Spinoza

Spinoza was a pantheist.

Spinoza saw, and I think with great profundity, that if a falling stone could reason, it would think, "I want to fall at the rate of thirty-two feet per second per second." Free will for us—that is, when we feel desire, when we are conscious of wanting to do what we do—may be even for us an illusion.

Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.

An immanent God is the universe’s pulse—think Spinoza’s pantheism, where God is nature, or certain Buddhist views of an all-pervading cosmic principle. Extraterrestrials, even if they’ve merged with technology to become planet-sized hive minds, remain distinct entities within the universe. They might manipulate reality in ways that feel divine—say, turning stars into energy grids—but they’re not the stars themselves, nor the laws that govern them. An immanent God’s essence is inseparable from all that exists; aliens, however advanced, are still players on the cosmic stage, not the stage itself.