324 Self and the Phenomenon of Life
b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanity “9x6”Dao (Tao) is the mysterious and unexplainable ground of being
underlying all things. This naturalistic worldview of Daoist (Taoist)
philosophy predates Spinoza by two thousand years.
Spinoza used the word “God” to signify a concept that was different
from that of traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheism. Spinoza’s
cool, indifferent “God” is the antithesis to the concept of an anthro-
pomorphic, fatherly God who cares about every aspect of humanity.
Following is a description of Spinoza’s God:
“This single, eternal, infinite, self-caused and necessary principle of
things is called God or Nature. God is not, as Descartes held, apart
from the world an external transcendent cause acting on it from
without (theism), but in the world, the immanent principle of the
universe. God is in the world and the world in him. He is the source of
everything that is (pantheism). God and the world are one. Cause and
effect are not distinct here; God does not create in the sense of produc-
ing something separate from, and external to himself, something that
can exist apart from him; he is the permanent substance, or substratum
or essence in all things... God is the universe conceived as an eter-
nal and necessary unity, an organic whole, a unity in diversity. Spinoza
expressly denies personality and consciousness to God. He has neither
intelligence, feeling, nor will; he does not act according to purpose, but
everything follows necessarily from his nature, according to law; his
action is causal, not purposive.”^21Albert Einstein concurred with Spinoza. “I believe in Spinoza’s
God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in
a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.”
These words were given by Einstein, upon being asked if he believed
in God by Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of the Institutional Synagogue,
New York, April 24, 1921, published in the New York Times, April 25,
1929.^22 Einstein suggested that behind anything that can be experienced
there is something that our minds might never grasp, whose beauty and
sublimity reach us only indirectly. “This is religiosity,” he said, “a cosmic