Interesting Reviews for Nature's God

[Sheila Zelkowitz]

Most of the reviews I found were fairly neutral but I'm sending you two of them that were more impassioned..

One is from The Objective Standard, an Ayn Rand Society, and the other is from the conservative Claremont Institute.  You may enjoy their different perspectives.

Sheila

[michael brewer]

Sheila,

Looks like you sent two copies of the Claremont review. The reviewer does argue well that some of the connections Stewart made were tenuous (like the extent that Spinoza may have influenced Locke). The reviewer's tone was throughout was dismissive and querulous. He seemed put out that Stewart doesn’t hold an advanced degree in philosophy. It was funny how many digs at religion Stewart included in his book (helpfully gathered here), and I sympathize a bit with the reviewer's annoyance at this piling on!

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[Karl Kasamon]

Please excuse brevity and typos, sent from iPhone

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[michael brewer]

Three of the most eminent philosophers in America today.

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[Karl Kasamon]

Two. I have never taken a philosophy class😢

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[Steven Clark Cunningham]

Doesn’t he have a PhD in philosophy from Oxford?

Sent from my mobile phone. Please excuse typos, etc.

On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 7:53 PM michael brewer <michael.r...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Sheila Zelkowitz]

Sorry--I didn't send the Ayn Rand Society review with the first email.  It's attached below.

Stewart got his doctorate in history from Oxford.  James Hutson, the conservative reviewer, ignored that because he isn't an academic.  He worked as a management consultant and now writes full time.

I agree that Stewart's thesis linking Locke and Spinoza is not mainstream, and may be stretching the connections way too far.  However, Spinoza seems to have been the dirty little secret of many of the Enlightenment philosophers--most likely reading Spinoza while denying they'd ever even heard his name.   For what it's worth, I think the American elites like Jefferson, Adams and Washington most likely believed in a god but not in a god who regularly performed miracles and intervened in daily life.  Whether that's Spinoza's pantheism I don't know.

It's also pretty clear that Stewart is at least as "spinoza-ist" as the founding fathers he was portraying in the book.  It's easy to read your own biases into the motivations of historical figures.  Still.the book does make you think so it was worth reading.

Sheila

On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 4:59 PM Sheila Zelkowitz <slamb...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Angie Boyter]

Ahem! Karl, you neve gave credit to the photographer!

Angie

On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 8:43 PM Karl Kasamon <kas...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Karl Kasamon]

I am a mess. Yes, the excellent photography was performed by Angie.

🥰

Karl

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[Steven Clark Cunningham]

yes, I agree, Sheila. Good comments.

Interestingly… maybe the Wikipedia page about Stewart is inaccurate then, because it says he got a PhD in philosophy from Oxford.

Who knows what the founding fathers believedor if we would even make sense of it now. In any case, the connection to Spinoza, as described by Stewart, seemed to me utterly plausible and even likely.  But, I’m kind of gullible when it comes to books presenting well-articulated ideas. 

steve

Sent from my mobile phone. Please excuse typos, etc.

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[Sheila Lambowitz]

Steve

You are correct—Stewart’s degree was in philosophy.  I think my fingers kept typing while my brain fell asleep.

I agree with you about Spinoza partially because of Stewart’s argument but partially because I’ve been finding so many vehement almost hysterical denunciations  of Spinoza’s ideas from the 1700s to the present.  You don’t have to refute someone whose ideas are unknown and who has no followers.

Sheila

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 24, 2025, at 2:19 PM, Steven Clark Cunningham <steven.clar...@gmail.com> wrote:



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