"Shikasta" is told largely from the perspective of Johor, a benevolent, near-divine emissary from the planet Canopus.
Also common to every religion is belief in a divine, benevolent, supreme being.
4. Benevolent dictators are benevolent.
The distinction represented by the gods is not that between good and evil but rather that between the two ways in which the divine manifests itself in this world as both benevolent and fearful, both harmonious and disharmonious, and both transcendent and immanent.
A divine figure is a "likeness" (pratima), a temporary benevolent or terrifying expression of some aspect of a god's nature.
Thus, providence may become a more or less impersonal principle of cosmic order as instituted and maintained by a divine being, but, if the starting point of a benevolent and just divine being is completely lost sight of or if it is consciously denied, then providence becomes fate.
It was an eerily quiet afternoon during the eighth year of Lebanon's civil war, and the delicious breeze felt like a breath of divine forgiveness, offering time out for a frivolous chat with a benevolent billionaire.
Yet he writes and acts much more like his benevolent but baffled Akbar, showing through the story-teller's unarmed might that "human nature, not divine will, was the great force that moved history"; and hoping that "discord, difference, disobedience" might turn out after all to be "wellsprings of the good".
The concept of providence is rooted in the belief in the existence of a benevolent, wise, and powerful deity or a number of beings that are benevolent and that are either fully divine or, at least, appreciably wiser and more powerful than human beings (e.g., ancestors in many religions).
If natural teleology were the result of benevolent intelligent design with human flourishing in view, as a kind of analogue of artificial teleology for a divine designer, then we might be able to understand natural functions and ends ultimately in terms of the good or flourishing of the organisms in question.
