what do christians say about chinese people

[Matt R.]

Kaj,
Do you believe theoretical physicists are wasting their time? A more general question: do you believe scientists waste their time when formulating hypotheses?

[Kaj]

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Kaj,
Do you believe theoretical physicists are wasting their time? A more general question: do you believe scientists waste their time when formulating hypotheses?

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No, but they are wasting their time if they assume their hypotheses are "true" in the absence of supporting evidence.

[Subfallen]

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So all you are really saying, in the end, is that any truth claims concerning God are not "actually meaningful" in that they are not derived (at least directly) from empirical observation.

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More specifically, because God claims do not have any empirically falsifiable relation to observable reality. Rather, God claims are INTERPRETATIONS of subjectively meaningful neuropsychical phenomena. Which leads us to:

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Could you offer a defense of methodological naturalism?

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I don't see methodological naturalism as needing any defense beyond Occam's Razor. Of course it cannot be "proven" as a systematic metaphysics (lol Vienna Circle), but it is the rational consequence of repudiating all idealisms.

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You seem to have asserted that it is the only reasonable view at the present time--why?

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Nothing observed in empirical reality suggests that non-naturalistic categories exist. Provisionally, it seems unlikely new observations will change this.

[Subfallen]

Matt -

Quit trying to "help" BTIrish. You have no idea what we're talking about. Hint: subjective meaning exists, and definitional meaning (logic, math) is a subset of subjective meaning. My objection is that it is dishonest to special plead an idealism that gives subjective meaning metaphysically privileged status.

[carlo]

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Yes, given the current state of human knowledge, I consider all non-naturalistic claims to be nonrational. Of course I am completely open to changing that position if future observation invalidates methodological naturalism.

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I am sure that I'm having difficulty understanding the nature(no pun intended) of the debate. When one talks of NATURALISTIC OBSERVATIONS as you're presenting I'd like to know if you are only relating to external nature as that which is perceived by the senses(blue sky, sun, moon,wind)?

I'd like to know if concepts like prudence, justice, envy, sloth,hatred,irony and love are observable realities and included in NATURE. Do they fit into the catagories of rational or irrational?

My perception is that they are all OBSERVABLE and within nature. Not only are they observable but they are experiential in the sense that I can experience "prudence". I can also experience "hatred" as a distinct entity.

The fact that 2 men are able to experience and observe "hate" shows that it can be treated rationally and in fact we(2 men) can come to the same conclusions(judgment) about this observation. One can say that neither of us need authority to recognize "hate" and therefore it can be an object of logical understanding without the use of our supposed external senses which perceive the supposed external world of scientific perceptions. In fact we can scientifically study "hate" through our thinking which is the basis of all scientific work.

If one states that one must be able to weigh and measure an entity to be scientific it is putting the methodology which is scientific into the trash can.

Another way of saying this is that NATURE is not only External but Internal to Man and it stands within the realm of rationality and logic.

[Subfallen]

carlo -

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I'd like to know if concepts like prudence, justice, envy, sloth,hatred,irony and love are observable realities and included in NATURE. Do they fit into the catagories of rational or irrational?

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It depends on how one attempts to define these concepts. As descriptions of neuropsychical states, clearly they are naturalistic concepts. (And thus actually meaningful.)

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If one states that one must be able to weigh and measure an entity to be scientific it is putting the methodology which is scientific into the trash can.

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Well surely phenomenology is a different sort of "weighing" and "measuring." But still the phenoms under discussions at least provisionally appear to have a solely naturalistic explanation: consciousness in the human brain.

In any case, I have great reverence for true spirituality (which is nonrational.) What I object to is the false intellectualization of religious claims. BTIrish's claim that it is actually meaningful to call men sinners in a metaphysical context is such a claim.

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Another way of saying this is that NATURE is not only External but Internal to Man and it stands within the realm of rationality and logic.


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Yes, this I agree with entirely.

[jogsxyz]

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Don't Christians think its strange that God choose not to spread his word to the entire human population?

does this suggest that Christianity is actually a man made invention and thus only exists in region it was invented?

Also, if a Christian has a Chinese friend, isn't it his duty to this person to do absolutely everything he can, including physical abuse and torture to convince the Chinese guy to save his soul and believe in Jesus?

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God is speaking to Asians through Yang, Jerry Yang.

[ofdabeat]

Opposing asian girls smiles and christian religion is dumb.

Ever heard about the philippines?

[Splendour]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't Christians think its strange that God choose not to spread his word to the entire human population?

does this suggest that Christianity is actually a man made invention and thus only exists in region it was invented?

Also, if a Christian has a Chinese friend, isn't it his duty to this person to do absolutely everything he can, including physical abuse and torture to convince the Chinese guy to save his soul and believe in Jesus?

[/ QUOTE ]

A lot of people in this forum can not seem to get the idea that God is transcendent. He's not bound by earth's rules. He made everything and does everything according to his own purpose. He doesn't see things the same way that people do.

The OP's question just shows how superficially he has researched this question himself.

1. Pearl S. Buck was part of a missionary family to China.

From Wikipedia some excerpts on Buck:
The Boxer Rebellion greatly affected Pearl Buck and her family. Buck wrote that during this time, “…her eight-year-old childhood … split apart.” Her Chinese friends deserted her and her family, and there were not as many Western visitors as there once were. “The streets [of China] were alive with rumors- many … based on fact- of brutality to missionaries …” Buck’s father was a missionary, so Buck’s mother, her little sister, and herself were “…evacuated to the relative safety of Shanghai, where they spent nearly a year as refugees…” (The Good Earth, Introduction) In July 1901, Buck and her family sailed to San Francisco. Not until the following year did the Sydenstrickers return back to China.

From 1920 to 1933, Pearl and John made their home in Nanking (Nanjing), on the campus of Nanking University, where both had teaching positions. In 1921, Pearl's mother died, and shortly afterwards her father moved in with the Bucks. The tragedies and dislocations which Pearl suffered in the 1920s reached a climax in March 1927, in the violence known as the "Nanking Incident." In a confused battle involving elements of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops, Communist forces, and assorted warlords, several Westerners were murdered. The Bucks spent a terrified day in hiding, after which they were rescued by American gunboats. After a trip downriver to Shanghai, the Buck family sailed to Unzen, Japan, where they spent the following year. They then moved back to Nanking, though conditions remained dangerously unsettled.

2. There are Chinese people throughout the world. You find large clusters of them especially throughout Asia in the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, probably every country in Southeast Asia, Hong Kong. These people have been evangelized and some may or may not have linked back to other Chinese in mainland China. Hong Kong used to have economic dealings with Macau on mainland China.

In the U.S. I have several friends who are Chinese Christians some of them went to Christian schools all the way up from elementary school and they tell me they thing religion in education is very important.

In one U.S. city I regularly drove down the street and used to see a sign that said it was a church for "Chinese Christians". Do you think there aren't any Christians among the Chinese in San Francisco?

At one time the Chinese had naval ships and power sometime around the time of the Renaissance but China for its own political reasons opted not to continue its navy. They have designed ship features, I think it may have been the rudder, which was considered state of the art for centuries. At the time of Columbus they had better ships than the Europeans but for internal political reasons didn't lift their own isolation from the world. China chose to be isolated. China built its own Great Wall. Maybe China had enough internal unification and warlord problems that it didn't focus on anything outside of itself.

If you study the Crusades besides the religious zealotry of Christians to reclaim the Holy Land there was also a need to defend against the Muslims "colonization". The Moors were in Spain. Doesn't anyone recall that?

From Wikipedia on the Crusades:
The immediate cause of the First Crusade was Alexius I's appeal to Pope Urban II for mercenaries to help him resist Muslim advances into territory of the Byzantine Empire. . In 1071, at the Battle of Manzikert, the Byzantine Empire was defeated, which led to the loss of all of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) save the coastlands. Although attempts at reconciliation after the East-West Schism between the Catholic Western Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church had failed, Alexius I hoped for a positive response from Urban II and got it, although it turned out to be more expansive and less helpful than he had expected.


Another excerpt:

The papacy of Pope Gregory VII had struggled with reservations about the doctrinal validity of a holy war and the shedding of blood for the Lord and had, with difficulty, resolved the question in favour of justified violence. More importantly to the Pope, the Christians who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land were being persecuted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_crusades

This type of Crusade is not unlike the 1950's Domino Theory the U.S. operated under. The U.S. tried to take an active stance in stopping communism. Thinking if they didn't fight or hold against it that it would spread. We never anticipated that communism would fall apart from internal economic causes.

You can't constantly point to the past as the reason for your conclusions if you don't know the reasons/motivations behind the history.

Take a look at this link: http://www.cjvlang.com/Dow/mission.html
It list several attempts of missionaries to get into China.
Here's the first one:

Christianity came to China not once but on several occasions.

The first was during the Tang dynasty in AD 635, when missionaries from the Church of the East (the Persian branch, cut off from the main church due to political tension between the Roman and Persian empires) came to China via the overland route. This church is normally referred to as 'Nestorian' as it follows the doctrines of Bishop Nestorius, declared heretical in AD 431. Nestorianism flourished for a while in China but did not outlast the Tang dynasty owing to the adoption of anti-religious measures in AD 845. Meanwhile, the religion had been transmitted to peripheral areas such as Mongolia

This article continues outlining multiple attempts to evangelize in China.

[Splendour]

Thinking more about Chinese isolationism, I went digging.

Under the topic Isolationism in Wikipedia:

Isolationism by country

[edit] China
This short section requires expansion.

After the Zheng He voyages in the 15th century, the foreign policy of the Ming Dynasty in China became increasingly isolationist. The Qing Dynasty that came after the Ming often continued the later Ming Dynasty's isolationist policies. Around the 1500's China began isolationism. One reason China decided on this was to keep out as much foreign influence on religious beliefs as possible, especially from European traders who came into China with Christian missionaries. The first missionary said to have an impact on Chinese religious beliefs was an Italian Jesuit called Matteo Ricci. Many of the educated Chinese opposed this Christianity introduced by missionaries, but Ricci's scientific knowledge gained him prestige in these circles, first introducing the concepts of trigonometry, and predicting an eclipse of the sun more accurately than Chinese astronomers of the day.

My next thought was: Didn't they consider the Emperor a God in China. We did have Hirohito in Japan and they had "emperor worship" there didn't they as late as the 20th century?

So wikipedia report the following about the Imperial Cult:

An Imperial cult is a kind of religion in which an Emperor, or a dynasty of emperors (or rulers of another title), are worshiped as demigods or deities. "Cult" here is used to mean "worship," not in the modern pejorative sense. The cult may be one of personality in the case of a newly arisen Euhemerus figure or one of national identity (e.g. Ethiopia or Japan) or supranational identity in the case of a multi-ethnic state (e.g. China, Rome).

Another excerpt:

[edit] Ancient China
Main article: Chinese sovereign
In ancient China, an emperor was considered the Son of Heaven. The scion and representative of heaven on earth, he was the ruler of all under heaven, the bearer of the Mandate of Heaven, his commands considered sacred edicts. A number of legendary figures preceding the proper imperial age of China also hold the honorific title of emperor, such as the Yellow Emperor and the Jade Emperor.

I am speculating that maybe maybe the missionaries were kept out because the rulers of China feared a threat to their sovereignty. In Europe they used to call the concept by which kings ruled as "The Divine Right of Kings".