Shrimat Vijyasandsuri
46. Question:
God punishes a man for the misdeeds he has committed, for no misdeed should remain unpunished.
Answer:
Your statement shows that God inflicts suffering upon men unnecessarily. According to you, man cannot enjoy the fruits of their actions without the intervention of God. If He were not to punish men, they "would never suffer in consequences of their deeds and thus will never be reborn or commit any further sins. What is it that leads God to roll these men again into the hell, when they are not performing any sinful actions? An impartial and compassionate Being, never inflicts unnecessary suffering upon any man.
47. Question:
It is for his own entertainment or amusement that God sends one to heaven, and another to hell, makes one a crawling snail and another a man. When these beings skip and jump for merriment or weep or beat their breasts for sorrow, God derives enjoyment from the spectacle of his own creation. It is for this purpose that the world is created.
Answer:
If this is the case, God is not certainly wise. What is a mere amusement to him^, involves infinite suffering to the created beings. It is unwise to call God merciful. One, who is compassionate and all-knowing, never enjoys the fun consequent upon the sufferings of others. God has been said to be without passions, but now you say that he creates the world for his own enjoyment and amusement. Is amusement consistent with dispassion? If God is dispassionate, it is impossible that he feels pleasure in such a show.
48. Question:
Our God is possessed of passion and hatred; hence He can take pleasure in an amusement.
Answer:
If God has passion and hatred, He is passionate like other beings; He is not beyond passions as alleged, neither is He omniscient. He is just like ourselves. How can He be the creator of the universe?
49. Question:
We believe in Him to be the creator of the universe, though possessed of passion and hatred.
Answer:
There is no proof supporting your statement that God is omniscient, notwithstanding His being possessed of passion and hatred.
50. Question:
There is no incompatibility in being omniscient and being possessed of passion and hatred. Fire burns but the ether does not. The tendency to burn, that exists in fire, is not found in the ether. Similarly God is, by His disposition, both passionate and omniscient.
Answer:
What you say is not held by the follower of any creed. None would say that an ass which stands before him is the creator of the world. If one asks why the ass is the creator of the world, your answer would be that it is so by its very nature. After creating the world, though omniscient and passionate, he turns into an ass. Similarly people will consider a buffalo &c. as the creator of the world. God is, therefore, only what one sets up in his imagination. This is verily a blasphemy. If God is omniscient and beyond passions, why should He create the world for His amusement?
0 Believer in God, if, according to you, everything has been created by God, then the scriptures of all faiths have been created by Him and these scriptures are contradictory to one another. Most of them are true and others untrue. God would, therefore, be considered as the preacher of both right and wrong. He is, therefore. Himself setting one against the other in religion Thousands-nay hundreds of thousands people destroy themselves by these religious dissensions. Does it not seem that God by creating the scriptures has brought on a catastrophe on the world? The author of such false scriptures should be designated an imposter, not God. If you say that God has created only the true scriptures, not false ones which have been put together by men themselves, then it does not appear that God has created the world. It is the creatures who have created the world, and not God, because it has not been proved that God is the creator of all things in the world.
