By Xiao Han

(Clearwisdom.net) Whether to believe in Buddhism, Taoism or a divinity is essentially a personal matter. It does not have anything to do with any government or any party. This is commonly understood in modern society. Freedom of belief is stipulated explicitly in the "International Human Rights Covenants" signed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and is also included in the Chinese Constitution. However, in order to continue with the persecution of Falun Gong, the CCP recently aggressively strengthened its propaganda on "atheism." They try to tie "science" with "atheism" and seem to have found a "scientific" foundation for "atheism." They thus seem to have found a new excuse to continue their persecution of Falun Gong. The CCP says that Falun Gong's belief in "Truthfulness, Compassion and Tolerance" is a superstition. Therefore, the CCP introduced the "Suggestions for Further Strengthening and Improving the Development of Young People's Morality System." In the name of building ideology and a system of morality, they forcefully instill "Scientific Atheism" to deceive China's young people.

Science and religious belief are of two different categories. It is ridiculous to try to negate religious belief, which is used to raise people's morality, by using science and its methodology, which does not contain moral elements. However, nowadays in China, due to the long-term forceful infusion of the CCP's culture, many people consider religious belief to be totally against science. They consider religious belief as akin to feudalism and superstition. Some people even consider the still-evolving science as the ultimate truth.

In fact, many of people who have made great contributions to the development of human science were religious people. For example, Isaac Newton, the founder of modern physical science, was a very religious person. Albert Einstein, who proposed the theory of relativity, had a deep and unique understanding of religion and God. Some politicians, government-supported atheist scientists and "popular science writers" in China say that religious beliefs are superstition. However, they cannot explain why these outstanding scientists were very religious. They are restricted to the narrow-minded CCP cultural circle and use "Scientific Atheism" to deceive others as well as themselves.

The CCP considers science and belief to be opposed to each other. They publicly claim that the dissemination of scientific knowledge will break theism. Nevertheless, they cannot negate an important fact: most people, including many outstanding persons in scientific and educational fields in Western countries, are very religious and believe in divinities. In science and technology, these countries are far more advanced and developed than China.

According to U.S. statistics, in 2001, out of 208 million American adults, 167.25 million (80.4%) were religious. Only 29.5 million people (14.2%) claimed that they did not have any religious beliefs. 11.25 million people (5.4%) refused to disclose whether they had any religious beliefs or not. The 2001 statistics for Canada show that 72% are Christian. Among 30 million Canadians, 83.8% are religious when including all other religious followers besides Christians.

This fact cannot be explained by the CCP's theories that religious belief implies "foolishness," "ignorance," "ignorance of science" and "superstition." In the whole world of over a hundred countries, most of them have religious beliefs. Probably none of the governments would canonize "atheism" as a "State Religion," except the CCP and the few remaining Communist governments.

In an article published on March 16, 2004 in the newspaper, Guangming Daily [a mouthpiece of the CCP], the author purposely ignored the international guidelines that government should not intervene with the religious beliefs of the people, and openly deceived the people in Mainland China. The article states, "It is the responsibility of a modern country to educate and disseminate scientific atheism to the public. But due to different reasons, many developed countries do not fulfill this responsibility." The CCP considers itself as the most legitimate, advanced and complete religious model. It contaminates a quarter of the world's population using "Scientific Atheism," which essentially departs from religious beliefs. In addition, the CCP does not hide its purpose of forcing people to accept atheism. It states, "The education and dissemination of 'Scientific Atheism' is a regular task in the realm of ideology. This is a world outlook that not only applies to Communist Party members, but also to the general public." To the people in Western society, this sounds ridiculous. Everyone understands that no country, government, party, group or individual can control a person's belief. However, these sayings are able to deceive the Chinese people because the CCP has isolated them from the rest of the world.

The CCP never tries to hide its intention of controlling people's beliefs. In the article in Guangming Daily, it broadly stated that the target of the "Scientific Atheism" education is the general public, not religious followers. Obviously, they are very clear that this kind of deceptive propaganda will not affect true religious followers. However, to those people who do not have any religious beliefs due to the CCP's long-term influence, the purpose of "Scientific Atheism" is to prevent them from understanding and learning about true beliefs.

The atheism that the CCP tries to infuse people with is obviously interfering with people's freedom of religious beliefs. It viciously slanders all religious beliefs. However, the "freedom of religious belief" that everyone understands is defined by the CCP in Guangming Daily article as follows: "Its tenet is first to protect the freedom of not believing in a certain religion and even protect the freedom of not believing in any religion." The CCP has for the last 50 years used the technique of switching concepts to mislead people. Their "definition" of "freedom of religious belief" is not allowing the public to believe in any religion. The ultimate goal of eliminating all religious beliefs is very clear.

The CCP implemented a special propaganda campaign targeting young people, known as "Suggestions for Further Strengthening and Improving the Development of Young People's Morality System." Related news reports have been surfacing recently around the country. In order to stigmatize Falun Gong from the belief standpoint, the CCP directly promoted the magazine, Science and Atheism. This magazine published an article on January 1, 2005, entitled, "Young People Need the Education of Scientific Atheism." The article stated that young people need to focus on learning atheism. According to the article, in order to inculcate them with the concept of atheism, young people should study their own physical bodies and realize that they "...can see some truly existing substances and hence it would lead them to believe that these were not created by gods because gods cannot create such things."

The reasoning that the CCP could never justify would be exposed by a question such as: "How can you prove that gods did not create all these; how can you know that gods can't create these?" To people from the Western world, the CCP's atheist education is ridiculous. However, impressionable young people who grow up in Mainland China are becoming victims of the "atheism" propaganda.

The culture of the CCP purposely lumps religious beliefs and Chinese traditional culture with feudalism and superstition. It negates and distorts them. The long-term inculcation of atheism causes more and more people to lose their sense of morality and not believe that good is rewarded and evil receives retribution. They consider power as the truth and their own benefits as their ultimate goals. "If people are not all for themselves, they stand condemned by heaven and earth," has become their motto. In the persecution of Falun Gong, many people have hurt innocent Falun Gong practitioners because they do not care about anything and they do not believe they will receive retribution for their wrongdoing.

In fact, belief in Buddhism, Taoism and divinity are the mainstream of human history. It is these beliefs that makes people civilized, whether in China or outside, no matter whether it is in the form of religion or not. The most resplendent period of Chinese history, the Tang Dynasty, was the time when everybody from royalty to civilians reverently believed in divinity.

In the whole course of human history, the only group to completely defame all orthodox beliefs and promote and instill atheism in the general public is the CCP.

February 10, 2005

Posting date: 3/6/2005
Original article date: 3/5/2005
Category: Practitioners' Insights
Translated on 2/15/2005
Chinese version available at http://www.minghui.org/mh/articles/2005/2/11/95279.html

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