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JAINISM: A THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY "GOD IN JAINISM"
Truth, beauty and goodness and as such moral values mould God into an absolute.
(d) God and Indian & Western Theism and Atheism
The concept of God in its traditional, religious or theological sense dose not differ much between the Indian and the western concept and the worship of God also resembles quite a bit Indian and western.
However, the Indian concept God is much wider and deeper in sense from the point of view of spiritualism and intuitionalism. God is not understood or viewed as a critical intelligence but as an inner-consciousness. According to Dr. Hemant Shah," theism and the place of God in it, is a logical pursuit in the western theology. God is proved and then accepted whereas in Indian philosophy God is to be realized, and for that one has to accept Him by faith, and not by reason. Not by intelligence but by intuition. God in the western theism enjoys the status of a master or father or a great first cause or a moral lawgiver or a creator. In Indian philosophy “Thou are that” God is totality of supreme spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent. God is both personal and absolute.
The term 'Atheism' is negative sense of theism, which would in literally or most popular term means 'No Belief in God' or No existence of God. Socrates was charged with ‘not believing in Gods the city believes in.'
We hear the cry in the Roman Empire against Christians as “away with the Atheist” for the lack of idolatry in all Christian worship. Spinoza for whom God alone existed and who was known as the “God intoxicated” was persecuted as an Atheist. In Indian philosophy, we find Jainism and Buddhism termed as Atheist for not accepting Vedas as an authority.
1"Dr. Hemant Shah, “Jain Theism”, 1997, P-9 & 10
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