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Indian Ethnicity and Religious Heritage
between the potentiality of the creative force inherent in a blade of grass, and the one inherent in humanly frame of Mahavir, the last and the most distiguished Tirthankar (Prophet) of our times, to achieve the final God-hood. It emphasises that the achievement of God-hood does not depend upon the favours of any agency outside your own self, and each soul ("Atman") can achieve the same by his own understanding and efforts. What is required is the will to exert.
"Encyclopaedia of Religion and ethics" edited by R. Garbe, makes distinction between naive and philosophical atheism. (Vol. II P.185). If this distinction is accpeted, one can say that Jainism believes in philosophical atheism. This is obviously different from crass materialism. The difference consists in the Jain conviction, which is the result of a serious philosophical speculation and not a naive refusal to believe what cannot be visualized. Heinrich Zimmer rightly observes that Jainism is not atheistic but is transtheistic.
Indian tradition uses the word "Nāstika"
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