27 replies to this topic

[RickCampbell]

http://www.orthodox....ntcnhist_en.htm
http://www.answersin...20/i3/china.asp

[sg_han]

Nonsense...c**p from evangelists

[Honam]

http://www.orthodox....ntcnhist_en.htm
http://www.answersin...20/i3/china.asp

Oh... not that c**p about the Chinese characters and the Bible again x.x

[XiaoXiao]

I really really hate foreign religions.

It's destroy Chinese people and Chinese society.

It also said bad things to Chinese culture, and claim they always right.

I hate it so much.

They brainwashing our children to hate their culture and people.

They also want to destroy our country and separate it into multiple countries.

[qrasy]

Nonsense...c**p from evangelists

Oh... not that c**p about the Chinese characters and the Bible again x.x

No matter how c**ppy those articles are, you may still have to explain to the first poster what is actually happening as (s)he might be misled instead of having intention to misled.
I think this is not the first time this kind of post appear, though.
The second article about Chinese characters should have an older thread dealing with it already. Basically it's "looking at the character and make your own imagination of how it comes" (i.e. "just-so story"). 婪 is obvious case as the contribution of 林 to 婪 is phonetic, not semantic.

Though I don't remember if there's a response about the first article.

I really really hate foreign religions.

It's destroy Chinese people and Chinese society.

It also said bad things to Chinese culture, and claim they always right.

I hate it so much.

They brainwashing our children to hate their culture and people.

Please stay, still, on the topic, though, instead of simply increasing the intensity of the flames.

They also want to destroy our country and separate it into multiple countries.

And this one is unfounded.

[sg_han]

And this one is unfounded.

It is time actually that Buddhism/Taoism /Confucianism under one large banner adopt a more hardline stance on sprading our religions.

Actually it is no secret that many countries would have wanted China to bt desintegrated (what i mean here is for it to become relatively smaller) through the independence of taiwan, tibet and xinjiang

[XiaoXiao]

It is time actually that Buddhism/Taoism /Confucianism under one large banner adopt a more hardline stance on sprading our religions.

Actually it is no secret that many countries would have wanted China to bt desintegrated (what i mean here is for it to become relatively smaller) through the independence of taiwan, tibet and xinjiang

I'm agree with you!!!

It's also not a secret that foreign religion also teach us to overthrow Chinese government, create social unrest. When it happen US and Europe will came to China and divide China into several countries. Only idiot and unpatriotic people who can't see this. All patriotic Chinese who want to reunited China will be labeled as terrorist.

There's evident everywhere how they want to destroy us. Look at the link at the first page and another websites. All of you know about underground Church right? Don't you ever ask yourself why there underground Church while official China church is already exist? The answer is because they want us to fanatics with them and destroy our civilization. They want us to respect their Gods and Goddess, throw away our great Heroes in Chinese temple. They want us to acknowledge that their Roman civilization and Persian civilization are superior than Chinese civilization. They want to completely destroy us!!!

I'm insulted when they write that article above, saying we are evil people. Not to mention tons of article that say the same thing in other religion website too. I demand apologies from the pope in Vatican.

We all know that Ethnic Hui is formed by 3 foreign religion: Islam, Christian and Jewish. All Chinese who are Christian is ethnic Hui. They don't practice Han Chinese culture, Han Chinese holiday, Han Chinese philosophy. They are less patriotic, they say bad thing about our culture, they said we are evil, they look lowly on us, they disrespect our philosophy. Basically they are completely different with Han Chinese.

I'm Han and I'm patriotic!!! I love my people, my culture and my country!!! I always be a Han Chinese!!!

[qrasy]

Actually it is no secret that many countries would have wanted China to bt desintegrated (what i mean here is for it to become relatively smaller) through the independence of taiwan, tibet and xinjiang

Of course I know some people want it split. But that's not what I meant. The sentence sounded that the subject was referring to "foreign religions". My interpretation of the sentence is also confirmed by the following part of the quote.

It's also not a secret that foreign religion also teach us to overthrow Chinese government, create social unrest.

XiaoXiao, some religious people trying to change the government doesn't mean it's the religion that teach them to do so.
To stay more closely to the topic: Christianity does not teach anything about politics; and the major religion in Tibet is Buddhism, not Christianity.
What religion would advise you to go to war (for your own private interests, for example)?

All of you know about underground Church right? Don't you ever ask yourself why there underground Church while official China church is already exist? The answer is because they want us to fanatics with them and destroy our civilization. They want us to respect their Gods and Goddess, throw away our great Heroes in Chinese temple. They want us to acknowledge that their Roman civilization and Persian civilization are superior than Chinese civilization. They want to completely destroy us!!!

Basically they want to keep being separated from politics; and as I said the religion is not political. There are splits after Anglican church were founded, with similar similar reasons.

Christianity was not even founded by Romans and Persians.

I'm insulted when they write that article above, saying we are evil people. Not to mention tons of article that say the same thing in other religion website too.

Though the only 2 instances of "evil" in the 2 articles were not even referring to Chinese.
Information flowing in the net can easily be mistakes, with writers misled by themselves.

I demand apologies from the pope in Vatican.

Then you might want to know why some churches split from Pope's big-big church.

We all know that Ethnic Hui is formed by 3 foreign religion: Islam, Christian and Jewish. All Chinese who are Christian is ethnic Hui. They don't practice Han Chinese culture, Han Chinese holiday, Han Chinese philosophy.

Funny to say it. There's a lot of Chinese Christians that are Han, not Hui. Huis are Islams, btw. And they often wear their religious clothing.
It's simply because religions do not tell you to deny your ancestry.
Don't you know that Chinese Catholics celebrate the Chinese ceremonies and holidays? For them there's nothing like you said in the next part of the quote.

They are less patriotic, they say bad thing about our culture, they said we are evil, they look lowly on us, they disrespect our philosophy. Basically they are completely different with Han Chinese.

Quite a number of Christians do look lowly on non-Christians, but that's never ever taught by the religion. If they do so, it's better to say that they haven't done that well in their religion, as arrogance is always to be avoided.

I'm Han and I'm patriotic!!! I love my people, my culture and my country!!! I always be a Han Chinese!!!

But please try to verify as much as possible before making statements.
Just think of how people will view it, otherwise.

Edited by qrasy, 05 March 2010 - 12:46 AM.

[Honam]

No matter how c**ppy those articles are, you may still have to explain to the first poster what is actually happening as (s)he might be misled instead of having intention to misled.

Judging from other posts and from the fact that he just pastes links without commentary (instead of... dunno, "hey guys, look what I found, is this real?"), would it make a difference? I'm not an idealist...

Edited by Honam, 05 March 2010 - 01:51 AM.

[Gan]

well, here's the thing, if comparing and contrasting any rituals, there are vast similarities between different communities, even if they are far away. Some Shaman designs and customs seemed similar between Indigenous Tribes in North America and Sibera/Central Asia. However, it really is hard to say if those similarities were formed because of interactions, which would have been extremely long time ago, and only a possibility, not to a point of actuality.

Using Hebrew or the Semitic language and relating to Chinese characters seemed very neat at first, but then I remember that the Semitic languages were even more fluid than Chinese. The allegory written in the Bible wasn't always in tune with the the physical descriptions in English. Take for example, Psalms 23. I heard a guy spoked the actual phrase in Hebrew, and it sounded more like singing, rather lively than the more serious, firm English phrases. The translation was very fragmented and taking into account the original rendering of the Psalm, it paints a very different picture than how it would sound like in the Christian Bible itself.

I found a Youtube link, now it might not sound very good to the ears compared with others, but it's kind of similar to how I heard it.



About the Border sacrifice, it might have been possible for the Ancient Chinese to have learn something from the communities in Western Asia, but then all the history regarding the worship of God in the Bible, as well as Shang di, the rituals themselves when actually performed, kind of wasn't coherent, if it makes sense. There are a lot of other customs and rituals not described by Biblical literature that goes along with sacrifices to God. It wouldn't have been 4,000 years ago, if both history and religious traditions coincide, all the customs and literature of the Ancient Hebrews would have been possible starting from late Shang period. Even though the guys were taking literature written by men in the Warring States Period, the history and religious traditions in the Bible weren't that influential yet and didn't necessary carry over to other communities, even to the ones closest to them in the Old World. The Chinese weren't the only ones outside of the Abrahamic faiths who worship a similar diety.

Edited by Gan, 07 April 2010 - 03:02 AM.

[Honam]

Using Hebrew or the Semitic language and relating to Chinese characters seemed very neat at first, but then I remember that the Semitic languages were even more fluid than Chinese.

In which way seems neat to relate Hebrew with Chinese? Regardless how different phonology and grammar are, how can it be neat to compare Hebrew letters to modern formed Chinese characters to prove (huh!) that they contain Biblical stories (since most hanzi are composed of phonetical parts and radicals, and have ran a long way till reach it's present form)?

About the Border sacrifice, it might have been possible for the Ancient Chinese to have learn something from the communities in Western Asia, but then all the history regarding the worship of God in the Bible, as well as Shang di, the rituals themselves when actually performed, kind of wasn't coherent, if it makes sense.

In which way does ShangDi look like the Hebrew God? History repeats itself: first, they compared it to the Platonic God in order to cheat Pagan communities, now (and then, back to the Jesuits) to cheat the Chinese...

[Gan]

In which way seems neat to relate Hebrew with Chinese? Regardless how different phonology and grammar are, how can it be neat to compare Hebrew letters to modern formed Chinese characters to prove (huh!) that they contain Biblical stories (since most hanzi are composed of phonetical parts and radicals, and have ran a long way till reach it's present form)?



In which way does ShangDi look like the Hebrew God? History repeats itself: first, they compared it to the Platonic God in order to cheat Pagan communities, now (and then, back to the Jesuits) to cheat the Chinese...

It is just a personal interest of mine to find similarities between different topics. However, I can not take the idea of Biblical connections as presented in this thread anymore serious than the other pseudo-theories out there.

Religion is ever-changing so I think we might have to talk about in different segments in time. The Shangdi of old seemed just a tad more distant than what many people today, especially the Chinese-speaking Christians, refer God to Shangdi of today. The Hebrew God, well, history seems to indicate that the Ancient Hebrews probably worshiped more than one god, and that the deity that is known today in Judaism took a very long time to seeped in. Religious traditions make the Hebrew God unchanged throughout the generations, and the same qualities as before. Both I guess you can say, expressed omnipotence, benevolent, omnipresent, invisible forms. However, I'm not really convinced that the concept of a Creator-God was the same between the two.

[brightness]

I'm agree with you!!!

It's also not a secret that foreign religion also teach us to overthrow Chinese government, create social unrest. When it happen US and Europe will came to China and divide China into several countries. Only idiot and unpatriotic people who can't see this. All patriotic Chinese who want to reunited China will be labeled as terrorist.

There's evident everywhere how they want to destroy us. Look at the link at the first page and another websites. All of you know about underground Church right? Don't you ever ask yourself why there underground Church while official China church is already exist? The answer is because they want us to fanatics with them and destroy our civilization. They want us to respect their Gods and Goddess, throw away our great Heroes in Chinese temple. They want us to acknowledge that their Roman civilization and Persian civilization are superior than Chinese civilization. They want to completely destroy us!!!

I'm insulted when they write that article above, saying we are evil people. Not to mention tons of article that say the same thing in other religion website too. I demand apologies from the pope in Vatican.

We all know that Ethnic Hui is formed by 3 foreign religion: Islam, Christian and Jewish. All Chinese who are Christian is ethnic Hui. They don't practice Han Chinese culture, Han Chinese holiday, Han Chinese philosophy. They are less patriotic, they say bad thing about our culture, they said we are evil, they look lowly on us, they disrespect our philosophy. Basically they are completely different with Han Chinese.

I'm Han and I'm patriotic!!! I love my people, my culture and my country!!! I always be a Han Chinese!!!

Not sure why one would find the two articles insulting. Regardless the validity of their theses, neither of them contained any criticism of Chinese per se. If anything, the authors tried to relate to Chinese cultural beliefs, trying to argue that ancient Chinese beliefs were very similar to their own presumably Judeo-Christian religions. In case it's not obvious, in the literalist Judeo-Christian belief, all people of the world are descended from the group gathering at the Tower of Babel. Personally, I think the Tower of Babel story was merely a metaphor illustrating how central planning and building heaven on earth projects would always fail . . . and in a subtle way making fun of typical human hubris.

As to why people would like to pick and choose their own beliefs/religions instead of just accept the official church/orthodoxy, well every person is different and would like to think for him/herself. Even in the religion of state-worship (worshipping the glorious government/country, holding it up as some sort of omniscient and omnipotent entity) that has been popular in China for centuries, there are different variants; for example, the official government-worship in China today advocates bending over backwards for the ethnic minorities in order to maintain a geographical empire . . . whereas your own brand of government-worship advocates stamping a jackboot on the faces of non-Hans. Different strokes for different people, I suppose. How realistically achievable is either? I doubt any more realistic than any of the religions that involve non-earthly deities . . . an all-knowing and all-powerful and non-corrupt government is not any more earthly being than Tian (big man walking through clouds) or God.

As for foreign attitude towards China. It's been divided for a long time. Those who wish to exploit Chinese "slave labor" prefer a unified China so that the Chinese central government can keep the masses of Chinese laborers down. That's why the powers did not breakup Qing after the Boxer incident; both the foreigners and the Chinese figured out that the "foreign devils" were afraid of the people; the people were afraid of the officials; the officials were afraid of the "foreign devils."

Those who wish to leave Chinese alone and be left alone by Chinese in the political context, only engaging Chinese in commercial trade, prefer balance of power. I'm sure most people of the world probably prefer the US divided into multiple countries so it wouldn't throw its weight all around the world and stick its nose where it doesn't belong. Many Americans share that sentiment because running an empire is extremely costly, and usually involving subsidizing the elite at the expense of the vast majority of the population of the imperialist nation itself. For example, US occupation of Iraq is really a subsidy of the weapons manufacturers, security companies and oil companies, at the expense of the American taxpayers (making oil more expensive not cheaper, and running up huge deficit). Whatever American administrators do in Iraq and Afghanistan is not going to make the locals happy, and whatever contract awarded will be perceived by the locals as corrupt, so more resources will have to be handed over to those places to buy off the locals. At this point, the US is not yet setting aside college entrance quotas for Iraqis and Afghans; walking around in the US with knives is allowed in the US regardless whether one is Iraqi, Afghan or American; Iraqis and Afghans committing theft in the US would face the same law as American thieves would, for now anyway. The imperialist warmongers themselves are too busy steeling from American taxpayers.

If all that nonsense comes to an end, individual American states (or divided into half a dozen countries) and individual Americans would probably have much higher standards of living, without having to finance an empire and without bureaucrats messing around with their lives. Americans have no appetite for military re-unification if that were to happen, so the full benefit of localized and less corrupt government has a chance of being realized. The issue is a bit trickier for China, where raising an army to conquer all of China and slaughtering millions of Chinese in the name of unification may still have significant political appeal. That political appetite would give room to war profiteering by foreign bankers just like in the early 20th century: being the "recognized" government of all China meant being able to borrow money in the name of all Chinese and spend it on the warlord's own friends; besides the ZhiLi, FengTian and Wan warlords, CKS was a ZheJian warlord and Mao was a HuNan warlord as most of their top officers came from those two provinces. All the big campaigns during that period in China were fought over unification attempts (including Japanese attempt to unify all of East Asia). Some kind of deprogramming would have to take place first before Chinese can realistically enjoy localized and responsible government.

[Gan]

Not sure why one would find the two articles insulting. Regardless the validity of their theses, neither of them contained any criticism of Chinese per se. If anything, the authors tried to relate to Chinese cultural beliefs, trying to argue that ancient Chinese beliefs were very similar to their own presumably Judeo-Christian religions. In case it's not obvious, in the literalist Judeo-Christian belief, all people of the world are descended from the group gathering at the Tower of Babel. Personally, I think the Tower of Babel story was merely a metaphor illustrating how central planning and building heaven on earth projects would always fail . . . and in a subtle way making fun of typical human hubris.

As to why people would like to pick and choose their own beliefs/religions instead of just accept the official church/orthodoxy, well every person is different and would like to think for him/herself. Even in the religion of state-worship (worshipping the glorious government/country, holding it up as some sort of omniscient and omnipotent entity) that has been popular in China for centuries, there are different variants; for example, the official government-worship in China today advocates bending over backwards for the ethnic minorities in order to maintain a geographical empire . . . whereas your own brand of government-worship advocates stamping a jackboot on the faces of non-Hans. Different strokes for different people, I suppose. How realistically achievable is either? I doubt any more realistic than any of the religions that involve non-earthly deities . . . an all-knowing and all-powerful and non-corrupt government is not any more earthly being than Tian (big man walking through clouds) or God.

As for foreign attitude towards China. It's been divided for a long time. Those who wish to exploit Chinese "slave labor" prefer a unified China so that the Chinese central government can keep the masses of Chinese laborers down. That's why the powers did not breakup Qing after the Boxer incident; both the foreigners and the Chinese figured out that the "foreign devils" were afraid of the people; the people were afraid of the officials; the officials were afraid of the "foreign devils."

Those who wish to leave Chinese alone and be left alone by Chinese in the political context, only engaging Chinese in commercial trade, prefer balance of power. I'm sure most people of the world probably prefer the US divided into multiple countries so it wouldn't throw its weight all around the world and stick its nose where it doesn't belong. Many Americans share that sentiment because running an empire is extremely costly, and usually involving subsidizing the elite at the expense of the vast majority of the population of the imperialist nation itself. For example, US occupation of Iraq is really a subsidy of the weapons manufacturers, security companies and oil companies, at the expense of the American taxpayers (making oil more expensive not cheaper, and running up huge deficit). Whatever American administrators do in Iraq and Afghanistan is not going to make the locals happy, and whatever contract awarded will be perceived by the locals as corrupt, so more resources will have to be handed over to those places to buy off the locals. At this point, the US is not yet setting aside college entrance quotas for Iraqis and Afghans; walking around in the US with knives is allowed in the US regardless whether one is Iraqi, Afghan or American; Iraqis and Afghans committing theft in the US would face the same law as American thieves would, for now anyway. The imperialist warmongers themselves are too busy steeling from American taxpayers.

If all that nonsense comes to an end, individual American states (or divided into half a dozen countries) and individual Americans would probably have much higher standards of living, without having to finance an empire and without bureaucrats messing around with their lives. Americans have no appetite for military re-unification if that were to happen, so the full benefit of localized and less corrupt government has a chance of being realized. The issue is a bit trickier for China, where raising an army to conquer all of China and slaughtering millions of Chinese in the name of unification may still have significant political appeal. That political appetite would give room to war profiteering by foreign bankers just like in the early 20th century: being the "recognized" government of all China meant being able to borrow money in the name of all Chinese and spend it on the warlord's own friends; besides the ZhiLi, FengTian and Wan warlords, CKS was a ZheJian warlord and Mao was a HuNan warlord as most of their top officers came from those two provinces. All the big campaigns during that period in China were fought over unification attempts (including Japanese attempt to unify all of East Asia). Some kind of deprogramming would have to take place first before Chinese can realistically enjoy localized and responsible government.

I guess if we took a historical look at the tower of babel, your view about the failure of earthly projects would make sense. In religious traditions (the non-modern Christian views) the believers stressed that it was and is man's goal to bring Heaven on Earth, thus projects in for that purpose would have been acceptable. The problem with the Tower of Babel was that humans wanted to displayed their arrogance and wage war with God. The Tower of Babel wasn't taken literally by some believers and different versions of this building existed, some I read was more like a ship than building.

I don't think the phrase, the "foreigners are afraid of the people, people afraid of officials, officials afraid of foreigners". can be taken absolutely in that direction. However, I've read it before on this site and understand why it was and is being used for.

Slightly off topic but I too see American politicians being a bit too elitist serving, not just with the wars but also the Economy and Education. Everyone is in one way or another, but I'm not really liking the idea being spread in the news of appreciating the Yuan too much. It will a little bit, but what some of these Americans politicians are wanting, it's going to hurt more than help the average American. There's going to be less room for social mobility and the US lifestyle is dependent on some imported goods. Well, it's not just the Yuan policy by itself by another host of decisions. I do think the average American, and probably Chinese national, are kind of thinking the same thing, they want to be left alone and live their own lives. However, I do think many Americans will be very angry if social mobility was greatly affected , almost to the point of physical violence. Not to mentioned what might happen if what media suggests, immigration reform was tackled. I've always believe and still do, that if there was going to be any organized civil conflict in the US, the biggest cause of them all would over demographics. It really isn't reasonable and hard to think critically about it, because people's feelings are very hard to measure but one can tell this area really hasn't fully made be peace yet despite the many success stories.

Sorry to be Dr. Doom or extreme with what I just say. I would have mentioned this is relatively speaking, however if I hadn't typed it out in that fashion, my word would have been to incoherent to understand.

[Spooner]

Seems that these folks have their compass upside down. It is more likely that Juedo/Christian lore arose as a half baked ripoff of existing Chinese lore.