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"Whoever loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return" - Spinoza > infantile narcissism would lead someone that wants to believe in God and then to imagine that this God would take an interest in bending the rules of existence to improve his or her life in some way

> Seneca, Spinoza's favorite philosopher, had compared human beings to dogs on a leash. The more one pulls against what's necessary, the more one is strangled. And therefore the wise must always endeavor, to try to understand ahead of time, how things are.

> To understand God, traditionally means studying the Bible and other holy texts. But Spinoza now introduces another idea. The best way to know God is to understand how life and the universe work. It's through a knowledge of psychology, philosophy and the natural sciences...

> Normally we call bad, whatever is bad for us, and good whatever increases our power and advantage. But for Spinoza, to be truly ethical means rising above such local concerns

> It might all sound forbidding, but Spinoza envisaged his philosophy as a route to a life based on freedom from guilt, from sorrow, from pity or from shame. Happiness involves aligning our will with that of the universe.

> The Universe God has its own projects and it's our task to understand rather than rail against these. The free person is one conscious of the necessities that compel us all.

> And yet Spinoza's work failed utterly to convince any but a few to abandon traditional religion and to move towards a rationalist, wise system of belief.

> Spinoza failed to understand like so many philosophers before and since, that what leads people to religion isn't just reason, but far more importantly: emotion, belief, fear and tradition.