Baruch Spinoza

Spinoza was a merchant who lived in Amsterdam, his family had a firm that imported dried fruits; but the business had very poor conditions.

Spinoza was excommunicated from the people of Israel, he used to be a jew, but the reason of his excommunication are not very clear.

The causes are considered to be his radical ideas, but we can't really tell how true this is.

His great philosophical pieces were The Ethics and the Theological-Political Treatise which were pretty scandalous for the decades.

One of his most famous ideas is his conception of God, and it is very different from the traditional God, and he called it "god of nature", this god does not creates plans, commands or judgements, and he also said, "there is only nature and its power", in this point he differs with many different philosophers like Aristotle whit believed in God as an spirit, perfect and pure. He also thinks there is not such thing as nature creation, he believed that nature was always there and it will always be there and he also said there is no thing as miracles, it is al superstition.

He didn't believe in Contingency neither, all our choices and actions are part of nature just as the plants and the rocks are. And if we think that god is just like us we will live waiting for eternal reward or with fear from eternal punishment.

He believed that religion was just a meaningless and empty practice and that the only "True Religion" was "Love your fellow human beings and treat them with justice and charity" and he considered everything else as superstition just as he considered afterlife, when you are dead you are dead

Spinoza denied that the Bible had a divine origin, neither the Pentateuch or any prophetic writings, he said there where just written by humans and that they are a collection of writings composed in different times from different people so we have a "corrupted and mutilated document"

So everything he believed in we can considered it heresy, at the end he stop believing on the jewish religion and his points of view where not really accepted from other people on the society, but he considered himself innocent and he just accepted his new destiny as excommunicated.