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Comment by kadoban | Hacker News Reader

> A low faction of Japanese people claim to "believe in God" but Japanese participate in religious rituals at a high rate.

Wouldn't both a Buddhist and a believer in Shintoism tend to answer no to "belief in God"?

Also my impression is that the Japanese are generally just into rituals, they don't seem to need much excuse.

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The word is superstitious. Other parts of Asia (like China) often claim no religious belief but are _very_ superstitious too.

It's not just superstition. Rituals play an important part for the human mind even in the absence of supernatural belief.

Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at school, or singing national anthems at non-national events come to mind as rituals not affiliated with the supernatural[1]

I hazard a majority of Americans (religious or not) voluntarily partake in those rituals.

1. I suppose rituals require venerated objects/subjects, and this is often religious, but does not have to be

Sort of, the pledge includes a “One nation under God” bit but few take it in a religious context.

That also came much later and if we take it in the same sense many of the founding fathers used the word "God", it would not be compatible with mainstream Christian theology.

This is addendum, not correction.

Rituals have a few distinct elements:

+ Repetition both in the ritual and of the ritual itself.

+ Assigned time or place. Eg praying before dinner, or Christmas mass.

+ Fetish. Some kind of object or words, a "solidification of intent". This can be a garment or some specific movement too.

So yes, an anthem is absolutely a ritual, as is a specific cheer for a sports team, under this framework.

Rituals serve several purposes including fostering group identity (the family praying before dinner together), marking something as special (the anthem before a sports game) and demarcation (Christmas mass). Obviously a ritual can fulfill some or a blend of these objectives.

Rituals, I believe, matter for the subconcious and non-rational parts of the human psyche. I think intentional, religious or non-religious, rituals are a useful tool.

I have noticed, anecdotally, that the non-religious tend to be more superstitious, but no that's not really what I mean.

Japan just has a lot of rituals that people do daily and ~seasonally, and they tend to be well attended. The few people I've talked to about it didn't seem to have some superstitious or religious reason to do them, it's just a thing to do.

Superstition and Gnosticism go hand in hand in many ways, chiefly in the belief that matter or identifiable bits of matter are or can be corrupted on an essential level. In Japanese, the word “汚れ” has this nuance and you see it reflected also in any societies built on caste structures.

> Japan just has a lot of rituals that people do daily and ~seasonally

We have the same thing in western societies, it just isn't often as homogeneous. Taking the USA for example we don't call them rituals, they're just "how we do things" and the like.

Honestly I find it similar to the formal system of addressing people in Japanese and other languages with lots of words or modifiers for expressing your relationship to another person. We do the same thing in English, just less formally and with more variation among groups and regions. For example even if I am familiar enough to address my boss by first name I wouldn't address them a nickname: shortening names or nicknames tend to flow down or across the hierarchy in English, rarely up. The exceptions themselves are usually expressions of an extremely close relationship. Obviously this doesn't apply to people who are so far removed from the speaker that it isn't a relationship at all... that's another unwritten informal rule: if we grunts have a nickname for the CEO it would be extremely rude to use it in a meeting where the CEO is present, even if not addressing them directly.

This is a cultural difference I think. Asking if you believe in God in the west is generally inclusive of such superstition.

It's "superstitious" from a Christian (particularly Protestant) point of view but this is what religion has historically been for most people. Even in rural England in the 1970s I saw the farmers had all kinds of observances related to saints, seasons etc. that didn't involve the church. I like to joke that the low belief in Christianity in England is because most Englishmen are actually druids!

I think some Chinese (I don't want to extend it to "Eastern" because I don't know) ways of thinking are "superstitious" from any rational standpoint. Even in non-religious contexts, it's common to believe in things like being careful not to accidentally invite a ghost to stay at your house during ghost month. Or take something like blood types, a Western medical discovery. Many people In Taiwan and Japan believe blood types can say something about your temperament or use it for match making.

See fan death in Korea:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

Belief in fan death is still common even among successful educated people in their 30s-60s. Don't argue, it won't get you anywhere that a flat earther won't take you.

It's a euphemism for suicide.

Preserving family honor may be why fan death caught on, but the media surrounding it has created an entirely different and sustaining belief.

I think a huge source of confusion around East Asian cultures and rituals/religions is that this religion-culture has no formal names, definitions, structures and boundaries. There is no church or a verse responsible for the upside down 福 on a wall of a downtown Chinese restaurant, but there is it, and the only word applicable is superstitions. On the other hand there are Christ-mas cakes with a smiling figurine of a Saint standing on it.

The thing about polling people about superstition is that people generally believe their own beliefs, so you're only going to conclude that other people are superstitious when they believe things different from you. So at best you have a noisy metric of ~religious tolerance.

It’s the same in India, except the superstitions are more codified and all wrapped up within Hinduism. I don’t know if a lot of Hindus believe there is a god but it’s a heady mix of hero and ancestor worship and modes of good living brought to life as a religion.

Religion is basically just organized superstition

The level of confusion and arrogance to call other religions than your own "superstition" is mind boggling. Especially since one of those religions is Buddhism which quite literally doesn't even believe in gods!

I'm the one you're replying to. I don't have a religion, but was raised somewhat culturally Buddhist.

I know Buddhism varies by sect but it's definitely still highly superstition: going to temples and praying, making offerings, beliefs in reincarnation etc

Going to temples? That's neutral clearly.

Praying? Yes. 100% superstition. Which is why it's not a thing Buddha talked about at all.

Making offerings? Same as above.

Belief in reincarnation? Well.. maybe. Buddhist rebirth can be just "have kids" or "influence others with your ideas", and then it can be "I got reborn as a monkey". The first is just science and common sense, and the latter is superstition. It's a wide range... Literally buddhists shouldn't believe in "reincarnation", but believe in "rebirth", as they shouldn't believe in a soul.

But we all know what Buddha says and what Buddhism teaches, and what people actually believe who call themselves buddhists are vastly different. Just as with Christians. There are plenty of people who call themselves Christians who don't believe in the divinity of Jesus. The head of the Swedish Church once said about the virgin birth "It's a nice story..." :P

Buddhism unfortunately has a bad history of talking down to the lay people and allowing them to believe all kinds of clearly incorrect stuff like immortal souls, or gods, or spirits. Hell, Pure Land buddhism is based on crazy stuff like that!

> Wouldn't both a Buddhist and a believer in Shintoism tend to answer no to "belief in God"?

Shintoism == believe in many "gods" or spirits, but not one singular "God".

+1 on the "superstition" points here.

Source: my wife is Japanese. Also, I've seen "Spirited Away" more times than I care to say.

To the point, Christianity has very little market penetration in Japan. People there don't feel the need.

I’m not sure Shinto involves “beliefs” (though I never asked), it’s more like a set of cultural rituals like Christmas.

buddhists do believe in GOD, just not the same way christians do.

Anyone who claims its athiest is mistaken and hasn't done enough research into it.

Can't speak on real shintoism, I don't know anything about it, but the meiji era state-shintoism held the emperor as their deity.

The basic tenets of "faith" of buddhism are literally

1. nothing is permanent (not even gods) 2. there is no soul (literally "atma" which can also mean god) 3. because humans don't accept 1 and 2, we are unsatisfied

The three marks are the bedrock of buddhism.

Now, buddhisTS, meaning people who call themselves buddhists often do believe in gods or god. Just like here in Sweden most people who call themselves Christians don't believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, or any other of things many christians would think are mandatory for the faith.

You need to keep your terms separate. Buddhism is agnostic, it says that if there are gods then they also are subject to the natural laws. Buddhists can believe anything.

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