China’s clampdown on religious freedom | Hacker News Reader

China’s clampdown on religious freedom

asiatimes.com

29 pointstomohawk21 comments

I haven’t read the article, but I have been following the story on the news. I think ultimately the Chinese government will fail. Religion is stronger than government. Virtually every human society has had religion, And religion has existed long before organized government came to be.

If you really want to suppress religion just educate your population.

Higher levels of education are linked with lower levels of religious commitment, especially the more extreme versions of zealotry.

I don't really understand how someone who studies biology or physics to any degree could subscribe to an interventional deity.

Ha, I don't understand it either, and I used to subscribe to your philosophy (increasing education == decreasing religious affiliation).

But the effect to which this is true is somewhat confuddled. For example many educated people on the conservative right tend to still skew religious. Maybe education alone isn't enough; intelligence, social circles, aptitude for self reflection/self criticism etc, might play more into determining one's religiosity.

Yes, I have some really clever friends who still attend church but at least here in the UK they are the exception.

I put it down to religion being deeply embedded into self-identity, especially in families and spousal relationships where everyone is religious.

It's a spectrum though, I am thoroughly atheist but still like singing carols at Christmas.

Ha! Same. I am definitely atheist or agnostic if we're being particularly pedantic, but I still go to church with my friends, engage in the rituals, etc. Just because it isn't of spiritual meaning to me doesn't mean it's meaningless. The increasingly polarizing & tribal nature of our world seems to suggest that this kind of thing is happening less and less.

while literally sitting on the toilet, the following names come to mind:

physics: issac newton, gottfried Leibniz, george lemaitre, james maxwell, lord kelvin,j. j. thompson ...

biology: gregor mendel, pasteur, francis collins...

there are rather a few very big names who are Just Fine doing both.

Sure, but their understanding of the world was different. Everywhere around them religion was important. That's not the case anymore. Furthermore, they also knew a lot less about the world in general, because such information simply wasn't available back then.

i don’t think we’ve made any staggering advances in knowledge since 1960, when lemaitre died, for instance.

it’s just a false dichotomy, sorry.

> i don’t think we’ve made any staggering advances in knowledge since 1960, when lemaitre died, for instance.

We've got Twitter and Reddit, and if those don't encapsulate staggering advances in human knowledge, I don't know what would.

Can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not...

As a counterpoint religious affiliation and attendance of religious services has fallen across the developed world space with education. I’m not sure that cherry picking a list of names can stand up to the overwhelming demographic shift we see today.

I am not sure, but looks like lemaitre is couple of steps ahead of your argument: https://archive.org/stream/theoriesoftheuni033062mbp#page/n3...

On the flip side religion at least provided meaning to life, a lot of 20th century writers struggled with that one, and I think we still struggle today.

No it's not. The Middle East is highly educated and really always has been, including the most zealous countries, like Iran.

What? Nobel winners and moon travelers have espoused religious ideas and talked of God, creation, and conversion. So, education is not really a factor (not even if you expand the sample size to include moderately educated and non-elite people).

Yes, you can be spiritual to an extent. That's very different from the gods described in most religious texts.

It's becoming pretty clear how everything since the big bang came to be.

I’m not amazingly fond of Gould’s “two magesteria” idea (the bell curves overlap more than he’d like to admit), but:

religion is not and never really has been primarily concerned with how. It’s larger concern is why, and even more than that, given existence: how then should we live?.

Since “religion” seems to be shorthand for “the religions of abraham” in common discourse, it’s worth noting that, e. g., Genesis was not written as a text on cosmology. It’s a text on ethics, and to a fairly large extent, it’s also a ~5th century BCE political document. To willfully read it “literally” is just wrong-footed, though it’s very common among christian fundamentalists and new atheists alike.

Religion is suposed to be a cult rooted in values deeper than anything else but a socialist government _requires_ to occupy that place hence it can't allow competitors or freedom of thought/speech.

Any religion that exists today started when organized governments already existed. An overwhelming number of religions that ever existed no longer have even a single follower. For example Slavic pagan religion was eliminated by the government of Kievan Rus enforcing Christianity on everyone [1]. I'd even argue that the only way religion can have power is when it is intertwined with the government, which is why separation of church and state is so important.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavic_paganism

As a native Chinese, I generally find this kind of articles to be funny.

With a master degree in computer science, I would consider myself to be well educated. During my entire education, no one told me to not to be religious. In fact, "religious freedom" was literally written in our textbooks. And we are educated to respect other people's religion. I, and many other well-educated Chinese people, am not religious, simply because we don't find them convincing.

I know many religious people. And I have nothing good to say about them. They are generally less educated, selfish and double-standard. They blame everything bad happened to them, which usually are their own fault, on other (non-religious) people. They credit everything good, which are usually help received from non-religious people, to god. I wouldn't say they are stupid, because they are smart enough to use their religion for their own personal gain.

I'm not saying religious people or religion in general are bad. I'm sure they are not in your part of the world. I'm sure the religious people you known even contribute positively to the society. But that's the pattern here in China, through out the history.

I understand the need for religions. They are very effective tools for keeping a huge portion of population, usually less educated, in check.

I'm not a fan of the CCP. But I hate the prospective of replacing it with any religion ruled by stupider people.

I have thought long and hard about why I believe in God (and appreciate science greatly, of course). I have posted my thoughts in detail at http://lukecall.net . These things help me even when life is hard (as designed--but worth it). (edit: I should probably have made this as a reply to other comments ... having some computer trouble in last few days; will try to remember. Also, the web site is lightweight and easy, I hope, to get around. The link in question is a few lines from the top.)

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