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 #17 (permalink) Fri Jun 08, 2007 15:33 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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Jamie:
nonono most of the chinese don't believe in any religions. To me even you invite me to convert to some a religion, i won't. In china if you want to believe in any religion nobody will prevent you from doing it. It is true. Please believe me, okay?
Those people overseas are exceptions. Suppose you are in a foreign country whee most people believe in one or another religion, if you are not one of them you will feel yourselves uneasy.I think many chinese just need a feeling of belonging to a group.
I don't understand why people believe in religions. I don't believe any god but i help people who need help and try my best to contribute the society. I do things i think right and don't believe any thing or person i can't see. Who is god? Where is he? If a person can't behave him/herself without the supervision of god, isn't it ridiculos?
Besides chinese have never really believed any god in history. Besides Dao is a chinese native religion, all of the others religions were imported. Even Buddisims in china is different from it in his original country, India. An ancient chinese idiom can prove that chinese have never truely believed in religions that is called "Lin Shi Bao Fo Jiao" Litterally means in English :"a person won't think of buddha until he has to=make hasty efforts at the last minute."
Generally speaking chinese don't care religion.
Jamie could you please recommand me a movie, a TV serie or book which can vividly describe or reflect the true life of average americans?
aleaf
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Aleaf
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| #18 (permalink) Fri Jun 08, 2007 16:05 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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| aleaf wrote: |
| nonono most of the chinese don't believe in any religions. To me even you invite me to convert to some a religion, i won't. In china if you want to believe in any religion nobody will prevent you from doing it. It is true. Please believe me, okay? |
I'm not talking about you. I said MANY Chinese people. Your own newspaper, The People's Daily, has reported that more than 31 percent of the people in China are religious. That's almost a third of the population. And 62 percent of the religious people are between the ages of 16 and 39, so they are mostly relatively young people. And according to your paper, religious belief is growing in China. Here is a link to the article:
http://english.people.com.cn/200702/07/eng20070207_348105.html
But China really DOES prevent people from practicing their religions -- normal religions, not dangerous cults. You can see articles about it at these sites:
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&geo=17&theme=8&size=A
http://www.buyhard.fsnet.co.uk/religiousoppression.htm#art2
Those articles are just a small part of the documentation available.
| aleaf wrote: |
| I don't understand why people believe in religions. I don't believe any god but i help people who need help and try my best to contribute the society. I do things i think right and don't believe any thing or person i can't see. Who is god? Where is he? If a person can't behave him/herself without the supervision of god, isn't it ridiculos? |
I think your understanding of religion is approximately at the level people typically have when they're 12, so you're understanding things too concretely. This is true of many adults.
| aleaf wrote: |
| Besides chinese have never really believed any god in history. Besides Dao is a chinese native religion, all of the others religions were imported. |
Communism is also an imported religion, but I think you approve of it.
| aleaf wrote: |
| Even Buddisims in china is different from it in his original country, India. An ancient chinese idiom can prove that chinese have never truely believed in religions that is called "Lin Shi Bao Fo Jiao" Litterally means in English :"a person won't think of buddha until he has to=make hasty efforts at the last minute." |
There are proverbs like this even in religious countries. It doesn't prove anything.
Nurses in Czechoslovakia used to tell me that when communists get very sick, they all become religious and start praying.
| aleaf wrote: |
| Jamie could you please recommand me a movie, a TV serie or book which can vividly describe or reflect the true life of average americans? |
Even though it's a cartoon show, I think you can learn a lot about American life from the TV series "King of the Hill", as long as you understand that some things in it are exaggerated. I think reruns of the old "Cosby Show" are pretty realistic in terms of how typical families think and behave. If you want to learn about the ugly part of America that most Americans don't have contact with, you can see shows like "Law & Order" or "NYPD Blue". Just realize that most Americans never have contact with the criminal justice system. One good movie that will show you a lot is called "The Pursuit of Happyness" (the last word is misspelled on purpose). Another good movie is "Akeelah and the Bee", and the new movie "Gracie" is pretty accurate, even though it's set 30 years ago.
I'll think about it and give you some more answers later. Meanwhile, maybe some other people will have ideas. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #19 (permalink) Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:49 am Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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| aleaf wrote: |
| Those people overseas are exceptions. Suppose you are in a foreign country whee most people believe in one or another religion, if you are not one of them you will feel yourselves uneasy.I think many chinese just need a feeling of belonging to a group. |
I've seen the process in action, Aleaf, and it didn't happen because the Chinese people wanted to belong to a group.
One particular case was a woman who was a real atheist when she arrived in the United States. Not only was she an atheist, but she held some horrifying opinions that Chinese immigrants tell me are typical of people who have just come from China. For example, she believed that citizens are state property and that it is the state's right to kill them as it wishes, as long as the government does not cross its own borders.
As two or three years passed, without anyone trying to convert her, without ever going to church or taking religion classes, and without ever reading religious books, this woman gradually started evolving toward a belief in God, just because of events in her life. At first she didn't know she believed in God, because she didn't understand that God is abstract, but later she figured it out. |
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Jamie (K)
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| #20 (permalink) Sat Jun 09, 2007 10:33 am Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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I'm not talking about you. I said MANY Chinese people. Your own newspaper, The People's Daily, has reported that more than 31 percent of the people in China are religious. That's almost a third of the population. And 62 percent of the religious people are between the ages of 16 and 39, so they are mostly relatively young people. And according to your paper, religious belief is growing in China. Here is a link to the article:
The figure showed that there were almost 1/3 chinese thought they believe in religions but i thought most of them were not really/truely believe in it. It is a very interesting phenomenon that there are lots of temples and some churches across china and some of them are always very popular, many chinese pray there but if you ask most chinese:"Do you believe there is gods ?" I think most of them will reply:"no." I don't know how they get the figure of 1/3. It is very strange that almost none of people around me believein religions. My cousin is an exception who believe in buddism and every time he visits my home and has meal at my home he avoids any kind of meats. Many chinese believe in one or another religion when they encounter difficulties they can't resolve and hope the situation can be changed by converting.
think your understanding of religion is approximately at the level people typically have when they're 12, so you're understanding things too concretely. This is true of many adults.
So tell me what kind of understanding an adult should hold on religion? Do the things the bible tells you should do? Obey the god's will? To find a plance for your soul?
I respect any kind of religion as well as people but i won't figure out why it is better to believe in a religion.
In english religion is one word but in chinese religion about politics and religion about god are two totally different words. I can't understand why you connect it to politics.
I don't dare to say i believe in socialism because i think when a person sayshe/she believes in something he/she should be very careful only those who 100% faithful to it have the right to say "believe in" . But so far i don't oppose socialism because i was from a socialism country and i feel my life is better and brtter, my country is sronger and stronger, so why should i say bad words about a country which can afford me better life?
Nurses in Czechoslovakia used to tell me that when communists get very sick, they all become religious and start praying.
Not only the communists get very sick they will start praying, but average chinese will do so which just prove the idiom i mentioned above. Most chinese won't think of any god except that they want to get help from the god.When they get what they get they will forget the god. Even so in fact we don't believe in god. It is just a kind of placebo.
Once a scholar ever explained this cultural phenomeon.He said china was an agricultural country of thousands of years . Chinese were peasants at heart so chinese focused more on what they could see and they didn't care those they couldn't see.chinese have been very down - to - earth.
Don't always think all socialists are clowns or vicious. They are human beings and have the same feelings as other people.People aare people.What they believe in chance to be you don't like but at least you should view it objectively. Admiting its advantages as well as disadvantages.
thanks very much for the recommendation and hope you have a good weekend.
Aleaf
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| #21 (permalink) Sat Jun 09, 2007 14:00 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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Hi Jamie
Why is communism a religion Jamie K? what makes it a religion and not a theory. Even to say it is an ideology can be an extreme remark.
Religion is
Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader.
WHat of the above makes communism a religion?
You made the comment "Communism is also an imported religion, but I think you approve of it". but does this statment not contradict that somehow?
"Nurses in Czechoslovakia used to tell me that when communists get very sick, they all become religious and start praying".
I do not think that there is a completely right or wrong theory as such, if there was we would be so convinced by it that we could live in some kind of Utopia.
Tolerance is maybe the thing that prevents theories coexisting together without friction.
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| #22 (permalink) Sat Jun 09, 2007 14:31 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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| stew.t. wrote: |
Religion is
Belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe.
A personal or institutionalized system grounded in such belief and worship.
The life or condition of a person in a religious order.
A set of beliefs, values, and practices based on the teachings of a spiritual leader. |
Based on your definition, then Buddhism is not a religion, because Buddhism is a nontheistic belief system. It expresses no opinion as to the existence or non-existence of God. In its belief set, the most recent Buddha, and all those before him, were ordinary people and are not gods.
If Buddhism can be a religion without any supreme being, then so can communism, and it is.
Communism can be distinguished from ordinary economic theories or ideologies by its religious trappings. It preaches belief in salvation involving a world of suffering from which the human populace can be liberated through certain ideologically pure beliefs and practices. This suffering-and-salvation paradigm is common to all religions, but it's not part of scientific economic or social theories.
If you read the Marxism-Leninism books from the Soviet Union and other communist countries (which I have), you see another dead giveaway that it's a religion: In the introductions, the books instruct the reader that it is necessary to choose to believe in the theory right at the outset -- before actually finding out what it is -- or else the whole thing will not make sense. Religions from Roman Catholicism all the way to Hare Krishnaism will have this in many of their books, but you'll never see it in a book on legitimate economic theory or sociology.
If you read those books, you can see that what has been done is to take the belief template of Catholic or Orthodox Christianity, replace God with "science", and most other things are left intact. Countries where it's been adopted even have a Vatican-like hierarchy whose members interpret "truth" for the general populace. They run just like religious organizations.
The funny part is when you get a convinced communist who says that there is no god and that everything people attribute to God is caused by "physics". When you start asking him a lot of questions about how "physics" caused this or that, you soon find out that they don't know what they mean by "physics" or how "physics" causes anything, or what caused physics, and it becomes very clear that they're simply using "science" as a proxy for God. They do believe in a supernatural, but they pretend it's not supernatural.
Some people think that religion has no basis in reality. I don't believe this, but even from that point of view, communism fits the description of a nontheistic religion, because Marx never visited a factory in his life, and even refused to visit one when Engels tried to arrange it. He had very minimal contact with real workers, and these contacts were often hostile, because the workers could see he didn't understand their lives or what they needed, and they thought he was off his rocker. And the attempts at implementation of his theory of a "workers' state" have proven he was off his rocker. |
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| #23 (permalink) Sun Jun 10, 2007 14:25 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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Mao's first wife who was also the daughter of his teacher was killed by Chinese Natuional Party. She was the one Mao beloved and Mao Wrote a poem to yearn her which is very famous in china.One of his son who died several years ago was beaten to have menatal problem when he was a kid by the National Party.One of his another sons was missing when he was a infant.Until now nobody know he is dead or live in a place somewhere. The third son was bombed to die in Korean war by american plane.
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| #24 (permalink) Sun Jun 10, 2007 14:44 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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| aleaf wrote: |
| Mao's first wife who was also the daughter of his teacher was killed by Chinese Natuional Party. |
She was probably assisting him in the communist revolution, so the Kuomintang probably had a reason for executing her.
| aleaf wrote: |
| One of his son who died several years ago was beaten to have menatal problem when he was a kid by the National Party. |
What had he done to attract the beating? After all, his dad was fomenting a violent revolution. Maybe the son was involved in it.
After all, the country run by the Kuomintang is now a prosperous nation where people have full freedoms and human rights. Mainland China, where the Kuomintang lost power, came under a totalitarian dictatorship that carried out numerous purges and genocides and still doesn't give full rights to its people. So I guess the Kuomintang were the good guys after all, as history shows.
| aleaf wrote: |
| One of his another sons was missing when he was a infant.Until now nobody know he is dead or live in a place somewhere. |
That can happen to anyone's child in any country.
| aleaf wrote: |
| The third son was bombed to die in Korean war by american plane. |
Why was he in Korea? Did he just happen to be shopping at a department store when some American pilot said, "Oh, look! Mao's son!" and dropped a bomb on him? And if he was fighting on the side of the North Koreans, well, it's very easy to see now that he was fighting for something evil.
Your explaining these facts (if they are all true) reminds me of a time I visited a prison and had a chance to talk to the inmates and hear their stories. You see, no prisoner is ever guilty of anything, and he's in prison because people who didn't like him arrested him for no reason. The murderer didn't really murder anybody. The car thief "didn't know" he was in a stolen car. The drug dealer was merely caught with some drugs that someone put into his pocket. In all their stories, they are completely innocent of everything, and they're only in prison because their enemies wanted to ruin their lives. This is also how the official Chinese stories about Mao sound. |
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| #25 (permalink) Sun Jun 10, 2007 14:49 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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You are so cold. jamie.
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| #26 (permalink) Sun Jun 10, 2007 15:07 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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What had he done to attract the beating? After all, his dad was fomenting a violent revolution. Maybe the son was involved in it.
At that time he was just a kid. don't you undersatnd? not older than 10 years old.
Taiwan? it was not ruled by Kuomintand any more. Don't you know it?taiwan has democracy now. But there is a mess.
why did Americans come all the way to korea at that time? Korea is a neighbour country of china. Just like there is a fire happening in your next room, you won't just sit there and don't lend a hand.
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| #27 (permalink) Sun Jun 10, 2007 15:08 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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That can happen to anyone's child in any country.
How could you say so?
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| #28 (permalink) Sun Jun 10, 2007 15:09 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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You even don't feel a little pity for him? are you a human being?
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| #29 (permalink) Sun Jun 10, 2007 15:23 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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So I guess the Kuomintang were the good guys after all, as history shows.
Kuomintand were a good guys, as history shows! ridiculous. Do you know when The kuomintang was in power. How were Jiang song Kong Chen four familise rich? but other chinese people were living miserable life. In china nobody say it is a good party.
Why was he in Korea? Did he just happen to be shopping at a department store when some American pilot said, "Oh, look! Mao's son!" and dropped a bomb on him? And if he was fighting on the side of the North Koreans, well, it's very easy to see now that he was fighting for something evil.
When the Iraq war happened where were the children of presidents when they saw kids of others died?
By the way Americans were considered as evil by we chinese at that time, and even now many people of other countries don't like the USA, do they?
Don't always think you america is the policeman of the world, we don't need you help us get the liberty. Please listen to the sounds of average chinese.
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| #30 (permalink) Tue Jun 12, 2007 18:20 pm Clean in the US, but dirty everywhere else |
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| aleaf wrote: |
| why did Americans come all the way to korea at that time? Korea is a neighbour country of china. Just like there is a fire happening in your next room, you won't just sit there and don't lend a hand. |
Aleaf, we went to Korea to save South Korea from communism. Look at how North and South Korea have fared since 1953.
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| A question about "30/30 challenge" | New words |
