Chapter 142 Dragonborn and Hybrid

Wang Chong also criticized various absurd claims of prophecy superstition based on the theory of vitality and nature, and put forward an atheistic view that negates the superstition of ghosts and gods.In order to deify the emperor, the prophecy superstitions often describe the emperor as the product of the sympathy between humans and foreign objects. For example, Yao is said to be born of the sympathy between Yao's mother and the red dragon, and Liu Bang is said to be born of the sympathy between Liu's mother and the dragon in her dream. ,etc.Wang Chong pointed out that only the same kind of things can communicate with each other, but dragons are not of the same kind as humans, "how can they give Qi when they feel people".Dragons are actually just beasts. To say that the emperor is a dragon is to say that the emperor is a hybrid born of a beast.

He believes that the way of heaven is natural, and the wind and rain change in their own time. It is futile to try to change the weather through sacrifices; the sacrifice to the ancestors is just a ceremony to remember the ancestors, and it does not mean that the ancestors can really be blessed by the ancestors through sacrifices. .Therefore, it is useless to seek help from ghosts and gods through sacrifices. The important thing is to rely on yourself. , it’s clear.” ("Release") According to superstition, people become ghosts after death, and ghosts have knowledge and can harm people.Wang Chong denied this claim.He believes that people and things are the same. Since things cannot become ghosts after death, people cannot become ghosts after death.He also used the relationship between spirit and body (body) to explain that people die ignorantly and cannot be ghosts.He said: "When a person dies, the blood vessels are exhausted, and the essence and energy are exhausted. When the body is destroyed, the body decays, and the decay turns into ashes. Why is it a ghost?" , Then how come there is a ghost of knowledge?Since ghosts do not exist at all, there is no such thing as ghosts being able to harm people.Finally, he pointed out that the concept of ghosts is entirely a fantasy caused by people's illnesses. He said that when people are sick, they are prone to fear. The so-called seeing ghosts is just such a "false view".

Wang Chong explained the composition of all things with the subtle and intangible vitality, which is more fluent in theory than the previous world view that people regard a certain tangible material form as the origin of all things.His natural theory of vitality provided the basic theoretical model for the later materialistic world view based on Qi.