Jewish China (Reprised)

[cranos]

Not really, no, but then that's why it's a challenge. Go back to the original thread if you want to see more.

The hard part really is to make China religious. China's really not very religious. Superstitious at time, and prone to cults at others (which usually lead to large scale rebellions, which may be one reason why the Chinese have general reservations about religions), but religious? Not often.

Umm China right now might be non religious but if you have a look at the history of the region, there has always been religion, whether its buddhism or confucism or some other ism. The current anti-religious stance is really an abberation brought on by the communists back in the forties and fifties, who viewed organised religion as both a drag on the proletariat and a direct challange to their authority.

 

[NFR]

Umm China right now might be non religious but if you have a look at the history of the region, there has always been religion, whether its buddhism or confucism or some other ism. The current anti-religious stance is really an abberation brought on by the communists back in the forties and fifties, who viewed organised religion as both a drag on the proletariat and a direct challange to their authority.

1. Confucianism is by no stretch of the imagination a religion
2. I said areligious, and I stand by that, I said nothing about anti-religious.
3. You think China is communist?

 

[cranos]

1. Confucianism is by no stretch of the imagination a religion
2. I said areligious, and I stand by that, I said nothing about anti-religious.
3. You think China is communist?

Okay point by point.

1. Confucianism was at the very least treated as a quasi-religion. And in many periods is was the dominant belief system amongst the ruling classes. While there is some debate about whether Confucianism could be technically called a religion, in practicallity it bore all the hallmarks.

2. Again I say that China at no point in it's history has been areligious. There has always been religion in china, Buddhism being the perfect example, not including all the local belief systems.

3. China today is not communist, instead it is pretty much a totallitarian regime swinging increasingly to the right but trying to hang on to the trappings of the extreme left. My comment however referred to the forties and fifties when China oh so definitly was communist and strictly enforced communist doctorine against organised religion.

 

[Hendryk]

1. Confucianism was at the very least treated as a quasi-religion. And in many periods is was the dominant belief system amongst the ruling classes. While there is some debate about whether Confucianism could be technically called a religion, in practicallity it bore all the hallmarks.

There is a debate about whether Confucianism could be called a religion because the Western concept of religion is largely inapplicable to China. The very word did not enter the Chinese language until the 19th century, when it was introduced by Westerners. "Confucianism" is itself a Western word invented by the Jesuits in the 16th century; to the Chinese, it's rujiao, the School of the Learned Ones. Nor could it be called a "belief system" as Confucius didn't present his doctrine in a systemic way, and neither he nor his disciples intended anyone to believe his teachings in a religious sense. Confucianism is more properly defined as an ethos that was adopted as a state ideology during the imperial era. It does have a ritual dimension (rituals were seen by Confucius as the outward manifestation of one's inner commitment to harmony between human beings on the one hand, and between mankind and the world as a whole on the other), but only the civil servants were required to practice them.
Confucianism's only transcendant tenet is the existence of a cosmic order with which mankind must seek harmony in order to prosper. When that harmony is achieved, Confucius argued, mankind will know the "Great Peace". But that cosmic order is an impersonal principle independent of the existence or non-existence of any deity or supreme being. When pressed by his disciples to define his position regarding spirituality, Confucius told them: "Honor the gods and the demons, but keep them at a distance." (in other terms, they're ultimately irrelevant). Likewise, when asked about the afterlife, Confucius came out as a complete agnostic: "I do not know life, how could I know death?" So one isn't supposed to behave righteously in the expectation of any reward after death, but simply because it is one's duty as a human being.

2. Again I say that China at no point in it's history has been areligious. There has always been religion in china, Buddhism being the perfect example, not including all the local belief systems.

Again it comes down to a problem of definition. What to us looks like a religion isn't necessarily viewed as such by the Chinese. To this day, if you ask a Chinese whether he/she has a religion, you'll likely get a negative answer; but if you ask whether he/she prays to Buddha and makes offerings to the spirits, the answer will in many cases be "yes". Few Chinese have a religion in the sense that they make a spiritual commitment to a specific creed (the Muslim and Christian minorities notwithstanding, and even in some instances in their case); they simply acknowledge the existence of spiritual forces, which to them goes without saying, and do what they have to in order to stay in good terms with them.

3. China today is not communist, instead it is pretty much a totallitarian regime swinging increasingly to the right but trying to hang on to the trappings of the extreme left. My comment however referred to the forties and fifties when China oh so definitly was communist and strictly enforced communist doctorine against organised religion.

Contemporary China is an authoritarian regime with Communist trappings that no longer fool anyone, least of all the Chinese themselves. The Mao era, from a long-term perspective, was little more than a short parenthesis during which a charismatic autocrat tried to shoehorn Chinese civilization into a Western-imported system, after which reality reasserted itself, and Communism became an empty shell inside which it's business as usual.

 

[cranos]

While Conficius may not have intended his teachings to be a religion however by the time of the nineteenth century it was so ingrained it may as well have been.

Again I will bring Buddhism into the conversation as a perfect example of overt religion in China.

they simply acknowledge the existence of spiritual forces, which to them goes without saying, and do what they have to in order to stay in good terms with them.

A rose by any other name perhaps?