הֲרֵינִי מְקַבֵּל עָלַי מִצְוַת הַבּוֹרֵא וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ כָּמוךָ
I hereby accept the obligation of fulfilling the Creator's mitzvah: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18).
Benedict de Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise
On Divine Law (Chapter 4)
[4]...Again, since nothing can exist or be conceived without God, it is certain that every single thing in nature involves and expresses the conception of God as far as its essence and perfection allows, and accordingly the more we come to understand natural things, the greater and more perfect the knowledge of God we acquire. Further (since knowledge of an effect through a cause is simply to know some property of the cause) the more we learn about natural things, the more perfectly we come to know the essence of God (which is the cause of all things); and thus all our knowledge, that is, our highest good, not only depends on a knowledge of God but consists in it altogether.
On the true original text of the divine law, and why Holy Scripture is so called, and why it is called the word of God, and a demonstration that, in so far as it contains the word of God, it has come down to us uncorrupted (Chapter 12)
[1] Those who consider the Bible in its current state a letter from God, sent from heaven to men, will undoubtedly protest that I have sinned ‘against the Holy Ghost’1 by claiming the word of God is erroneous, mutilated, corrupt and inconsistent, that we have only fragments of it, and that the original text of the covenant which God made with the Jews has perished. However, if they re£ect upon the facts, I have no doubt that they will soon cease to protest. For both reason and the beliefs of the prophets and Apostles evidently proclaim that God’s eternal word and covenant and true religion are divinely inscribed upon the hearts of men, that is, upon the human mind. This is God’s true original text, which he himself has sealed with his own seal, that is, with the idea of himself as the image of his divinity
[3] But they [i.e. my adversaries] will insist that, even though the divine law is written on our hearts, the Bible is still the word of God, and therefore we may not say that it is mutilated and corrupt any more than we may say this of the word of God. Truly, though, I fear that they, on the contrary, try too hard to be pious. They are converting religion into superstition, indeed verge, unfortunately, on adoring images and pictures, i.e. paper and ink, as the word of God. I know I have said nothing unworthy of Scripture or of the word of God, since I have said nothing that I have not demonstrated to be true by the clearest reasoning.
Hermann Cohen, Reason and Hope: Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen (1971), p.5.
Only the idea of God gives me the confidence that morality will become reality on earth. And because I cannot live without this confidence, I cannot live without God.