China: officials seek to banish superstition

[rug]

China’s top religious affairs official has told a state-run newspaper that the government wants its citizens to stop believing in superstitions.

Samantha Stainburn
April 22, 2013 11:56

In a rare discussion of the Chinese government’s policies on religion, China’s top religious affairs official told a state-run newspaper that the government wants its citizens to stop believing in superstitions about birth, death and fortune, Reuters reported.

"For a ruling party which follows Marxism, we need to help people establish a correct worldview and to scientifically deal with birth, aging, sickness and death, as well as fortune and misfortune, via popularizing scientific knowledge," Wang Zuoan, head of China’s State Administration of Religious Affairs, told the Study Times, according to Reuters.

While the Chinese government regularly bans superstitious practices, belief in pseudo science like palm reading, horoscopes, feng shui and rhino horn potions persists.

For example, "ghost marriages," in which families marry dead women to their deceased single sons, uncles and divorced fathers so they are not alone in the afterlife, are growing in popularity in spite of being banned decades ago. Familes pay a few hundred dollars to upwards of $7,000 for the corpses of these women, often stolen, GlobalPost reported in January.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/130422/china-officials-seek-banish-superstition-0

[gordianot]

1. Good luck with that! Pesky Humans.

If China had Republicans they would need to banish the entire party.

[rug]

2. They're just trying to prevent child asbuse.

[gordianot]

3. Also apparently grave desecration but seriously furniture arrangement?

[rug]

4. Feng shui must be eradicated!

[gordianot]

5. I hereby refuse to move another couch in order to eradicate superstition.

[Phillip McCleod]

9. feng shui is about much more than furniture arrangement in china.

it's rooted in belief in.. more or less.. ley lines. historically it was used to determine the best place to intern the dead, and includes things like 'never live in view of a graveyard'. there was a movement at one point to move Mao's remains because he's buried at some important intersection of dragon lines.

feng shui as furniture arrangement is kinda like madonna studying kabbalah. it's the westernized version, and kinda pathetic new age crap.

[dimbear]

6. My understanding is that 13 is a lucky number in China. Here it is the opposite.

That luck should be subject to experimental verification. Science on the march.

[rug]

7. +13

[Humanist_Activist]

8. Looks like they want to go after scams and con artists, and to try to demolish the trade of...

"traditional medicine" which is literally driving species to extinction, and destroying fossils.

[backscatter712]

10. If they can put a dent in the trade of ivory, or potions made from endangered tigers...

or all the other horseshit that creates that huge market niche for poachers that are hunting species into extinction, I'm all for it!

Maybe some basic, well-funded public education campaigns will help.

[dimbear]

11. I would like to request an exception for bright red underwear. I'm pretty sure that actually is

lucky.