Lord Mahavira

Author(s): Boolchand
Publisher: Jain Cultural Research Society

Page 85

of 78 )
and will then there could not have been diverse kinds of creation and destruction. Destruction and creation cannot be the result of one unchangeable will and knowledge. Moreover, it is the character of knowledge to change, if the word is used in the sense in which knowledge is applied to human beings, and surely we are not aware of any other kind of knowledge. You say that God is omniscient but it is difficult to suppose how he can have any knowledge at all, for as he has no organs he cannot have any perception, and since he cannot have any perception, he cannot have any inference either. If it is said that without the supposition of a God the variety of the world would be inex. plicable, this also is not true for this implication would only be justified if there were no other hypothesis left. But there are other suppositions also. Even without an ominiscient God you could explain all things merely by the doctrine of moral order or the law of Karma."
Jainism rejects the conception of creative divinity as self-discrepant. Its belief is that there is no God and that the world was never created. In this view the Jain is curiously enough in agreement with the Miman. saka, the upholder of strict orthodoxy. But as we mentioned above, although Jainism does not believe in a creative God, it does believe in godhead. Theistic systems are generally anthropomorphic, they bring down God to the level of man. Jainism, on the other band, looks upon man himself as God when his inherent powers are fully in blossom. Every liberated soul is divine, God in Jain theory being only another word for the soul at its best. In rejecting God who is so by his own right and with it also the belief that salvation may be attained through his mercy, Jainism recognises that karma by itself and without the intervention of any divine power is adequate to explain the whole world of experience and thus impress on the individual his complete responsibility for what he does. “Jainism more than any other creed gives absolute religious