7815
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Early Stoics called the logos 'god', meaning not a being, but the principle of the universe [Stoic school]
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Full Idea:
Logos was also called 'god' or 'Zeus' by the early Stoics, but they did not think of this deity as a separate being, but as a principle of organization of things. As the soul is the principle of an individual life, so 'god' is the soul of the universe.
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From:
Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]), quoted by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.3
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A reaction:
This sounds not too far from Spinoza's pantheism. Interestingly, the Stoics were making God more impersonal, and it is Jesus who reverts to the much more popularly appealing personal image.
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12566
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We exist, so there is Being, which requires eternal being [Locke]
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Full Idea:
Everyone's certain knowledge assures him that he is something that actually exists. ...Therefore there is some real Being, and since non-entity cannot produce any real being, it is an evident demonstration that from Eternity there has been something.
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From:
John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.10.03)
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A reaction:
This is a cosmological proof, deriving God as a necessary precondition from the observation that something exists. It is similar to, but not as good as, Aquinas's Third Way (Idea 1431).
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6038
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Stoics say god is matter, or an inseparable quality of it, or is the power within it [Stoic school, by Chalcidius]
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Full Idea:
The Stoics say that god is that which matter is or that god is the inseparable quality of matter and that he moves through matter just as semen moves through the genital organs.
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From:
report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Chalcidius - Commentary on Plato's 'Timaeus' 294
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A reaction:
This actually offers three different theories - of identity, of supervenience, and of omnipresence. It certainly seems close to pantheism. Such theories invite Ockham's Razor, which would shift talk to 'nature', and leave out 'god'.
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