Nor could God be the world's designer or one who imbues it with purpose.

Nor could God be the world's designer or one who imbues it with purpose. That is because wanting to bring something about implies lack, and God can lack nothing. Lacking purposes, God can have no moral goals for humanity. God is the network of all truths, not a personal being who gives revelation. Still, to know God-which is necessarily a matter of reason-is an essential good. As Spinoza said, "the highest virtue of the mind is to understand or to know God" (Ethics, Part 4, prop. 28; trans.