Packing and Unpacking Religion
Why we can’t agree on whether Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism are religions — and why Lego, Disney and Marvel can solve the puzzle.
Re-Assembling Reality #3. By David A. Palmer and Mike Brownnutt
In discussions of science and religion, it is often taken for granted that there is a plurality of religions and unity of science. While we are questioning fundamental assumptions, let’s question that one too. When we say that there are many religions, we imagine that there is one ‘religion’ called Christianity, another one called Islam, another called Buddhism, and so on. And we imagine that they are all basically comparable: Christianity has the Ten Commandments, Islam the Five Pillars, Buddhism the Four Noble Truths. Christianity believes in Jesus, Islam in Allah, Buddhism in Buddha. Christian churches have crosses, Muslim mosques have crescents, Buddhist monasteries have wheels. Christian monks shave a tonsure, Muslim imams grow beards, Buddhist monks have no hair. All of them discriminate against women.
Take your pick, like items on a supermarket shelf: each is a separate box, with different packaging, flavours, and selling points — and even different prices and discounts. Some of them are bitter (‘fundamentalists’) or spicy (‘charismatics’), others are rather sweet or bland (‘liberals’). But the basic shape of the box is the same, and they can all fit onto the shelves in the ‘religion’ aisle, perhaps between the ‘personal development’ aisle and the ‘children’s literature’ section — certainly far from the ‘science’ aisle.
But let’s step out of the supermarket, and retrace the supply chain, and see what was there before things became packaged as different ‘religions’ and as ‘science’. We’ll start with China, since China is one of the countries in the world that seems to have experienced the most profound conflicts between science and religion. The conflict started in the early 20th century, when what was once a mighty empire, the ‘Middle Kingdom’, was crushed in a series of wars and invasions by Western powers. The new generation of Chinese intellectuals, who received a modern education in Japan, Europe, and America, came to the conclusion that the might of the West came from its science — and that China’s weakness came from its superstition and religion. The consensus was that China’s path to modernization would entail abandoning religion, forcefully if necessary. Most religions were restricted under both the Nationalist (1911–1949) and Communist (since 1949) regimes. Indeed, during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), all forms of religion were banned.[1]
But what, exactly, was to be restricted? This turned out to be far more complicated than imagined.
What religions do we find in China? In Chinese, there is the expression of san jiao 三教, the “three teachings” of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. The concept of ‘religion’ as we now understand it only entered the Chinese language in 1902, when the Japanese translation of the English word “religion” was introduced into Chinese, as zongjiao 宗教. Are these three teachings then China’s three religions?
Ask this question to a group of Chinese people or scholars of China, and they will erupt into a loud cacophony of voices, debating whether these ‘teachings’ could count as religion. Let us consider each in turn.
Confucianism
Most of the people in this cacophony will claim that Confucianism is not a religion but a moral philosophy. Confucius, they will say, taught his students to be concerned with the affairs of this world, not to ask about the afterlife, and to stay away from spirits and ghosts. But others will retort that Confucius devoted much of his teachings to how to properly conduct rituals — rituals recorded in the Book of Rites (Liji 禮記), which detailed how to give sacrifices to the heavenly spirits and the souls of the ancestors. They would also point out quotations from Confucius showing that he revered heaven (Tian 天) not as an abstract principle but as a deity with consciousness and feelings. When he warned people to stay away from spirits and ghosts, it’s not because they don’t exist, but because you should keep good company; namely, with the living.
If we elaborate our analogy of a supermarket with things neatly packaged as ‘religions’, one might imagine the supermarket manager started putting Confucianism into religious packages, only for some customers to vociferously object, storm into the supermarket, pull the Confucian boxes out of the ‘religion’ aisle, and re-stock them in the ‘philosophy’ section.[2]
Daoism
While they’re fighting, let’s turn to Daoism. You will hear the same arguments. Again, somebody will lead to you the philosophy aisle, this time taking a copy of the Daodejing — the main classic of Daoism — off the shelf. They will open the page where it says that the Dao, or the Way, the highest principle and origin of the cosmos, “follows the law of nature” (daofa ziran 道法自然). “Nothing religious here!” they will say. But others will then pull you away and take you to an actual Daoist temple. Through the clouds of incense, you will see an endless number of gods: the Jade Emperor, the Supreme Lord Lao, the Dipper Mother, the Heavenly Worthy of the Primordial Beginning, the immortal Lu Dongbin, and so on. You will see the priests conducting enormously complex rituals and practicing exorcisms. Faced with this evidence, the first group will admit that there is indeed a ‘Daoist religion,’ but it is different from ‘Daoist philosophy’ — the former is a corruption of the latter, to such an extent that there is no connection between the two. If they see packages of Daoism in the supermarket’s ‘religion’ aisle, they will throw them in the garbage, saying that it is not even religion but a tangled mass of superstitions. Scholars of Daoism will then rush to the scene, picking up the discarded packages and stuffing the philosophy books into them, saying that this dichotomy between Daoist ‘philosophy’ and Daoist ‘religion’ is artificial — that the study of Chinese cosmology and history shows that the two are, in fact, organically linked.[3]
At this point, others will come to say that Daoism is actually a science: the concern of Daoism over the centuries has been to understand how humans can harmonize themselves with their environment (tianren heyi 天人合一) and how to live a long, healthy and prosperous life. The Daoist texts speak of the observation of nature and of the body, and over the centuries Daoists have systematically accumulated observations about astronomy, geography, botany, zoology, chemistry, and so on, establishing the foundation for Chinese medicine. They developed a widely appreciated art of living that is expressed in Chinese cuisine, notions of good nutrition and healthy lifestyle, exercises such as Taiji, and so on. Those advocates of Daoist science will then open the Daoist packages, take out all the rocks, plants, stars, human body parts and medicines, and put them into nice new boxes with a yin-yang symbol on them, and place them in the ‘science’ aisle.[4]
Buddhism
Let the Confucians and Daoists run back and forth between the aisles. Things are quieter when you start examining the Buddhist packages in the religion section. Not much disagreement here: there seems to be a consensus that Buddhism is a religion. Buddhism is always discussed in textbooks and encyclopaedias as one of the main “world religions”, while the same reference books might omit either Confucianism or Daoism, or both.[5]
But — oops — we spoke too fast: here come some Buddhists! They tell you that Buddhism is actually not a religion, because it does not believe in a creator God, and that the Buddha himself was only a human being who shared the rational principles that he discovered through his own investigations [6]. But then more people come, and they open up some of the older Buddhist packages to show you the ‘real thing’. All kinds of supernatural beings start flying into your face: deities, bodhisattvas, Tathagatas, Arhats, demons, and so on, not to mention hungry ghosts. Buddhist scriptures clearly refer to the Buddha as a superhuman spiritual being who had godly powers before being born in this world [7]. Buddhists pray to Buddha and give offerings to him, treating him like a god. At this point, another group comes over, closes the lid on the supernatural beings, puts aside the box, and pulls you over to the ‘science’ aisle. They tell you about Buddhist practices of meditation and its theories of the mind and consciousness, which, they claim, are more profound and complete than those of Western psychology [8]. These Buddhist practices can be learned without prior belief, and you can empirically test and validate the theories. They put on some soothing music, invite you to sit in the lotus position, and teach you the meditation steps to try out for yourself.
Wait! There’s more!
So much for Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. At this point, your meditation session is disrupted by a crowd of worshippers carrying a god statue in a procession, clanging cymbals and setting off firecrackers. You follow them to a traditional Chinese street where you see all kinds of gods — the Kitchen God, the Earth God, the Door Gods, the God of Wealth, the Empress of Heaven, and so on. However, on asking, you find out that these gods, their temples, and their worshipers, usually don’t identify as Confucian, Buddhist, or Daoist! What is this religion, you ask? Most of the worshippers won’t understand your question. But some well-educated Chinese people will smugly inform you that this is not religion at all, because those who worship these gods pray to them for worldly purposes — for healing, good health, for success in business, for good grades in exams. This is not religion, they say; merely superstition [9]. At that point, you might be puzzled because your Christian cousins also pray for good health, good grades, and so on [10]. Does this therefore mean that Christianity is not a religion either?
We started Essay #1 of the Re-Assembling Reality series with a nod to the Four Cs framework of science and religion (Conflict — Compartmentalization — Conversation — Convergence), and how that rested on a framework of dichotomising things into two Columns. Considering acupuncture in Essay #2, we found that before we got a chance to ask how science and religion relate to each other, we had problems with even classifying practices into the categories of science and religion. It seemed that for acupuncture (and, indeed, for physics and care for the poor) the pieces inside the packages that we had bought labeled as ‘science’ or ‘religion’ did not fit under the ‘right’ Column. Delving deeper into Chinese teachings in this essay has made the problem worse. Any given package seems to have things from all over the shop, from either Column or from none. Some voices say that Confucianism and Chinese deity worship are neither religion nor science. Others, speaking of Daoism and Buddhism, say that, from certain angles, they could be seen as both science and religion. Others say that these are all philosophies, and some would dismiss all of it as nothing but superstition and a waste of time.
These arguments have been going on without pause since the 19th century. But before that, in China, there were the sanjiao 三教, the “three teachings”. Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism were considered to belong to the same category of jiao, and nobody went on to open up the “teachings” and divide their contents into ‘religious’ boxes and ‘non-religious’ ones. People considered that there were differences between the three teachings, but they all shared the same essential features of a jiao. In fact, they didn’t hesitate to put all three into the same box, saying that the “Three Teachings are One” [11]. Or if they still preferred a box of Confucianism, they didn’t mind throwing some pieces of Daoism and Buddhism into the mix; and likewise if they preferred one of the other two teachings [12].
Let us imagine the plight of a modern Western supermarket manager who looks to China in an attempt to diversify her supermarket’s line of religious offerings beyond the regular stock of Christian denominations. On arriving in China, she will end up spending a lot of time trying to determine, out of the multifarious elements of Chinese culture, which ones can be packaged as religion and which ones can’t. Once she has identified the different ‘religions’, she can’t stop being amazed or entertained by the fact that the Chinese are always mixing those religions together! Similar things will happen if the manager goes to source her religions in India, Africa, or elsewhere. On the other hand, if a Chinese person of the Qing Dynasty were to go abroad to add from there to his collection of teachings, he might easily have included those ‘religions’ of the West. In fact, many did do so, and made new packages of the ‘Five Teachings’ all combined together, adding Christianity and Islam to the mix [13]. Moreover, they were puzzled as to why the Westerners always insist on keeping the teachings separate from each other, and even go to war over the separations!
How far can we push this metaphor?
Soon, we must accept that this supermarket metaphor may have carried us as far as it will go. But let us take a moment to explicitly draw some of the connections we have implied, and see what insight we might glean from pushing the parallels as far as we can.
- The aisles in the supermarket are the usual Western categories: science, religion, philosophy, superstition, and so on.
- The things inside the boxes are the individual elements of practice and belief: meditation, prayer, spirits, gods, texts, major figures, ideas.
- The boxes are the way people chose to bundle and present the elements: we choose to package some elements together and label them ‘Confucianism’, ‘Christianity’, or ‘spirituality’.
So far, so good. Where, in this picture, do the ‘teachings’ fit? We might imagine them (should we really want to stretch the metaphor) as the brands of the things going into the boxes. When I buy a box that says Lego on the side, I expect to only get Lego products inside. The box might contain different elements (building blocks, a key ring, a Batman poster) but they are all from Lego. There might be some discussion by the store manager if Lego should be stocked in the ‘toys’ aisle or the ‘movie merchandise’ aisle, but there is no confusion about what Lego products are, and what they are not. A box that says Lego will never contain elements from Meccano, it will never contain cake, and it will never be sold in the ‘cleaning products’ aisle.
If one were to take Lego as the paradigmatic toy brand (just as one might take Christianity as the paradigmatic religion), then Meccano is definitely a toy brand (just as Islam is definitely a religion). All the things you can ask about Lego, you can ask about Meccano. (What different shaped pieces are there? How does it progress in complexity as kids grow? What language does it use for its new computer interface?) Disney is more tricky to characterise as a toy brand: sure, they make movies (just like Lego does) but they care less about making building blocks and more about selling holidays. Marvel is even more problematic. They make money from movies, figurines, and some seriously adult merchandise. Surely no ‘proper’ toy brand should count Deadpool or Venom within its core business.
Should the store manager put Deadpool DVDs in its ‘toys’ aisle? Or display building blocks in their ‘movies’ aisle? Or say that Disney is a superior brand than Meccano because Meccano doesn’t sell holidays? It is not hard to see that the difficulties our fictional store manager has been having with putting Daoism in the religion aisle are similar to the difficulties that real store managers might have with putting Marvel in the toy aisle. To the extent a brand emphasises kids’ building blocks, it fits neatly in the toy aisle. To the extent a teaching emphasises demons, morality, and ritual, it fits fits neatly in the religion aisle. Some brands include items that range across toys, movies, and clothing, yet remain a coherent brand. Some teachings include items which range across science, religion, and philosophy, yet remain a coherent teaching. And the store manager needs to deal with it.
Pushing the analogy between teachings and brands still further may help to understand how it can be that some teachings maintain strict boundaries, while others are much more flexible with what is included. How can it be, for example, that Christianity seems dogmatically exclusive, while Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism have a much more fluid flow of ideas between them? Or how can it be that some boxes which say Confucianism on the front have Daoist elements inside, while other Confucianist boxes do not? Let us return again to consideration of toys.
A box that says Marvel on the side will never contain Batman, any more than a box which has Judaism on the side will have graven images of God in it. A box saying DC on the side will never contain Spider-Man. A box that says Lego may contain Spider-Man or Batman, but never both together. A cheap knockoff that says Lepin on the box looks a lot like Lego, and may contain something that looks like Spider-Man and something that looks like Batman, much to the annoyance of Marvel and DC and Lego. Just as Lepin has carved out its niche, New-Age spirituality has no qualms about re-purposing and combining aspects of Christianity, Buddhism, and Paganism in ways which would be anathema to Christianity, Buddhism, and Paganism.
People tend to keep Lego and Meccano separate, not out of brand loyalty, but simply because the two systems don’t really work together. Some people keep Spider-Man and Batman figures separate because,well, it’s just right. Some people buy multiple Lego kits and mix all the figures together. (Spider-Man wearing Batman’s cowl, anyone?). There is a long running dispute over the validity of this practice, with some calling it “creative” while others call it “syncretistic heresy.”
We are comfortable with the idea that Lego fits reasonably well in the toy aisle, but has some things fit better in other aisles. We are comfortable that Lego can make toys in collaboration with brands that would otherwise not be toys, and that all sides of the collaboration, while being in the same box, can maintain their own distinctive brand. How strange it is that we struggle when some (though not all) aspects of Confucianism, Daoism, or Buddhism fit reasonably well (though not perfectly) in the religion aisle.
Tracing some origins of our difficulty
The problem we face is that the concept of ‘religion’ we are used to using is a concept that describes a ‘Western’ understanding of something that Westerners call religion — a concept that is derived from Western Christianity and which, even in the West, only arose only in the last few hundred years. In a nutshell, the concept of ‘religion’ is a package of things that contains what, for the past two centuries, people have considered to be the basic ingredients of Column 2 (“Religion”), of which modern Christianity is taken as paradigmatic: belief in God (supernatural), a Holy Book (full of miracle stories and moral admonitions), a Doctrine, and a Church (the community of people who believe in the God, the Book, and the Doctrine). To the extent that other traditions have similar ingredients to those highlighted in Christianity (albeit with different colours and flavours), then they’ve been considered to be religions. But while many of those ingredients can be found, they might be mixed up with other ingredients that aren’t included in the standard list of religious (Column 2) ingredients. So, the more a certain tradition resembles Modernist conceptions of Christianity, the more quickly people will reach a consensus that it’s religion, while the less it looks like Modern Christianity, the harder it will be to achieve consensus on whether it counts as a ‘religion’.
Since the late 19th century, all modern educational systems around the world have been based on Western knowledge; all intellectuals and educated people use the Western concept of religion. This means that regardless of whether is someone is British, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Ethiopian, or Congolese they use the same standards and have the same arguments when they consider what counts as ‘religion’ within their own cultures. When people who adhere to those non-Christian religions (or to non-Western versions of Christianity) receive a Western-style education, they tend to look at their own traditions through the lens of the Western concept of religion — and often try to change their traditions to fit that concept. They highlight the ingredients of their tradition that fit the standard list, make sure that the colour and flavor of the standard ingredients are sufficiently distinctive so as not to confuse it with other religious packages, and then try to throw out or hide the other ingredients. The resulting package could be very different from what had originally been. And some people will attempt to keep the discarded parts, much to the embarrassment of those doing the repackaging [14].
From the 19th century onward, groups of people have continually researched, compared, and debated about the non-Christian traditions in other parts of the world, and categorized them according to the modern Western concepts. The result is that these traditions have been pulled apart and their contents redistributed into at least six different types of boxes: religion, philosophy, science; medicine; spirituality; and a chest of residual rituals and magic which is either thrown into the back alley as ‘superstition,’ or proudly displayed as ‘folk customs’ or ‘indigenous culture’.
A closer re-examination of Daoism
By way of example, let’s go back to the case of Daoism. Daoism has many deities, it has scriptures, it has priests. So we can easily pack those into a religious box. Modern scholars of religion will describe its contents according to the standard Western template for religion: What are its gods? Who was its founder? What are its doctrines? What are its scriptures? What are its branches and sects? Who are its clergy? What are its laws of personal behavior? What are its major rites and ceremonies? How does one become a Daoist? It is possible to write an account of Daoism in this way [15], but some ‘cultivators of Dao’ would retort that this description is superficial and completely misses the essence of Daoism.
Within the classic texts of Daoism, one can find many rich ideas that fall under the modern label of ‘philosophy’ — ideas that can be reflected on intellectually, explained without recourse to supernatural entities, elaborated rationally, and argued about dispassionately. Scholars of philosophy can write accounts of ‘Daoist philosophy’ answering questions such as who are its thinkers? What are its core concepts? What is its epistemology? Its ontology? Its ethics? What have been the philosophical debates within this tradition? How do these ideas compare to those within the continental or analytical traditions of Western philosophy? Such accounts can — and have — been written, becoming standard textbooks[16]. But some Daoists would say that nothing could be further from the spirit of Daoism than hair-splitting rational arguments and intellectualizing for the sake of intellectualizing.
Historians of science in China find many accounts and practices related to the observation of the natural world, and can write an account of Daoism as the main source of scientific knowledge and research in premodern China. In Joseph Needham’s monumental Science and Civilization in China, the many volumes on “Chemistry and Chemical Technology” and on “Biology and Biological Technology” note how much this knowledge owes to the experimentations of the Daoists.[17] Needham’s project aimed to recover these jewels of scientific knowledge hidden within the “useless” dross of mystical and esoteric doctrines. But some Daoist cultivators would say that focusing on these utilitarian outputs misses the essential spirit that led to these observations and discoveries.
Nurturing a healthy body and healing illness is an important dimension of Daoism. Indeed, Daoism is inseparable from the history of Chinese medicine. It is possible to collect all of the remedies, formulas, herbs, and healing techniques to be found in the ancient Daoist and Chinese texts, and classify them into disciplines such as pharmacopeia, acupuncture, massage, moxibustion, qigong, and so on. And then one can conduct experimental research on these herbs and therapeutic techniques, to isolate which ones have proven clinical efficacy. But some Daoist cultivators would say that such an approach involves picking the fruit but ignoring the root — which is about aligning oneself and one’s body with the Dao.
For many, this essential idea of Daoism would be called spirituality, whose focus is on becoming aware of one’s inner essence, and the harmony between one’s self, one’s body and the cosmos. Here one could write an account of the wisdom in the Daoist tradition concerning how to nurture a healthy and spiritual life, and list the practices of meditation, of breathing, gymnastics, sexuality, and healthy living that have been developed in the tradition [19]. Many scholars and Daoists, however, would retort that these ideas and practices become a superficial form of self-indulgence when they are cut off from the depths of the tradition that has been transmitted from master to disciple, within a religious and ritual context.
Finally, if one researches the Daoist texts and history, or goes to do field research, one will find an endless maze of complex rituals, formulas, talismans, divination, magic, gods and demons, festivals, and so on — often local practices and traditions that seem to have some connection to Daoism. Some scholars will see them as excessive dross: superstitions that need to be cleaned away. Others, however, will argue that these local traditions are the very soil and matrix out of which Daoism has grown; that it is in these communities and practices that Daoism continues to exist as a living tradition [20]. And others would nonetheless consider that they are quaint and colorful customs that should be studied as folklore and preserved as cultural heritage.
Thus, we can see that the ingredients of what we call “Daoism” have been pulled apart and placed into six different boxes. Different people will prefer and emphasize one or another of the six boxes as containing the most important ingredients of Daoism. But others will argue that this repackaging is artificial — it imposes a foreign, Western set of categories onto the Daoist tradition and, in the process, destroys the tradition. For them, Daoism is an inseparable whole, in which all of these different dimensions are deeply interconnected within a single ‘path’ or way of life, in which religious practice, philosophical wisdom, scientific knowledge, a healthy body, a healthy spirit, a harmonious and prosperous community are all integrated. Should we find this view strange? We know that Lego toys boost engagement with Lego movies, and Lego movies boost engagement with Lego toys, and both boost engagement with Lego clothing and theme parks. We know that Lego, as a brand, is an inseparable, interconnected whole. Why would we insist that Daoism must be carved up to fit into separate boxes?
Rather than dividing it up to fit in different boxes, some say that Daoism is greater than all western Categories. It is a ‘super-science’ that not only encourages the observation and use of the outer world, but also the observation and understanding of inner spiritual worlds, as well as the primal cosmic force or energy that connects the two. From this perspective, Daoism holds the key to transcending and unifying what Western thought sees as the mutually exclusive categories of ‘science’, ‘religion’, ‘philosophy’, ‘spirituality’, and so on [21].
But that is not the only response to the failure to fit Daoism in Western boxes. There are those who would say that the failure is simply because there is no such ‘thing’ as ‘Daoism’. Daoism is only a word, and this word has been used by different people at different times, with different meanings, for different purposes. Under this view, the debates and confusions outlined above simply reinforce the basic claim that there is no thing that is Daoism [22]. Similarly, ‘science’, ‘religion’, ‘philosophy’, and so on are nothing more than words. None of these words represents an unchanging reality.
Christianity too?
While we have delved in depth here into Daoism, a similar process of slicing apart and distribution — and similar debates over the process — have occurred and continue to occur around such traditions as ‘Confucianism’, ‘Buddhism’, ‘Hinduism’, ‘Shintoism’, ‘indigenous religions’, and so on. In the case of the monotheistic, Abrahamic religions — Judaism, Islam and the Baha’i faith — the issue might appear to be less problematic. They obviously seem to share the basic ingredients of the Christian-derived notion of ‘religion’: they all believe in a transcendent God and His revelation through a line of Abrahamic prophets as revealed through a divine book. But even they need to shave off some ingredients and amplify others in order to fit the specifications of the standard religious package.
Historians, anthropologists, and scholars of religion specializing in non-Western religions have described in detail how those traditions have been pulled apart and repackaged to conform to the Western model of religion. A full consideration of science/religion needs to fully take into account traditions and cosmologies other than those of Modern Western Christianity. The majority of the world’s populations and cultures are rooted within other cosmologies and worldviews, which deeply influence the way they live and think, even if their academic training follows Western categories. Spiritualities and practices from Asia are also increasingly popular in the West, while Christianity has been developing in Asia, Africa, Australia and Central and South America in ways that do not always follow the modern Western model. To the extent that we take these non-Western cosmologies and traditions into account, the conventional divide between scientific and religious boxes will be disrupted.
But it would be too simple to say that this Western model represents Christianity. Throughout its history, Christianity has undergone continual processes of being reformulated and repackaged to make sense in — and make sense of — different cultural contexts. The Old Testament was written in an Ancient Near Eastern milieu that differed radically from Modern thinking. The Old Testament was formulated to sometimes reject, sometimes embrace, and sometimes subvert surrounding worldviews. The writers of the New Testament wrestled with prevailing Greek thought; again, sometimes rejecting it, sometimes embracing it, sometimes subverting it. Subsequently, each of the major Church divisions — including Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism — embraced some ways of connecting ideas, while rejecting others. As Christianity has spread around the world, this process has continued, with Christianity in Africa (for example) having a character distinct from Christianity in Europe. It should therefore be unsurprising to find that the Modern Western model fails to adequately represent Christianity outside the Modern West [23].
A general situation
But the problems do not stop there! There is commonly a disconnect between what people think they are doing and what they are actually doing. It is possible that a person can swim well while having an incorrect understanding of theoretical hydrodynamics. There is no shame in this disconnect between theory and practice: an Olympic medallist’s (incorrect) belief that ‘more wet’ equates to ‘more slippery’ in no way detracts from their swimming prowess. It is therefore possible that the Modern Western model of Christianity — in addition to being a poor description of everything else — doesn’t even well describe Western Christianity! A European Christian may firmly believe the Modernist dichotomy that science is limited to natural concerns and religion is limited to supernatural ones. This does not stop them from giving bread to a homeless person, nor does it stop them from believing that this mundane act is a religious concern. Their mental acceptance of Modernist dichotomies simply means that the Christianity which they are living is not the same as the model that they have in their head which they think they are living.
Over the course of this essay, we have argued that the categories of science and religion that people are used to using in the Modern West — and the many other dichotomies that are often associated with them — are ill-fitting for engaging with Chinese traditions. Having illustrated this by appeal to Chinese medicine in Essay 2, we have further appealed in this essay to Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Along the way, we have developed an extended metaphor of packaging which considers the issues at stake without appeal to the standard framings of two-list-ism or the Four Cs. Finally, we have indicated that Christianity — even Modern Western Christianity—may be thought of in a similar way. It is even possible that such a way of thinking of Christianity may provide a better account of than the typical Western two-list account that Christianity itself originally helped inspire.
…
In Re-Assembling Reality, we’re questioning the relationship between science and religion based on what people do, rather than on what they say they do.
Click here to read the next essay (#4) in the series, on Is there even such a thing as religion?
Click here to read the previous essay (#2) in the series, on Acupuncture: Science? Religion? Both? Neither?
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This essay and the Re-Assembling Reality Medium series are brought to you by the University of Hong Kong’s Common Core Curriculum Course CCHU9061 Science and Religion: Questioning Truth, Knowledge and Life, with the support of the Faith and Science Collaborative Research Forum and the Asian Religious Connections research cluster of the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
Endnotes
[1] See Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
[2] Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities. Princeton University Press, 2013; Yong Chen, Confucianism as Religion: Controversies and Consequences. Brill, 2012.
[3] Schipper, Kristofer and Franciscus Verellen (eds), 2004, The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang, Chicago: Chicago University Press, p. 6.
[4] Raphals L. (2015) Daoism and Science. In: Liu X. (eds) Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2927-0_24
[5] On the choice of whether to include Daoism and/or Confucianism in reference works on world religions, see the preface to the Norton Anthology of World Religions, which selected Daoism and not Confucianism: Jack Miles, “Preface”, The Norton Anthology of World Religions, New York: Norton, 2015, xiix.
[6] See, for example, Alan Watts, Buddhism: The Religion of No-Religion: the edited transcripts. North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 1996.
[7] Guang Xing, The Concept of the Buddha: Its Evolution from Early Buddhism to the Trikaya Theory. Routledge, 2010.
[8] Padmasiri de Silva, An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology and Counselling, Palgrave MacMillan, 2014; Dennis Tirch, Laura Silberstein and Russell L. Kolts, iBuddhist Psychology and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: A Clinician’s Guide. Guilford Press, 2016.
[9] See Goossaert & Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, p. 46; Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity; Harvard University Press, 2010.
[10] See Kate Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. Oxford University Press, 2013.
[11] Timothy Brook (1993) Rethinking Syncretism: The Unity of the Three Teachings and their Joint Worship in Late-Imperial China, Journal of Chinese Religions, 21:1, 13–44, DOI: 10.1179/073776993805307448
[12] Fung Yu-Lan and Derk Bodde, “The Rise of Neo-Confucianism and Its Borrowings From Buddhism and Taoism”, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies Vol. 7, №2 (Jul., 1942), pp. 89–125.
[13] David A. Palmer, “Chinese Redemptive Societies and Salvationist Religion: Historical Phenomenon or Sociological Category?” Journal of Chinese Theatre, Ritual and Folklore/ Minsu Quyi 172 (2011), pp. 21–72.; Philip Clart, “The Role of Jesus in Chinese Popular Sects.” In The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ (vol.3), edited by Roman Malek. Monumenta Serica Monograph Series №50/3 (St. Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica; Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2007), 1315–1333.
[14] Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions: or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. University of Chicago Press, 2005.
[15] See Louis Komjathy, The Daoist Traditon: An Introduction. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
[16] See Xiaogan Liu ed., Dao Companion to Daoist Philosophy, Springer, 2014; Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames. Daoist philosophy, 1998, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-G006–1. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/daoist-philosophy/v-1.
[17] Needham, Joseph, 1976, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. V: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, part 3: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention: Historical Survey, from Cinnabar Elixirs to Synthetic Insulin, With the collaboration of Ho Ping-Yü and Lu Gwei-Djen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[18] Stanley-Baker, M. (2019). Daoing Medicine: Practice Theory for Considering Religion and Medicine in Early Imperial China, East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine, 50(1), 21–66. doi: https://doi.org/10.1163/26669323-05001004
[19] See, for example, Eva Wong, Being Taoist : Wisdom for Living a Balanced Life. Boston: Shambhala, 2015.
[20] Kristofer Schipper, The Daoist Body. University of California Press, 1993.
[21] See, for example, David A. Palmer, Qigong Fever: Body, Science and Utopis in China, Columbia University Press, 2007; Ni, Z. (2020), REIMAGINING DAOIST ALCHEMY, DECOLONIZING TRANSHUMANISM: THE FANTASY OF IMMORTALITY CULTIVATION IN TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY CHINA. Zygon 55: 748–771. https://doi.org/10.1111/zygo.12634; Hu, Fuchen, National Cultures under the Wave of Globalization — — More on the New Daoist Culture Strategy in the 21st Century. The Orient Forum, 2005.
[22] See David A. Palmer and Xun Liu, “Introduction: The Daoist Encounter with Modernity”, in David Palmer and Xun Liu eds., Daoism in the 20th Century: Between Eternity and Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012, pp. 1–22.
[23] Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford University Press, 2011.
