Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?

> Your descriptions of God are interesting. Are these concepts that come from reading the Koran?

These descriptions are in fact sourced from the Qur'an. Allah gives us his description throughout the Qur'an. He has 99 names/attributes which you can look up. Below are example verses where he gives us part of the 99 names. It's a recurring theme in the Qur'an where He emphasizes His attributes. If you would like to read a Qur'an I would recommend "The Clear Quran, a thematic translation".

""He is Allah—there is no god ˹worthy of worship˺ except Him: Knower of the seen and unseen. He is the Most Compassionate, Most Merciful. He is Allah—there is no god except Him: the King, the Most Holy, the All-Perfect, the Source of Serenity, the Watcher ˹of all˺, the Almighty, the Supreme in Might, the Majestic. Glorified is Allah far above what they associate with Him ˹in worship˺! He is Allah: the Creator, the Inventor, the Shaper. He ˹alone˺ has the Most Beautiful Names. Whatever is in the heavens and the earth ˹constantly˺ glorifies Him. And He is the Almighty, All-Wise."" Qur'an (59:22-24)

Interestingly, this line of thought seems compatible with the description of God in the bible to me. If you put aside all your preconceived notions of some dude in the sky and simply read the bible for what it is, you'll find things like "I am what I am", "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end", etc. The Cristian God is called the Father. And what is a father but a source? The first link in a causality chain that leads to new life?

Sometimes I really wonder if our current understanding of Christianity is just completely different from what it meant originally.

> Because, thinking the existing of subjective experience that is any way special is just societal programming that claims that humans are special and important in the universe.

This has absolutely nothing to do with humans, or even this planet. I have no "bias".

We have trillions of stars in trillions of galaxies.

I was talking about consciousness, zero to do with "societal programming". If you don't want it to be about humans than make it about planet X that is orbiting star Y in galaxy Z that has also evolved conscious beings.

You don't think existing at all as a conscious entity in a vastly enormous, complex and strangely beautiful universe is "any way special"? We'll have to agree to disagree on that one!

Edit: upon reflection, I think maybe you and I are interpreting "The set of natural laws" in the GGP differently. I think maybe maybe you're interpreting this as a statement about how the universe actually works, instead of a statement about the set of laws enumerated by modern science (or any logic-based successor of modern science). The GGP mentioning the axioms of the laws however, makes it clear they're talking about the set of laws discovered and discoverable via the scientific method.

In other words, there are two ways to talk about the laws of nature: (1) some set of Platonic ideal laws existing outside of human experience, that actually govern the universe and (2) the set of approximations of these ideal laws that could possibly be discovered by a logic-based science. The GGP's mentioning of axioms means they're clearly talking about (2), but your statement makes much more sense if meant about (1).

Everything below is based on my original understanding of what you wrote, which I believe is a misunderstanding on my part.

I'm not sure what you're getting at with regard to Godel's incompleteness theorem not applying to modern science.

Are you arguing that Godel's incompleteness theorem doesn't apply to the mathematical logic model(s) at the heart of the modern scientific method, because a scientific model is an approximation of reality? The match between the models and reality has no bearing on the limits of the structure of the models themselves.

The original statement was about the limits of the logical structure of the models underlying modern science, having nothing to do with how well they actually fit reality.

Are you perhaps saying something along the lines that because scientific models don't precisely match reality, it's okay to introduce axioms that make them complete (able to prove all true statements in their domain) but inconsistent (and therefore able to construct proofs that false statements are true)?