’s non-belief in a personal God Who sustains this universe in its continual existence, I also hold that Einstein’s very own theories of relativity, especially his theory of Special Relativity, contradict Einstein’s non-belief about a personal God, and especially contradicts his non-belief about life after death.
Specifically, special relativity is based on a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space. In fact, the higher dimensional nature of special relativity was a discovery that was made by one of Einstein math professors in 1908 prior to Einstein’s elucidation of General Relativity in 1915. (In fact, in 1916 Einstein fully acknowledged his indebtedness to Minkowski)
Moreover, these four dimensional spacetimes that undergird both special relativity and general relativity are also comforting to overall Christian concerns in that they reveal two very different eternities to us. One eternity is found for a hypothetical observer who is going the speed of light, and another eternity is found for a hypothetical observer falling to the event horizon of a black hole.
Specifically, in Einstein’s special relativity we find that time passes differently for different ‘observers’ depending on how fast the observers are moving through space, “with time slowing to a stop as one, (an observer), approaches the speed of light .”
To grasp the whole ‘time slowing to a stop as one, (an observer), approaches the speed of light’ concept a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into e=mc2.
Moreover, the finding that time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light is very friendly to Theistic presuppositions about ‘eternity’ and/or ‘eternal life’.
As Dr. Richard Swenson noted in his book “More Than Meets The Eye”, “The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality. Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to know how tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass.”
Even Einstein himself indirectly alluded to the Theological significance of special relativity when he, upon the death of his close friend Michele Besso, stated, “For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
That time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light, and yet light moves from point A to point B in our universe, and thus light is obviously not ‘frozen within time’, has some fairly profound implications for us.
The only way it is possible for time not to pass for light, and yet for light to move from point A to point B in our universe, is if light is of a ‘higher dimensional’ value of time than the temporal time we are currently living in. Otherwise light would simply be ‘frozen within time’ from our temporal frame of reference.
One way for us to more easily understand this higher dimensional framework for time that light must necessarily exist in is to visualize what would happen if a hypothetical observer approached the speed of light.
In the first part of the following video clip, entitled ‘Optical Effects of Special Relativity”, a video which was made by two Australian University Physics Professors, we find that the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer approaches the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light.
To give us a better understanding as to what it would be like to exist in a higher dimension, this following video, Dr. Quantum in Flatland, also gives us a (very) small insight as to what it would be like for us to exist in a higher dimension:
Moreover, to further validate the Christian claim that the ‘higher eternal dimension’ of heaven is real, we don’t have to rely solely on our scientific evidence from special relativity. We can also reference the many testimonies of people who have died for a short while and come back. These testimonies are commonly referred to as Near Death Experiences (NDEs).
In the following video clip, Mickey Robinson gives his Near Death testimony of what it felt like for him to experience a ‘timeless eternity’.
And here are a few more quotes from people who have experienced Near Death, that speak of how their perception of time was radically altered as they were outside of their material body.
As well, Near Death Experiencers also frequently mention going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension:
In the following video, Barbara Springer gives her testimony as to what it felt like for her to go through the tunnel:
And in the following audio clip, (Vicki Noratuk, who has been blind from birth, and besides being able to see for the very first time during in her life during her Near Death Experience), also gives testimony of going through a tunnel to a higher heaven dimension:
And the following people who had a NDE both testify that they firmly believed that they were in a higher dimension that exists above this temporal realm and that the primary reason that they have a very difficult time explaining exactly what their Near Death Experiences felt like is because we simply don’t currently have the words to properly describe that higher dimension:
That what we now know to be true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, dimension that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDEs is, needless to say, powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true and that they are accurately describing the ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension, that they experienced first hand, and that they say exists above this temporal dimension.
I would even go so far as to say that such corroboration from ‘non-physicists’, who, in all likelihood, know nothing about the intricacies of special relativity, is a complete scientific verification of the overall validity of their personal NDE testimonies.
Thus in conclusion Einstein himself may not have personally believed in life after death, (nor in a personal God), but Special Relativity itself contradicts Einstein and offers stunning confirmation that Near Death Testimonies are accurate ‘physical’ descriptions of what happens after death, i.e. going to a ‘higher timeless/eternal dimension’, i.e. heavenly dimension, that exists above this temporal realm.
Verse: