Do theosophists believe in God?
May 27, 2004 07:01 AM
by Paul Gillingwater
It's a serious question.
I am thinking of one of the passages in the Mahatma Letters, wherein KH
implies very strongly a lack of belief in the Christian (or other
Monotheistic) version of God. In fact, he suggests that the view of the
Adepts is quite close to a type of Atheism. They seem to deny the
existence of a single, isolated Divine Deity separate and apart from His
creation, which I guess also denies the Dvaita of Vaishnavism. (See
http://www.dvaita.org/faq.shtml). To me, this is closest to Mahayana
Buddhism, which apparently adopts a somewhat Atheistic approach.
Atheism seems to follow three forms:
The theistic position is belief in a deity. Then there are two atheistic
positions. The first, called implicit (or weak) atheism, is a disbelief
in a deity. The second, called explicit (or strong) atheism, is a belief
that there are no deities. So what we actually have is:
Theism -- positive claim
Implicit Atheism -- neutral claim
Explicit Atheism -- negative claim
The following link however suggests that Mahayana does not in fact teach
Atheism (being largely based on Vaishnavism), and suggests instead that
pure Atheism is to be found in the Theravada school.
http://www.vaisnavi.com/saragrahi/columns/one/one1/pure_land_bhakti_buddhism.htm
What do you'all think?
--
Paul Gillingwater
Confused in Vienna
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