Chapter 13 Verse 13: There is no God

Moreover, just as the absolute sacred duty of loyalty taught by Confucius guaranteed the racial immortality of the nation, so the ritual of ancestor worship in Confucianism guaranteed the racial immortality of the family.In fact, Chinese ancestor worship rituals are based less on a belief in an afterlife than on a belief in racial immortality.Chinese people, when he died, what comforted him was not that he believed in an afterlife, but that his children, grandsons, great-grandchildren, and all his relatives would remember him, think of him, and love him forever, In this way, in his imagination, death is like a long journey for the Chinese, and even if there is no hope, at least there is a great "possibility" to meet again.Thus, through the rites of ancestor worship, and the sacred duty of fidelity, Confucianism gave to the Chinese the same sense of eternity of existence while they were alive, and of the same sense of permanence in their death that the religions of other nations have given to the mass of mankind the belief in an afterlife. gave them the same sense of comfort.It is for this reason that the Chinese place as much importance on the rituals of ancestor worship as on the principle of the sacred duty of loyalty to the emperor.Mencius said: "There are three types of unfilial piety, the greatest of which is having no descendants."The entire system of national beliefs taught by Confucius, which I call China, actually has only two things, loyalty to the emperor and filial piety to parents-in Chinese, it is loyalty and filial piety.Specifically, the three terms of loyalty, known in Chinese as Sangang, the three main responsibilities of Confucianism or Chinese national beliefs, are in order of importance—first, the absolute duty of loyalty to the emperor; second, filial piety and ancestry worship; third, the sanctity of marriage and the wife's absolute obedience to her husband.The last two of the three clauses are already present in what I call family beliefs, or Old Testament beliefs in pre-Confucian China; while the first clause—absolute duty of allegiance to the emperor—was first taught by Confucius, who Based on this, the national belief or New Testament belief of the Chinese nation was established.The first clause of loyalty in Confucianism—the absolute duty of allegiance to the emperor—replaces the first clause of loyalty in all religions—belief in God.Since Confucianism has a substitute for belief in God in religion, Confucianism, as I have explained, can substitute for religion, and the Chinese, with such a large population in China, have no sense of religious need. (z-36)

Now, you will ask me, how can a belief in God without religious teachings make people, the mass of mankind, follow and abide by the moral code taught by Confucius, the absolute duty of loyalty to the emperor, as you can according to the belief in God-given authority, Does religion give people the same moral code to follow and obey?Before I answer your question, let me first point out a big mistake of yours. People believe in the binding force of God's authority to obey the rules of moral behavior.I told you that the sacrament and inviolability of European weddings comes from the Church, and the prestige of the binding, the Church says, comes from God.But as I said, this is the binding force of the surface form.The true true inner binding force of the inviolability of marriage, as we see it in all countries where there is no church religion, is the sense of honor, the law of the gentleman of man and woman.The real prestige of the obligation to obey a code of moral conduct is the person's moral sense, the law of the gentleman.Therefore, belief in God does not necessarily lead to moral behavior.

It is this fact that makes skeptics such as Voltaire and Tom Payne in the last century, and rationalists such as Hiram Maxim today, say that belief in God is invented by the founders of religions and taught by priests. A form of deceit or deceit maintained.But this is a crude and absurd slander.All great men, all great minds, have always believed in God.Confucius also believed in God, although he rarely mentioned it.A man of such great practical reason as Napoleon also believed in God.As the hymnist puts it: "Only a fool—a brutish, superficially rational man—could really say that there is no God."But the belief in God of men with great minds is different from the belief in God of the mass of mankind.The belief in God of great minds is like Spinoza: a belief in the divine order of the universe.Confucius said: "Fifty knows the destiny" - that is, the divine order of the universe.Men of great mind have various names for this divine order of the universe.The German Fichte called it the divine idea of ​​the universe.The Chinese philosophical language calls him the Tao-Road.But whatever the divine order of the universe may be called by a man of great mind, it is the knowledge of the divine order of the universe that enables a man of great mind to see the absolute necessity of observing the code of moral conduct, or moral law, which forms part of the divine order of the universe . (z-25)

Thus, although belief in God does not necessarily make one obey the laws of moral conduct, belief in God does make one see the absolute necessity of obeying those laws.It is this knowledge of the absolute necessity of obedience to moral conduct that enables all men of great thought to follow and obey those laws.Confucius said: "If you don't know your destiny, you can't think of yourself as a gentleman."But at that time, the mass of mankind did not have such great minds, could not understand the reasoning of this knowledge that leads a man with great minds to the knowledge of the divine order of the universe, and therefore could not understand the absolute necessity of obeying the moral law.In fact, as Matthew Arnold said: "The moral law, first conceived as an idea and then strictly observed as a law, is and can only be the work of a saint. The masses of mankind do not have sufficient intellectual power to comprehend as The moral laws of ideas, and not enough personal strength to obey them as laws." It is for this reason that the philosophy and morals described by Plato, Aristotle, and Herbert Spencer are only for scholars. valuable.