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THE BASIC IDEA OF GOD
HARISTYA BHATTACHARYYA
Subjectively speaking, religion is a consciousness, establishing the closest possible relationship between a man and being, transcending that man's ordinary empirical self. Religious beliefs and practices are due to the various attempts to establish that relationship. Although this general statement may be made about all the religions, current or past, in their positive and concrete forms, they have differed from each other more or less widely. Some religions are polytheistic, believing in a number of gods; some, henotheistic, in which one of the gods is given the supreme position, while the others are more or less subordinated to him; Zoroastrianism, in some of its aspects, seems to posit two contending deities; while monotheism admits only one God. As regards the question of the God's creating the universe, the religions do not seem to have been unanimous. Some maintained that God created the universe out of nothing; some held that matter in its ultimacy was independent of God and was only shaped and moulded in definite forms by the creator; others contended that not only matter but time, space and an infinite number of souls had independent realities of their own and that the creator's business was only to build up bodies and environments or requisite circumstances for those psychical beings. It is, however, manifest that creation involves an internal urge in the Creator and as such implies some sort of imperfection in him. Accordingly it is only a finite being that can be a creator in any sense, so that if God be conceived as the supreme Being with infinite perfection, he cannot be supposed to be the Creator of the Universe. As a matter of fact, some of the rational religions maintain that man alone is the creator of his own destiny and dispense with the hypothesis of the world-creator.
Amidst the variednesses of religions, it is certainly difficult to pick out the fundamental features which can be found in all religions. The conception of some sort of God as a being superior to the finite beings is of course the central doctrine in all forms of religion but differences crop up when we look to the positive contents of this idea of God. We have seen how world-creation has not been attributed to God by some religions. Upon a careful survey of all the most basic doctrines connected with the theories of God, it appears that all religions, of whatever age and in whatever stage of development they may be, agree in attributing 'power' to their God or Gods. Even in totemism, a 'totem'
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