Re: Michael Wood documentary proves Oral Traditions are a lie

In message <5kb4m7F2uortU3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Agamemnon wrote:


2. If China's population *were* 2 billion, which it isn't, there wouldn't be 2 billion Chinese Buddhists anyway. Well below 100% of Chinese are Buddhists. The Wikipedia article on the People's Republic of China has a figure of 8%. The majority have no religion.

That's because they are Communists and Communism does not recognise religion. Officially the may have no religion

Officially *none* of them has a religion. I didn't say zero, said 8%, an estimate of the portion of the people who *actually* subscribe to Buddhism.
In a communist state.

The people who *don't* follow Buddhism, don't follow Buddhism. Do you think that the fact that they're in a communist state means that you can pretend that they do follow Buddhism when the don't?


but unofficially just like with Russia on the case of Orthodoxy, nearly all of them are Buddhists.

I suppose the Confucianists, Taoists, Muslims, and Christians living there aren't Chinese, then?
They are insignificant.

There are more Confucianists and Taoists than Buddhists, so if they are insignificant then so are the Buddhists.

.... but not half as insignificant as the Chinese Buddhists who believe that Ganesha wrote the Mahabharata. Or the ones for whom it's "central to their religion".

;-)

--
Richard Herring
.

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