Puddock Hill Journal #22: Reflections on a backyard steward’s place in nature.
When someone asked Albert Einstein whether he believed in God, he is said to have replied, “I believe in the God of Spinoza.”
Baruch Spinoza, to refresh your memory, was a 17th Century Dutch rationalist philosopher who argued that God and the universe are one and the same. Some consider him the first modern philosopher, with Hegel famously saying, “You are either a Spinozist or not a philosopher at all.”
Others took offense to Spinoza’s conception of God, which was considered so radical in its time that, at age 23, the Jewish community into which Spinoza had been born excommunicated him. Even his own family wrote him off.
An updated interpretation of Spinoza’s central thesis might be expressed, “God is the laws of nature.” To put it yet another way, “God is physics,” because physics lies at the bottom of everything. I think that is what Einstein was getting at.