Reference: Postulate Mechanics (PM)
Divinity has always been looked upon as infinite because the universe has infinite dimensions, and space is where infinity is most immediately apparent and perplexing to human understanding. Divinity is viewed as having the property of Oneness because the whole universe operates in a dynamic equilibrium. This is the starting point for any notion of God.
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The Vedic Gods
The earliest Vedic notion of “God” is not a single, systematized monotheistic deity, but a fluid vision of many devas manifesting one underlying cosmic order and truth. The tradition often highlights the famous statement “Ekam sat viprā bahudhā vadanti” (“The Truth/Reality is one; the sages call it by many names”), as expressing this intuition: the manifold gods are many names and forms of a single sat (truth/being). This sat is connected with ṛta—cosmic order as the “active realization of truth.”
The Vedic notion of God is best seen as poetic intuition of one truth shining through many devas, ordered by ṛta, rather than a finished “doctrine of God” in the systematic theological sense.
This notion of God is further refined through other Eastern religions, such as, Hinduism; but it essentially remains the same.
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God in Buddhism
Buddhism also derives its ideas of devas from the Vedas, but it takes a more practical approach with its focus on addressing suffering in life as a result of ignorance. Buddha’s ideas of God and Self may be summarized as follows:
“Two ideas are psychologically deep-rooted in man: self-protection and self-preservation. For self-protection man has created God, on whom he depends for his own protection, safety and security, just as a child depends on its parent. For self-preservation man has conceived the idea of an immortal Soul or Atman, which will live eternally. In his ignorance, weakness, fear, and desire, man needs these two things to console himself. Hence he clings to them deeply and fanatically.”
In early and mainstream Buddhist doctrine, the idea of an omnipotent, eternal, personal creator is explicitly rejected as incompatible with core teachings such as dependent origination and non-self.
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The Monotheistic God
Monotheistic belief in a single, universal God is a relatively late development in religious history, emerging gradually out of polytheistic traditions in the ancient Near East between roughly the late 2nd and mid‑1st millennium BCE, and reaching a clear, exclusive form only in the late stages of ancient Israelite religion and the early common era.
Ancient Yahwism in the 9th–8th centuries BCE was devotion to one god as supreme, without denying others. Later, much of early Israelite religion worshipped one god while acknowledging that others exist but must not be worshipped. Thus, monotheism has been a progressive privileging of one deity over others, then the denial of those others.
Many scholars locate the crystallization of strict, metaphysical monotheism—“there are no other gods at all”—in the exilic and post‑exilic periods (6th–5th centuries BCE). After the Babylonian exile, returning Judean elites in the Persian period develop a rigorously monotheistic Judaism centered on the Jerusalem temple and a codified corpus of scripture (the Tanakh), emphasizing a single creator God of all nations, not merely a national deity.
This is the point at which the “God of Israel” is explicitly identified as the only God of all that exists, not one god among many—what later Christian and Islamic traditions inherit as a monotheistic template.
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Postulate Mechanics
Postulate Mechanics starts with the postulate of SUBSTANTIALITY-AWARENESS-ONENESS based on Vedic “Sat-chit-ananda.” The theory (scientific religion) that follows makes up the chapters of this book.
Postulate Mechanics sees the monotheistic God as the simplistic reification of the dynamic equilibrium of this wonderfully complex universe. But there could also be social engineering aspects involved in the development of a rigorously monotheistic God after the Babylonian exile by the returning Judean elites.
A single transcendent God, often linked to a single revealed law or scripture, can provide a unified moral and doctrinal framework across large populations. It divides reality into true vs. false gods, true vs. false worship, which encourages a strong sense of shared identity among those who follow the “one true God.”
Postulate Mechanics sees “one true God” as an arbitrary postulate that distracts one from understanding the Oneness of the wonderfully complex universal reality.
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