I read Steven Gambardella’s interesting article Spinoza, God, and You and found it very engaging. I made a few comments and figured it was enough. But thinking on it all day, I still want to write about a key element that I feel keeps getting left out of such discussions about God and consciousness.
Steven Gambardella - Oct 14, 2025
Gambardella's article begins with:
(SG) The morning is a symphony of small things — the rumble of the kettle, the diminuendo of a passing car, a shard of sunlight across the worktop. Outside the breeze catches a dewy web, the spider tremors. An odd thought occurs — what if none of these things are really separate?
What if the kettle and the car, the spider and the heart beating in your chest aren’t items laid out on the counter of the world, but kinks in a single fabric? Spinoza the most ambitious claim a philosopher can make — there is only one thing. And that one thing is everything.
Wow, talk about getting smacked across the face. Good morning, wake up and smell the coffee!
But, but, I believe in Evolution! I understand a good deal about the astounding pageant that has brought us to this point in history. The one-ness of my existence with the All out there - it is a reality, once appreciated, it can't be escaped. So give me a moment to clear my head before continuing with what promises to be a fascinating article.
First, to clarify - I am an individual evolved biological animal (an Earthling), with some 600 million years of successfully evolving generations under my belt. One thing that means, is that I appreciate that my biological body has layers of insights and agendas well beyond my awareness. {It sets up an odd sort of partnership situation between my mind and my body. Difficult to convey, but oh so real.}
My thoughts & mind ( the "conscious" part of me) are an internal reflection of my biological body (the physical part of me) dealing with the rush of physical reality coming at me, interior and exterior. (Physical science, [as opposed to philosophy/theology], supports this supposition. For details see, Solms, Damasio, Sapolsky, Sloan-Wilson, etc),
I'm not unique, one of billions.
Yet my mind and my life's journey is unique.
And it is mine, same as it ever was.
And that's about all I can know with certainty,
based on a life time of absorbing the developing scientific evidence and understanding. It's fractals all the way down.
Okay now that I have that out of my system, on to the rest of Gambardella’s story . . .
(¶10) (SG) “Here we meet Spinoza’s definition of God: “By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite.” (Ethics 1.6)
Not a bearded man in the sky, nor a hidden engineer — “absolutely infinite” means nothing stands outside or alongside God. God is — surely — all powerful, all knowing, so therefore must be all present.
If there were a second thing, God would not be all. Spinoza argues that outside God “no substance can be or be conceived” — that is, there cannot be two ultimate stuffs. There is only one — and “whatever exists is in God, and nothing can exist or be conceived without God.”
In Spinoza’s phrase, Deus sive Natura — “God or Nature” — are not two names for two things but two names for one. You can say “Nature” if “God” gets stuck in your throat, or say “God” if “Nature” feels thin. (Or, the Universe)”
That works for me. God permeating everything and beyond our understanding. With us humans as the most spectacular, if oh so flawed and destructive, manifestation of Time and Earth's evolutionary drive.
Then we get these suppositions,
(¶21) (SG) “The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.” (Ethics 2.7)”
That can't be true.
The thoughts our minds can produce are limitless, free of the constrains of our physical world out there.
Besides, it is our creature bodies engaged with living, that produce our thoughts, it also limits what our thoughts can actually achieve.
(¶17) (SG) “All the difference you see in the world isn’t an illusion”
"Illusion" doesn't do it justice, the notion isn’t helpful and derails the reasoning.
It is our body/brain's "perception" of physical reality that we are perceiving.
Think perceiver - and the perceived.
(¶18) (SG) “But surely, thoughts and things are entirely different?”
Indeed, this highlights the need for a more explicit appreciation of a most fundamental observation, the Physical Reality ~ Human Mind divide.
The article continues another 900 interesting words in 26 paragraphs.
Steven Gambardella - medium.com - Oct 14, 2025 - (The Sophist)
Finishing with:
(SG) “… People often meet Spinoza through his slogan-like formulas, and then discover an astonishing depth. You leap into a puddle only to be immersed over your head.
You are a way the infinite articulates itself for a time. The task isn’t to break out of oneness but to understand it so plainly that your actions become a resounding yes to what you are.
Call that virtue. Call it peace. Spinoza, who paid for this peace with exile and danger, called it blessedness.”
In a couple of those paragraphs I noticed other nuances that would be interesting to bring up - but I fear it would have come across as piling on. Which isn’t my intention. I keep hoping for an informed philosopher type to engage in dialogue. Until then I’ll have to make do with virtual dialogues such as this one.
Until someone finds the gumption to explain why big time philosophers have such a hard time including evolutionary biology into their outlooks. I did leave some final thoughts. I hope he has a sense of humor, perhaps even a respond.
Thank you Steven,
that was a fun and engaging article, as my comments underscore.
I would enjoy being in a room, hearing you present this and having a discussion with likeminded.
But this will have to do, and I'm hoping you're receptive to my perspective - and my sharing.
I can relate to much of what you wrote in that excellent article and there's little I could disagree with, on a metaphorical sort of level.
The devil was in the missing parts. Stuff Spinoza hadn't a clue about, so can't be faulted, but that we need to incorporate into our dialogue and understanding. Keeping in mind, our answers can only be as good as the questions we compose.
Without realistically, explicitly incorporating the realities of our biological evolution, and our ever deepening understanding of this biological body we inhabit, we remain stuck within our “imagination bubble” and limited to demonstrating respective intellectual acumen, ... without getting down to the roots of our reality.
Bottomline: We create our Gods from within our Thoughts.
Our thoughts are produced from within our creature bodies engaging with life.
Regardless of how some dedicated philosophers want to distance us from the inevitable conclusion based on the consilience of medical/biological/evolutionary evidence. There is no other contender. We aren't plugged into anything out there. We follow the same pattern that is consistent with all the rest of Earth's creatures.
We are evolved biological thinking creatures, hundreds of millions of years in the making.
Our thoughts are the product of this still evolving body that we inhabit during your generation, all we know gets processed through that body, there are no other candidates. Our Gods, like all our thoughts, are produced from within our collective and individual mindscapes. (they are as real or unreal as said individual wants to make them - but they will never be part of physical reality and biology.)
Steven Gambardella, thank you for your time, and your engaging article.
Perhaps you have some thoughts on why human evolutionary/biological realities seem to be on a philosopher's black-list?
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