Text Post: Do you believe in God? posted by Squid4Hire
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  • anaxarchos
    +3

    It heavily depends on what you mean by God. Do you mean a theistic god? No, I don't believe in such a god and neither did the Stoics. Somewhere else I wrote

    Read, for example, the Chapter 4. Stoic physics from John Sellars' Stoicism, beginning at page 91 (God and Nature). According to Sellars the Stoic God was a philosophical god and can be seen as the providential ruling force in Nature. The Stoics can be seen as pantheists identifying God with Nature. It was also common among Stoics to see Nature as a living being. Sellars points to the theological discussions in Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, Cleanthes' Hymn to Zeus and Diogenes Laertius.

    That being said, I have no problems with this God which is very similar to Spinoza's God. Basically, one can use God and Nature interchangeably.