/lit/ - Literature

Is there any other book than pic related that might be of interest for someone who believes in God (in the broadest sense, not the man in the sky strawman) but not in organized religion?

Couldn't he have written in more retarded form of argumentation? Like maybe in cipher or numerology?

Here you go OP. The sacred text to end all the sacred texts.

Just finished this bad boy. What did i think of it?

Posted this on /his/ but it got no attention so I guess they're a bunch of pseuds.

I'm a brainlet attempting pic related, I'm not even going to pretend I'm understanding it completely, but I'm getting some of the main ideas.

Getting through Part IV now though and am having trouble wrapping my head around the concept of active joy.

>God is the infinite substance, we are all modes of God
>our essence is to preserve our being, so we strive to increase our "activity"
>being the active cause of our actions brings us true pleasure, vs passive pleasure which comes from the affects

This is how I'm understanding it, and it makes sense, but if we need to pursue wisdom, reason, and rationality in order to be active, we need adequate ideas. And it was already established in Part II that our knowledge is inherently inadequate, because we understand the world through images/ideas. On top of that he even admits himself that the only way to dislodge a powerful affect is for it to be met with an equal or opposite affect.

So isn't all pain, pleasure, and desire that we feel passive by nature?

>>15172891
Then read some of the OT by yourself, realize it's a bunch of nonsensical and superstitious crap, and read Spinoza to free yourself from the abrahamic cancer. St. Augustine, Aquinas and his fuck buddies are bible apologists who try to patch up the word of the semites handed down to them and still fail at making sense of it.

Just finished reading this. What did i think of it?

I was told to read this after descartes.
Descartes had some good points and made a lot of sense but this shit is just nonsense!