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A Note on Jaina Atheism
SUBODH KUMAR PAL
The tendency of philosophical thinking usually branded as atheism holds the view that 'the world has not been brought into existence by an omnipotent and omniscient personal consciousness called God (Isvara), since a personal creator God of that kind does not exist. Atheism may of course mean more than this and may assume diverse forms, viz., materialism, scepticism, naturalism, agnosticism etc., but the denial of a Personal God who is the creator of the world and moral governor of human destinity is the basic minimum that is connoted by the word ‘atheism'.
Systems of Indian philosophy are sharply divided on the questionDoes God exist? The Carvarkas, the Buddhists and the Jainas, and even the Samkhyas and the Mimamsakas in the Hindu fold stoutly deny His existence. The Carvaka denial is intelligible : they are qualified materialists. But how the Buddhists and the Jainas who turned their philosophies to a high level of spirituality could deny God is almost an enigma. In India atheism could put up with high-pitched spiritual philosophy-a type of compatibility which it is difficult for the western people to allow. The Buddhists and the Jainas, were not all positivists or humanists; their religions, though largely ethical, were as spiritual as religion could be, and they did not fail to recognise higher and higher levels in spiritual progress. In this paper I shall discuss Jaina atheism.
One of the most acrimonious battles of Indian philosophy was fought between the Jainas and the Naiyayikas on the ontological nature and status of a Creator God, the former denying His existence altogether while the latter defending His Being by means of inference (anumāna). The argument of the Naiyayikas proceeds from some perceived features of the world around us. The empirical datum from which this argument takes its start is the observed fact that the world-process consists of a casual series. For example, any particular event or object say a ‘pot', has a cause, which again in its turn has a cause and so on. But this observed casual series of an object or event extending backwards in time cannot run out to infinity, but must finally be terminated in an uncaused First Cause, which is no other than God Himself. In otherwords, the world is of the nature of an effect (kārya) must have an efficient cause (nimittakārana), just as a 'pot' is made by an efficient cause, i.e. potter. In the
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