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Atheism and agnosticism in Asian traditions?

 
 
 
lpetrich

lpetrich

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Atheism has been part of many Asian traditions for millennia
To many, atheism – the lack of belief in a personal god or gods - may appear an entirely modern concept. After all, it would seem that it is religious traditions that have dominated the world since the beginning of recorded history.

As a scholar of Asian religions, however, I’m often struck by the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism - the view that it is impossible to know whether a god exists - in ancient Asian texts. Atheistic traditions have played a significant part in Asian cultures for millennia.
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Including such Asian religious traditions as Buddhism and Jainism. They are about spiritual liberation, but for the most part, they do not treat deities as very relevant for them, or at least not fundamentally important. However, some Buddhist sects feature a pantheistic Buddha-mind. There are also atheist schools of thought in Hinduism, along with pantheist ones.

There were other atheist schools, like the Carvakas, who were complete materialists, believing that the soul cannot separate from the body. Also the Ajivikas, who believed in souls and reincarnation. We don't know anything about them except from what their Hindu and Buddhist and Jain critics said about them.

Looking outside of India, Taoism seems more pantheist than atheist, and Confucianism is more like some secular ideology than like a religion.
 
In China, there were the so called "9 schools of thought" of the Spring and Autumn period (ca 300 BC) included the "Logicians" and the "Naturalists." Sadly, the works of the "Logicians" are almost entirely lost now, but according to contemporary descriptions they were a group based on reasoning, not unlike the greeks of the same period. The "Naturalists" were focused on the interaction between the chinese elements and so forth, while incorrect, they at least made an effort to explain reality without recourse to divine forces.
 
Sarpedon said:
In China, there were the so called "9 schools of thought" of the Spring and Autumn period (ca 300 BC) included the "Logicians" and the "Naturalists." Sadly, the works of the "Logicians" are almost entirely lost now, but according to contemporary descriptions they were a group based on reasoning, not unlike the greeks of the same period. The "Naturalists" were focused on the interaction between the chinese elements and so forth, while incorrect, they at least made an effort to explain reality without recourse to divine forces.
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Ya, and every last one of the people in those groups died in a massive, worldwide flood because they were evil atheists. There's perhaps a lesson to be learned from that and the logicians would be helpful in our figuring out what it might be but, sadly, they're all dead so we'll probably never know.
 
I don't think even the most boneheaded creationist sets the flood that late.
 
From a Western perspective this is worth noting only because we're so used to theistic traditions, but from an Eastern perspective it's just a way of life.

As Ancients came up with different religions atheism was just an option among a set of metaphysical possibilities. Not much more interesting than theistic traditions, but it looks that way because theism predominates.

If India had dominated the global economy in the early modern period the global religious landscape may have looked much different.
 
Depends on what you mean by religion.

Taoism has no deity I am aware of but there are supernatural elements and spirits.

Confucianism is said to be the foundation of China. It is a moral philosophy taught in schools.

Shinto I believe is primarily rituals and homage to ancestors. Marriage and funeral rituals.No gods in the Abrahamic sense.

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

Shinto (神道 Shintō) or kami-no-michi (as well as other names)[note 1] is the traditional religion of Japan that focuses on ritual practices to be carried out diligently to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient past.[2]

Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified religion, but rather to a collection of native beliefs and mythology.[3] Shinto today is the religion of public shrines devoted to the worship of a multitude of "spirits", "essences" or "gods" (kami),[4] suited to various purposes such as war memorials and harvest festivals, and applies as well to various sectarian organizations. Practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, dating from around the time of the Nara and Heian periods (8th–12th centuries).[3]

The word Shinto (Way of the Gods) was adopted, originally as Jindō[5] or Shindō,[6] from the written Chinese Shendao (神道, pinyin: shéndào),[7][note 2] combining two kanji: shin (神), meaning "spirit" or kami; and michi (道), "path", meaning a philosophical path or study (from the Chinese word dào).[3][7] The oldest recorded usage of the word Shindo is from the second half of the 6th century.[6] Kami is rendered in English as "spirits", "essences", or "gods", and refers to the energy generating the phenomena.[8] Since the Japanese language does not distinguish between singular and plural, kami also refers to the singular divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms: rocks, trees, rivers, animals, objects, places, and people can be said to possess the nature of kami.[8] Kami and people are not separate; they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity.[3]

As much as nearly 80% of the population in Japan participates in Shinto practices or rituals, but only a small percentage of these identify themselves as "Shintoists" in surveys.[4][9] This is because Shinto has different meanings in Japan. Most of the Japanese attend Shinto shrines and beseech kami without belonging to an institutional Shinto religion.[10] There are no formal rituals to become a practitioner of "folk Shinto". Thus, "Shinto membership" is often estimated counting only those who do join organised Shinto sects.[11] Shinto has about 81,000 shrines and about 85,000 priests in the country.[9] According to surveys carried out in 2006[12] and 2008,[13] less than 40% of the population of Japan identifies with an organised religion: around 35% are Buddhists, 3% to 4% are members of Shinto sects and derived religions. In 2008, 26% of the participants reported often visiting Shinto shrines, while only 16.2% expressed belief in the existence of a god or gods (神) in general.[13]

According to Inoue (2003): "In modern scholarship, the term is often used with reference to kami worship and related theologies, rituals and practices. In these contexts, 'Shinto' takes on the meaning of 'Japan's traditional religion', as opposed to foreign religions such as Christianity, Buddhism, Islam and so forth
 
Taoism and Confucianism definitely do have deities.
 
Yes, deities are extremely important in folk Taoism. Most people have heard of Jade Emperor who reigns over the Celestial court for instance. They do understand in a very different way than Western polytheists do, though.
 
I don't think deities in the Abrahamic traditions. I see it more as metaphor. Taoism has a supernatural tradition. In the movie Forbidden Kingdom the good guy and the bad guy battle with 'chi'. Analogues to the forcs in Star Wars.

Chi can be used to lengthen life, kill, and heal others in the tradition. Taoists were searching for immortality on Earth.
 
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there is no use splitting hairs or pretending that we know what other people 'believe' when it comes to their religion. How can you possibly pretend to know that european pagans and daoists think of their deities as more or less metaphorical? That there are cultural differences is certain. That these are meaningful enough that we can arbitrarily say that X culture 'understand' their deities differently enough so that we can pretend that they are not really theistic is absurd, and frankly colonialist in the whole 'East vs West' nonsense. The fact remains that when these different cultures encounter one another, no one has any difficulty understanding what the other religion is up to. Take a person from China, and plop them in a temple in India, or Greece, or Egypt or Hawaii, and they will instantly recognize what sort of building they are in, what the people are doing, and what that statue at the end of the hall is. They may not know the name or exact provenance of the deity, but they should have no trouble expressing in their own words what they see.

Worship is worship, and a being who is worshipped is a deity.
 
Right, no one suggested that the Tao was a deity. That doesn't mean that Taoists don't have deities.
 
Do they worship an entity that dictates rules to them, is the question. It's not a question of spiritual practice, it's a question of the nature of the practice.

I don't know enough about Eastern religions to know the answer to that question.
 
There's a distinction between the philosophical Daoists Laozi and Zhuangzi, and the alchemical Taoists. You won't find mention of elixirs to lengthen life in the former, nor any mention of praying to deities. Instead you'll find the sentiment that the best dao, or way, is to let nature be the guide and change your attitude so that alleged "problems" like aging and death don't feel like something to resist. Zhuangzi, a perspectivist, would have mocked the alchemists for valuing longevity, wondering why long is better than short when in the bigger picture it just doesn't matter -- or, from another angle, they can equally matter, so why take the bother to prefer either one?

In Laozi, "the Dao" it is the autopoietic nature of nature.
 
abaddon said:
There's a distinction between the philosophical Daoists Laozi and Zhuangzi, and the alchemical Taoists. You won't find mention of elixirs to lengthen life in the former, nor any mention of praying to deities. Instead you'll find the sentiment that the best dao, or way, is to let nature be the guide and change your attitude so that alleged "problems" like aging and death don't feel like something to resist. Zhuangzi, a perspectivist, would have mocked the alchemists for valuing longevity, wondering why long is better than short when in the bigger picture it just doesn't matter -- or, from another angle, they can equally matter, so why take the bother to prefer either one?

In Laozi, "the Dao" it is the autopoietic nature of nature.
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Well said...

My impression is that the alchemical Taoists in Taoism would be analogous to the faith healers in Christianity. Sorta a subset of believers that do not really speak to the philosophy or meaning of the religion itself.
 
And who gets to say who the 'real' taoists are, or the 'real' christians are? You can't just pick the sort that you like better and say that their interpretation is 'correct.' In any religion there's a wide spectrum of differing beliefs, and if you have this preconception that the way Taoists look at their religion is somehow different from others, then you can probably find a few of them to support your view with.

The more correct, but challenging ways to understand religion is to look at all the traditions and see how they interact with and feed off each other. Then you will see what the 'philosophical' and 'alchemical' Taoists have in common.

The fact that taoist alchemy looks a lot like european alchemy confirms my suspicions that there is a great deal in common between the psychology of the people involved, despite their traditions being completely discontinuous. This reinforces my belief that general, superficial even definitions are the best place to start when talking about religions. Every religion will claim that it is different and better than others, and people who leave a religion are more likely to look favorably on different traditions and perhaps take their claims more credulously than they should.
 
The Tao is the way or path. Over thousands of years it became a general nebulous term. Going back to Zen, Tao is an ill definable truth using words and logic. One realizes it through practice. You have to know the context of the speaker. Taoism is full of allegory and metaphor and symbolism.

Like the Ching. I used to have a copy. You have a problem. One tosses dice or sticks to get a number that indexes into the text. You interpret the hexagrams in terms of your problem. A skilled practical psychologist of the day used it to guide someone to an answer to a problem. Heaven and Earth can refer to the aristocracy versus commoners. Referring to a chimney can invoke family and home. I had the Willhelm translation and commentary.

https://www.iging.com/intro/introduc.htm

The general starting point is the Tao Te Ching. Read that and other writings in early 70s when I was into martial arts.

Taoism over the several thousands of years has many aspects.

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

The Tao Te Ching ([tâu tɤ̌ tɕíŋ] (About this soundlisten)), also known by its pinyin romanization Dao De Jing,[a] is a Chinese classic text traditionally credited to the 6th-century BC sage Laozi. The text's authorship, date of composition and date of compilation are debated.[5] The oldest excavated portion dates back to the late 4th century BC,[6] but modern scholarship dates other parts of the text as having been written—or at least compiled—later than the earliest portions of the Zhuangzi.[7]

The Tao Te Ching, along with the Zhuangzi, is a fundamental text for both philosophical and religious Taoism. It also strongly influenced other schools of Chinese philosophy and religion, including Legalism, Confucianism, and Buddhism, which was largely interpreted through the use of Taoist words and concepts when it was originally introduced to China. Many Chinese artists, including poets, painters, calligraphers, and gardeners, have used the Tao Te Ching as a source of inspiration. Its influence has spread widely outside East Asia and it is among the most translated works in world literature

The Chinese characters in the title (Chinese: 道德經; pinyin: Dàodé Jīng; Wade–Giles: Tao⁴ Tê² Ching¹) are:
道 (pinyin: dào; Wade–Giles: tao⁴) literally means "way", or one of its synonyms, but was extended to mean "the Way". This term, which was variously used by other Chinese philosophers (including Confucius, Mencius, Mozi, and Hanfeizi), has special meaning within the context of Taoism, where it implies the essential, unnamable process of the universe.


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

The I Ching or Yi Jing (Chinese: 易經; pinyin: Yìjīng; Mandarin pronunciation: [î tɕíŋ] (About this soundlisten)), also known as Classic of Changes or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics. Possessing a history of more than two and a half millennia of commentary and interpretation, the I Ching is an influential text read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, psychoanalysis, literature, and art. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), over the course of the Warring States period and early imperial period (500–200 BC) it was transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the "Ten Wings".[1] After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.

The I Ching uses a type of divination called cleromancy, which produces apparently random numbers. Six numbers between 6 and 9 are turned into a hexagram, which can then be looked up in the I Ching book, arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching is a matter of centuries of debate, and many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing.
 
If you want to get a sense of Asian philosophy, imagery, poetry, literatyre and relgion look at the symbolism in the South Korean flag.

Yin and Yang opposing forces continualy flowing around in motion. The universe itself or a human spirit.

If you keep looking at Asin thought through Greek and wetern thought and logic you will not get it.


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

Symbolism[edit]

The flag's background is white, a traditional color in Korean culture. White was common in the daily attire of 19th-century Koreans, and it still appears in contemporary versions of traditional Korean garments, such as the hanbok. The color represents peace and purity.[3]

The circle in the middle represents balance in the universe. The red half represents positive cosmic forces, and the blue half represents the opposing negative cosmic forces.

Together, the trigrams represent movement and harmony as fundamental principles. Each trigram (hangeul: 괘 [gwae]; hanja: 卦) represents one of the four classical elements,[4] as described below:
 
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