Don't Let Them Take Our Spinoza Away

In the introduction to Richard Dawkins' excellent book The God Delusion, Dawkins drops the name of Baruch Spinoza and says something like, "pantheism is sexed-up atheism".  Somewhere in Hume's Treatise, he also refers to Spinonza as an atheist (derisively, by the way).

IMAO, nothing could be further from the truth.  Spinoza had God on his mind 24 hours a day.  True, Spinoza's God was not the traditional, "personal" God, but Spinoza describes an all-consuming love for this Being, kind of an unrequited love.

When I was discussing this with a friend of mine, he said, "OK, but Spinoza was a materialist."  This is also wrong IMAO.  Spinoza asserted that Mind and Matter are but two of an infinite number of dimensions.  This is very similar to what is nowadays called dualism, except with Spinoza's usual mystical twist.

Ironically, I think that Hume is often called an atheist himself, although I can't think of good examples right now.  IMAO, this is technically true, but somewhat misleading.  Hume was a skeptic about everything, not about God in particular.  He didn't believe in God any less than he believed, say, in his mother.