gad-fly wrote: ↑March 1st, 2020, 12:55 am
In Christianity, the Holy Bible starts with Genesis: In the beginning, God creates Heaven and Earth. The Earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light . . . God saw all that He made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
In Islamism, the Qur’an states the all-knowing Allah created the heavens and the Earth, and all that is between them, in six yawm (each ranging from 1,000 to 50,000 years).
In Hinduism, There are many universes, with each following the destruction of the earlier, as created by Lord Brahma, maintained by Lord Vishnu, and destroyed by Lord Shiva. These three gods are all forms of Supreme One and part of the Supreme One. The Supreme One is behind and beyond all.
In Buddhism, Creation occurs repeatedly throughout time in cycles. According to
[email protected]: “In the beginning of each cycle, land forms, in darkness, on the surface of the water. Beings who populated the universe in the previous cycle are reborn; some of them become the “new” humans in the new universe. Suffering and misery reign. That is where we stand today. Eventually, the universe breaks down; all living creatures return to the soul life, and the cycle repeats. There is no ‘Creation’ in the usual Christian-like way of looking at it. Some older Buddhist stories do indeed involve some kind of god or gods making the creation happen. Today, these are generally accepted as symbolic stories.”
Taoism is pantheistic in its view of the material world. The origin of creation is explained: "Tao is its own source, its own root. Before heaven and earth existed it was there. It gave spirituality to the spirits and gods; it gave birth to heaven and to earth." The word Tao is nothing less than an expression of the profound unity of the universe and of the path human beings must take to join rather than to disturb that unity. Translated from Chinese as Path or Way, Tao is more a beacon than an entity.
In Chinese mythology, chaos and harmony as one, termed Tai-chi, has been around until the beginning of time, when it gave birth to that double helix chasing each other inside a circle. In turn, this circle gave birth to four ways, which in turn gave birth to eight sooths, which in turn gave birth to sixteen something which I cannot translate, and so on.
No religion worth its salt can afford to evade the issue of ‘Creation’ without losing the ardent faith of its believers. The issue of there being a ‘Creator’ is so crucial that some would deny Buddhism as a genuine religion in its absence of a viable creator. In the same vein, Taoism is no more than the study of harmony in nature which must be accepted with due respect or suffer the dire consequence. Be that as it may, installing a creator would beg the question right-away: Where is the Creator from, as he apparently cannot create himself?