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Enlightenment
Baruch Spinoza believed that humans' actions and activities are not based on free will, but rather humans are moved to action and thought because he believed that nothing happens by mere chance. His rationale for believing as he does is the basis for this essay.
Free Will vs. Determinism
A review of what Spinoza believed is not the easiest thing to accomplish since some of what Spinoza puts forward is seemingly esoteric to the lay person or student engaged in research. But in researching Spinoza's philosophy, looking carefully at his positions, one can come to understand basically why he did not believe in free will. He believed that God, and God alone, is free to make decisions and to act according to His free will. Since God is Nature, and Nature is God, and therefore everything that exists on Earth are there because God decided, of His own free will and power, to create those things.
Because everything in Nature has been done through God's free will (that would include humans), which are but an extension of God's of choice, Spinoza explained. Will, in other words, is just a way of thinking, and because humans are gifted with intellect, they believe they are making intelligent choices but in fact their choices are determined in advance by their conditioning.
Divine nature, which God has created, has provided the necessity for humans to act in certain ways; they do not have the luxury of deciding what they will do and when they will do it, Spinoza explained.
The…
The following incident is being used as a metaphor for Spinoza's ideas. He believed that everything in nature takes place by necessity (and mankind is part of Nature). When the enormous section of a hill in Washington State became too saturated (after numerous heavy rains earlier in 2014), and collapsed into a village, killing / burying many people and their homes, that can be used as a metaphor for what Spinoza was saying. Thousands of tons of wet earth roared down into the village with no warning, but that disaster was determined by Nature. The land didn't decide it would suddenly give way and hurtle down upon the village.
In fact, the logging around that piece of land took away the roots of trees that otherwise would have kept the hill in place. And the river below was known to be cutting into the hill, eroding important features of the land -- a definite determination that led to the horrific event. Moreover, the heavy rains in Washington State leading up to the collapse also determined that the land would give way. So, if one can see the hill as a human entity, as part of Nature that has intelligence (which may seem to be a stretch, but it does have value as an example), that entity did not have free will to decide when it would slide down into the village. The existing Natural World realities determined if and when it would roar down into the village.
In conclusion, humans governed by determination, and not by free will. One's will is not put into motion by a decision one makes, but rather one's will acts out of necessity which has been predetermined by God, or Nature, which is also God, according to Spinoza. In other words, there are no should have arguments or could have arguments, or ought to have done arguments in terms of why an action or activity or decision was performed. That is because the behavior in question was externally or internally caused by the person who could not possibly have acted other than the way he or she did.
but, these entities should normally have equal power. If good encloses evil, this means that good is more powerful than evil. In addition one may wonder if it God's choice to allow evil to continue existing. The answer is no. According to Spinoza everything which exists derives from the very existence of the absolute substance, God, independently from his will. This puts an equality sign between God and nature. The
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' Religion is belief in the existence of a supreme being while science is a study to explain the how. The main conflict of these two disciplines begins with the concept of life. Religion explains that God is the creator and giver of life, whereas scientists argue that life evolved from a microorganism. The debate between religion and science is highly controversial but I choose to take the stand of the