AAQ-
You aren’t agreeing with me. You are for one thing still seeing Science and Religion as opposing, hostile forces, both comparing to offer explanations. That’s a part of the popular, but Historically defunct Conflict Thesis, created by John Draper and Andrew White. The Truth is of course more complex and less simplistic than people had Religious explanations made up out of nothing till Science came along and offered better ones. In fact, that idea makes Science and Religion the same thing, even though its purpose is to show how Science is superior to Religion. Once you reduce the entire topic of Religion down to nothing more than an attempt to explain things, and say that Science is nothing more than an attempt to explain things, then it’s really not justifiable to say that Science is different from Religion. Any Religious Idea that Science could discredit would be no more non-scientific than previous Scientific Theories that were accepted as fact that have been disproven. Even the methods for Gathering the information to postulate the ideas would rest on Observation. Well, that is unless you want to also use the commonly believed but utterly ridiculous idea that Religious beliefs were just invented out of thin air, and never had any thought added, which goes right up there with the idea that Religions never correct ideas or change over Time as an oft repeated nonsense.
That said, your claim that a god who works through Nature and Natural law is more like Deism or Spinosism is absurd. I mean, I realise that you aren’t use to actual Theological thought, which is why I am being ignored when I point out that Angels are not Supernatural beings, but the Truth is, no, its not. Most gods in History have been seen as Natural, not Supernatural in their own existence, yet neither Deism nor Spinoza’s Philosophy could apply to them. Take as a prime and non-Christian example the Greek Pantheon. The Greek gods were described by the Poets as vast in power, but not unlimited. They were also not understood as Supernatural beings who existed in a Supernatural world with Supernatural powers, who existed separately and apart from the Natural World. Rather, the Greek gods were understood as the personifications of Natural Phenomenon. They were literally the Spirit of those forces. Note, I said of, not behind. Poseidon was not simply the god of the Sea, he was the Sea. His Violent and unpredictable personality is itself in turn how men understood the Sea to be. Helios may have Driven the Sun in the Sky with his Chariot, but the word also means “sun’ and Helios was as much the Sun itself as he was the god of it. Demeter was the force of life behind all Vegetation. The gods were Immortal, but if they could be killed it would not have been like on Hercules and Xena, the thing they were god of would also disappear. Even things like Sexual arousal and longing or Warfare whose gods were Aphrodite and Ares respectively were ultimately just Personifications of those forces men and women actually felt and personally experienced.
The Ancient Greeks were not Deists, but the gods worked via Natural Laws and Natural constraints, and did not actually possess any Supernatural abilities.
This brings us back to Christianity. Even many Christian Theologians past and present have rejected the Idea of God being understood as Supernatural. Some would posit that God has specified Limits, such as Process Theology, while others would Identify God as the Source of Nature and thus better Understood as a Supreme Natural force as opposed to being separable from Nature. Either way you go with it though, neither view is actually like Deism, and while they may be compatible to Spinoza’s Philosophy in what I just said, I could name any number of specific ideas utilised by Theologians who made these arguments that would contradict Spinozism. EG, some who believe that God is not Supernatural but instead the Supreme Principle of Nature would still hold that God can suspend what we understand as the Regular Natural Laws, they would just contend that as God is the Source of Nature to begin with this is itself a Natural process. Its just aa Superior Natural process overriding an inferior one. That is not like Spinoza at all.
Or look at the Theology of Paul Tillich. Would you really describe him as a Deist? Or perhaos you think Tillich was a Spinozan? It would be obvious to anyone who read his work that he was neither.
No, I am afraid you aren’t agreeing with me. I am afraid you don’t understand what it is that I am saying at all.
