Spinoza on Science and Stress

Richard Dawkins is not aware of it, but his latest book, The God Delusion, has driven the last nail into the coffin of Humanism. (1) By taking on the mantle of Nietzsche’s madman (God is dead), and making it respectful, Dawkins has destroyed forever the link between religion and science that Humanists forged. After Dawkins’critique, can any intelligent person use the word, ‘God,’ today, without feeling embarrassed? And yet we hang around the Best Seller lists, feeling a loss as the excesses of theism and anthropomorphism slowly drain any credibility from the deity. In reaction, some individuals fled east to the sound of one hand clapping. But it’s a shock to lose the word altogether.

Dawkins has given us Delusion as a handbook as to why we must reject the notion of a superhuman in the sky who justifies our baser emotions and actions. All right thinking people, owe Dawkins their thanks.

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We live in a complex word and it seems hard to make sense of it.

Ancient Greek thinkers used the word, ‘logic,’ to describe the process of trying to make sense. These thinkers made up rules, like a game, for how to play logic. The rules got very complex.

Today you can learn Polish logic in a game called, ‘Wff & Proof.’

The original Greek thinkers, (we call them, philosophers), believed that logic and its rules were part of the fabric of the universe. Today, many philosophers believe logic is only a game man has invented.

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As a stress-damaged prison guard (retired), I found the answer to why the world is so f****ed up from a stress-damaged seventeenth century philosopher, Benedict de Spinoza. His answer is simple: stupid (or as he calls it, inadequate) thinking. Spinoza says the universe we live in makes sense. Our thinking does not. He explored the reason in his philosophy.

Why do I use the ‘F’ word? When I was a prison guard, I found that the two most common words used by prisoners were ‘respect,’ and ‘f***.’ A prison is a very f****ed up place. Anger and despair hang like a morbid tapestry on the walls.

The prisoners respond to their situation with F.T.W. (F*** The World).

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In 1992, a prisoner tried to stick a shiv in my gut. I caught the thrust with my hand. The cut, while superficial, went deep into my soul. The adrenalin addiction I had acquired as a guard, became Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I lost my faith in life. It was not till I discovered Baruch Spinoza’s God Of Science that I found the way to recovery. By the 17^th century, a new description of God was emerging from the womb of human understanding. This was the God Of Science. The church did its best to make this a still birth. However, early fathers of Humanism sneaked a bastard version out of the midwife’s hands.

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Stress disease in soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, was recently addressed in a two-part CBS television series called, ‘Mind Battles.’ . While well-intentioned, the program suffered from the two fallacies that usually occur in discussions on stress disease; 1) that it is a mental health issue and 2) that only a percentage of front-line workers have it. Read the rest of this entry »