Refutation of Western Materialism On the basis of Jain Philosophy

Author(s): Mahendrakumar Muni Dwitiya
Publisher: Z_Kailashchandra_Shastri_Abhinandan_Granth_012048.pdf

Page 7

Also the materialists leave unanswered the important question such as how and why consciousness was created from matter. 20 The eminent writer on the history of the universe, J. G. Bennett, in his conclusive remarks on the 'Origin" of Life" expresses this thus. 21 "The conclusion that we are bound to draw from all these considerations is that the fortuitous origin and evolution of life and human culture on the earth must be rejected as contrary to the well-established laws of probability and thermodynamics.
"This is, as is well recognised even by mechanistic biologist, not the only serious difficulty. Inert matter is insensitive, life is sensitive. When and how did sensitivity arise from insensitivity ? Again, man is conscious and entertains ideas of value and purpose. Inert matter is unconscious and the whole argument in favour of mechanistic theories is that they do not require any assumptions as to conscious purposes at origin of life, How then could consciousness and purposefulness have arisen in a world from which they were previously totally absent."
Further he writes 22 : "The obvious difficulty of believing that sensitivity and consciousness could be produced by chemical reactions of inert matter, has led materialistic and mechanistic scientists to make the assumption that these properties must be associated with all matter and make themselves apparent when living bodies having a high degree of organisation, have evolved. Such hypotheses are unsatisfactory inasmuch as they do not account for the transition from the 'atomic' to the organic' state of consciousness." Thus the cosmological argument is untenable on logical grounds too.
Lastly, let us consider the argument in the light of the Jaina view. The Jaina philosophy asserts that all substances including soul and matter have been existent in the universe since ever and will continue to exist till eternity.28 No new soul is ever created in the universe. Infinite number of souls go on transmigrating from one life to another. Thus birth of a new organism is nothing but transmigration of a soul from its previous life.
It is also asserted by the Jaina theory that a suitable structure or matter is required to serve as a nucleus (or birth place for the soul to take birth in. The nucleus is called as Yoni. There are different kinds of Yonis for different species. The yonis may be composed of totally lifeless matter or of bodies of living organisms or of a combination of both. 24 Formation of yonis takes place by the suitable combination of the ultimate atoms (puramanus) or the molecules (skandhas) which continually. undergo the processes of "fusion" aud "fission" throughout the universe.
Now the fact ascertained by the scientists that no life existed on the earth for a long time (nearly 3000 million years) after formation of the earth can be explained on the basis of the Jain a view as follows:
It is highly probable that at the time of formation of the planet earth, the yonis were wanting and this condition might have prevailed over for a period of 3000 million years. Also it is unlikely that during this period the environment could have been
- 182 -