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JAINISM: A THEISTIC PHILOSOPHY "GOD IN JAINISM"
God is the ultimate cause of the creation, maintenance and destruction of the world.
He did not create world out of nothing, but out of eternal atoms, space, time, ether mind, and souls.
This world has been created in order that individual's souls (Jiva) might enjoy pleasure or suffer pain according to the merit or demerit of their actions in other worlds.
• The most popular argument for God's existence is "All things of the world like mountain and sea, the sun and the moon, are effects, because they are made up of parts. Therefore they must have a maker (Kartā). The creator of the world must be an intelligent spirit with unlimited power and wisdom, and capable of maintaining the moral order of the universe.
• God created the world not for any end of His own, but for the good of all living beings. This however, does not mean that there must be only happiness and no misery in the world.
But under loving care and wise guidance of the Divine being, all individuals can sooner or later attain right knowledge about themselves and the world, and thereby final release from all sufferings (mukti).
b) The Vaiseṣika System.
The Vaiseṣika system was founded by sage Kaṇāda also named as Ulūka. It is allied to the Nyaya system and has same end view, namely the liberation of individual self.
The supreme soul or God is inferred as the creator of the world of effects. God creates the world out of eternal atoms. The composition and decomposition of atoms explain the origin and destruction of the composite objects of the world. But the atoms cannot move and act by themselves. The ultimate source of their actions is to be found in the will of God, who directs their operations according to the law of Karma. The atoms are made to compose a
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