Creator deity
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A creator deity is a Deity responsible for creating the universe or specific aspects of the world. Creator deities are identified in nearly all theistic religions.
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[edit] Abrahamic religions
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam teach that Creation is believed to be the origin of the universe by the action of a god. Even more particularly, every type of existence is believed to be result of a god's act of creation.
Among monotheists it has historically been most commonly believed that living things are a god's creations, and are not the result of a process inherent in originally non-living things, unless this process is designed, initiated, or directed by a god; likewise, sentient and intelligent beings are believed to be a god's creation, and did not arise through the development of living but non-sentient beings, except by the intervention of a god.
- Rouvière, Jean-Marc, Brèves méditations sur la création du monde L'Harmattan, Paris (2006), ISBN 2-7475-9922-1.
[edit] Christianity
It is a tenet of Christian faith (Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant) that God is the creator of all things from nothing ("from nothing" is usually understood in an absolute sense), and has made man in the image of Himself, who by direct inference is also the source of the human soul. Within this broad understanding, however, there are a number of views regarding exactly how this doctrine ought to be interpreted.
- Many Christians, particularly Young Earth creationists and Old Earth creationists, interpret Genesis as an historical, accurate, and literal account of creation.
- A small minority of Christians, in contrast to both of these views of acts of the Creator, may not understand any of these to be statements of historic fact, but rather, spiritual insights more vaguely defined.
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothng came into being that has come into being ... And the Word [Jesus Christ] became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" <John 1:1-3 and 1:14>. "For by faith we understand the the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible" <Hebrews 11:3>. We are told that Jesus is the Word of God <Revelation 1:13> and that the word of God is living <Hebrews 4:12>. All citations are from The Holy Bible, New American Standard Version, ISBN 0-7369-0018-7.
Together these two passages state that Jesus (1) is the Word of God, (2) was in the beginning and, thus, has always existed, (3) is God, (4) created all things that have ever come into being, (5) created everything using nothing but his word to speak everything into existence, and (6)is still living and active. People who follow Jesus are Christians, and they hold to the absolute truth that Jesus is both God and Creator of the Universe.
In summary, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" <Genesis 1:1>. Each day since creation, "The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands" <Psalm 19:1>. All citations are from The Holy Bible, New American Standard Version> ISBN 0-7369-0018-7.
[edit] Catholicism
There Roman Catholic Church allows for both a literal and allegorical interpretation of Genesis, so as to allow for the possibility of Creation by means of an evolutionary process over great spans of time, otherwise known as theistic evolution.
It believes that the creation of the world is a work of a god through the Logos, the Word (idea, intelligence, reason and logic):
- In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was god...all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made." The New Testament claims that God created everything by the eternal Word, his beloved Son. In him "all things were created, in heaven and on earth.. . all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. [1]
Surrounded by a pervasive culture of rationalism, relativism and secularism, the Catholic Church is questioning the validity of reason basing itself on an evolutionary origin of mere chance, and thus basing itself on irrationality. In a 1999 lecture at the University of Paris, Benedict XVI said:
- The question is ... whether reason, being a chance by-product of irrationality and floating in an ocean of irrationality, is ultimately just as meaningless; or whether the principle that represents the fundamental conviction of Christian faith and of its philosophy remains true: "In principio erat Verbum" — at the beginning of all things stands the creative power of reason. Now as then, Christian faith represents the choice in favor of the priority of reason and of rationality. [...] there is no ultimate demonstration that the basic choice involved in Christianity is correct. Yet, can reason really renounce its claim to the priority of what is rational over the irrational, the claim that the Logos is at the ultimate origin of things, without abolishing itself?
- Even today, by reason of its choosing to assert the primacy of reason, Christianity remains "enlightened," and I think that any enlightenment that cancels this choice must, contrary to all appearances, mean, not an evolution, but an involution, a shrinking, of enlightenment.
[edit] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Followers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and others within Mormonism, believe that physical reality (space, matter and/or energy) is eternal, and therefore does not have an absolute origin. The Creator is an architect and organizer of pre-existent matter and energy, who constructed the present cosmos out of the raw material.
[edit] Islam
The fundamental concept in Islam is the oneness of God. Muslims believe that God (Allah) is the creator of all living and non-living things in the universe. This monotheism is absolute, not relative or pluralistic in any sense of the word.
[edit] Judaism
Orthodox Judaism affirms that one God is the creator of all things, and that a god created the first man and woman in his own image — Adam and Eve.
[edit] Hinduism
Hinduism holds that Brahma is the foundation of all being, and that the universe has a definite origin from Brahma; and yet at the ultimate level, all assertions of a distinction between Brahma and creation are meaningless. This is not to say however, that in some more superficial sense the assertion is not true, that Brahma is distinct from the creation brought forth. Therefore, according to Upanishadic teaching, it is not false to speak of Hindu Creationism.
[edit] Classical Greece
Plato, in his dialogue Timaeus, describes a creation myth involving a being called the demiurge.
