ABSTRACT
From the point of view of world religions, this is, at first sight, an unpromising topic, because for Indian and Asian religions creation is not the context in which law and probability are likely to be discussed. For some of those religions, creation itself is not central because they do not believe that the universe has come into being as a consequence of a, or the, Creator. For Jains, for example, the universe (loka) is finite (in the sense that it is surrounded by aloka), and it has no beginning or end. That in itself does not rule out a Creator, but Jains are clear that the unending cycles of time neither need nor reveal the work of God. It is not that Jains are atheists. They are entirely happy to use the word “God” of the Self in its state of perfect and complete freedom, paramatman, and they recognize that there are many deities within the loka who interact with humans. But the deities, like humans, are seeking their own liberation and have no part to play in the creation and ordering of the universe.
