Why God necessarily exists
“The union of the soul with God is its second birth, and therein consists man’s immortality and freedom.”
Baruch Spinoza
Most people have not read anything by Spinoza, or even heard of him, which is a shame. If people have heard at all of arguments for the existence of God, they are probably familiar with the five arguments of Thomas Aquinas. Spinoza lays out a very detailed argument for the necessity of the existence of God, but while he is at it, he redefines the concept of God in western civilization. This led people to accuse him of being an atheist, which he was clearly not.
God, according to Spinoza, is “substance,” which meant something different in the 17th century than it does today. By the fourth sentence of the “Ethics”, Spinoza gets right to the definition:
“By substance, I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself: in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception.”
Or, as God is quoted as saying in Exodus: “I am that I am.” According to this view, God is existence itself. Therefore, God necessarily exists.
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