Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677) was a deeply religious man, but did not belong to any religion. Having lived the life of a righteous man, he found himself an outcast whose books were cursed and burned. Spinoza created a breathtakingly beautiful philosophy based on the belief that through logic one can understand the Universe and God. His ideas anticipated the modern view of the world around us as a single system where all people, being part of the whole, can freely coexist...