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Thread: Do Chinese People Really Believe in God?

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[quote=MICHAEL_BOND,441292]"Love is the only true religion. Chinese people are in fact deeply religious. Agree? "

I am a native Chinese who like reading history and travelling, going to lots of temples. And I went to church very often 5 years ago, so I have some ideas for your question.

In our history, Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism were once flourish, and now still affect people in their subconscious and philosophy. And Christian has been booming in recent 2 centuries.

But...

From my understanding of theology, my opinion is that much of our piety is not to the truth of GOD, or to pursue ultimate questions of religion like believers in other parts of world do. But it is very concrete to detailed things in China, like money, health or luck. People always pray in temples for "the lord keeps me rich", or "the lord blesses me health". That may be the reason of why GAZ07 said Chinese people are too smart to bother with religion. From the first glance, it is indeed like trading rather than worship.

But we should consider the historic facts that Chinese like concrete living wisdom while western like theory more. That is why modern science died in China, but art and literature lived. From 2000 years ago, government distorted the core philosophy of Confucius from “why” to “what to do in this situation”. Because the question of why makes people hard to control, but what to do can lead to the opposite. And this reflects in religion. Anyway, I think the result is the same, even under these kinds of motivations, a little bit different from your “LOVE of GOD”, people accept disciplines of love and charity in the same way. And this is a little bit different to what I saw in Europe, where I lived for two years. Still, religion, although not welcome by our government, affects our way of living by "promise and punishment" which still guide people to good side. But I am not sure whether this is what you said, as "deeply religious"[/quote]

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