Spinoza, Like Sultan, Was a Titan of Trouble Making

"THURSDAY marked the 350th anniversary of the excommunication of . . . Baruch Spinoza . . . Spinoza's life and thought have the power to illuminate the kind of events that at the moment seem so intractable and overwhelming. . . . . he came to be vilified throughout all of Europe . . . [because he] argued that no group or religion could rightly claim infallible knowledge of the Creator's partiality to its beliefs and ways."

Reasonable Doubt, By Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, New York Times, July 29, 2006