Spinoza?s conception of God ?Deus sive Natura- even if just verbalized, would be enough of a reason to madden any traditional religious community to the point that it proclaimed herem on the basis of ?evil opinions? and ?abominable heresies.? His conception practically destroys the pillars of all traditional major religions. Spinoza?s God ? Nature - lacks even the most basic attributes a supernatural deity would have: Goodness, wiseness, justness. Spinoza?s God, in a way a much simpler deity, is one that we need not worship or pray to. There are no divine scriptures, only written words. Mother Nature is no divine creation. Nature is just the existing substance of the universe that forges it all including us, human beings that essentially live and die as part of one of Nature?s numerous processes. There?s no way that Spinoza?s radical philosophical and religious views would have been tolerated by a Portuguese-Jewish community, a community which was united and subsisted as such in a foreign city as was Amsterdam primarily because of its faith in God and their traditions. Spinoza?s opinions, when expressed in this particular community, were out of place, as it seems the excommunication was of vital necessity to the surrounding community, which hung by the thread of traditional religion in order to survive. 

I suppose the persecuted deserve our sympathy, but that's no reason to magnify their importance. The question that comes my mind is how it is that such orthodoxies arise that are so confident of their rightness they feel the need to convince the rest of the world and the justification to kill or ostracize those not of the same opinion. This is a great mystery and problem for understanding history. With the possible exception of Buddhism, most of the religions of the world are not particularly evangelical. Why the three that cite the Bible are so implacably so needs examination.
As for Spinoza, I don't see a lot new in his view. Aristotle's unmoved mover amounts to much the same causal solution, certainly close enough to evidence the issue has a long history. And a more careful look at the Torah will reveal an anonymous deity, substituted by an anonymous causality is not so different. And, remember, the Judaism of Amsterdam had Christianised trappings which would have been, in a typically Christian way, offended by a reversion of the character of the deity to an earlier form.
As for modernity, well, that's a vexed issue if ever there was one. During the darkest days of the Medieval era most commoners established, amongst themselves, social patterns more democratic than we have today. This was possible because the elites cared not a whit how they went about their work, whereas the 'modern' era constituted itself largely as a comprehensive attack on these ancient democratic institutions. And Abelard could be credited with insisting reason reign over scholarship, Anne Boleyn caused the emergence of the secular state, and Descartes was simply using the deity as a token term, at a time when the isolated individual alone before a judgmental providence had long since become established as de rigueur. We play sop to similar orthodoxies today, they just go by another name. Like "scientific method".

God is just another name for everything. =

And how does ALice and the Jabberwacky fit exactly?
 
I wanted to add this: a quote from wikipedia on spinoza:
 
Spinoza kept the Latin (and so implicitly Christian) name Benedict de Spinoza, maintained a close association with the Collegiants, a Christian sect, even moved to a town near the Collegiants' headquarters, and was buried in a Christian graveyard?but there is no evidence or suggestion that he ever accepted baptism or participated in a Christian mass. Thus, by default, Baruch de Espinoza became the first secular Jew of modern Europe.[57]
And so, I think there are mainly two kids of guys:  the guys who stay home and the guys who take off for " distant places ".
Spinoza I think falls into a category of both and neither....
Very interesting conversation.
ANd who is that guy?

Marc,
Penguin makes a cheap and comprehensive Dictionary of Philosophy. It has an extensive entry on Spinoza. Sometimes paper beats the web! (I think the editors told the researchers what to make, and they didn't see any reason not to do a spectacular job, the result is a little gem of a book)