INTRODUCTION 5that Jainism gives to persons and physical elements while denying that
there is a God. Theravada Buddhism takes the basic elements of the world
to be co-dependent and transitory. These doctrines are presented and
explained.
A monotheist can hold that God is in time or that God lacks all temporal
properties. A purely philosophical monotheism may simply hold that the
world depends for its existence on God though God does not choose to
create. On this view, God and the world exist beginninglessly and God’s
existence is necessary and sufficient for the world’s existence without
God’s doing anything. A religious monotheist accepts a doctrine of
creation. She may hold that the world beginninglessly depends on God,
that the world was created by God after some time had elapsed, or that
creating the world automatically includes the creation of time. In any case,
the world exists because God chose to create it. Religious monotheism
holds God to be providential, concerned with and active in the course of
history. A monotheist can hold that God has, or that God lacks, logically
necessary existence. She will hold that it is logically impossible that God be
caused to exist or depend for existence on anything else. Advaita Vedanta
Hinduism asserts that these views about God should be replaced by the
view that all that exists is a being without qualities.
Jainism accepts one view of persons. Theravada Buddhism holds another.
The views in question are different and incompatible. The Buddhist view
goes as follows. A core Buddhist doctrine is that everything^3 is
impermanent. Hence persons are impermanent. At a time, a person is one
or more purely momentary states. Over time, a person is a series of such
bundles. The Jain view is that persons are permanent. Nothing that happens
can destroy a mind, which is the essential person. A person is an enduring,
indestructible self-conscious being. Strictly speaking, for the Buddhist the
world’s history is a matter of one set of states being replaced by another set
which in turn is replaced by another. Change is a matter of something
gaining or losing a quality; an item at one time has different qualities than
those it has at another. This requires that the item in question endures
through time. If everything is impermanent, nothing endures.^4 On the Jain
view, change occurs. The Jain view entails that persons retain personal
identity into enlightenment. The Theravada view entails that personal
identity is not retained in the ultimate enlightenment state.
In Part III, we consider what can be said for and against monotheistic
belief. The existence of evil is the most influential consideration against the
existence of God. Wrong choices, debilitating disease, war, and suffering are
evil. Is it even logically possible that a world created by God contains these
evils? Does the fact that such evils exist provide evidence against the
existence of God? While it has seemed to some that the answers to these
questions cast severe doubt on monotheism, others have thought they do