radagast

I have to say, I disagree on the point of the Buddha. Why would it be a significant matter if he hadn't existed. The practice and teachings attributed to him exist, they are what matter to practicing Buddhists. As a Buddhist, I can't imagine finding out the Buddha was a retroactively created historical figure would have even the slightest effect on my practice.

Jesus, on the other hand, was supposed to be a divine entity that performed a lot of miracles, which, I presume, bolster his teachings to his followers. That's a case where his lack of existence could pose certain problems.

Regards,
Glenn

ohwilleke

If preservation was so hard, why do we have the Analects?

And, a man with hundreds of students is hardly so marginal that he wouldn't be able to write in his own hand. Also, if there were hundreds of students, and they thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread, you would think that many of those students would have saved something from their esteemed teacher and that some of those pieces would have survived, even though most would have perished. After all, Confucius became prominent fairly quickly. And, while the original papers might have faded, copies and accounts of people seeing the original papers, would have survived.

Answerer

Because many of his disciples lived on and so did his ideas. In addition, Analects is basically the accumlation or summary of all the ideas regarding ethics, rites and politics that Confucius taught, not the exact form of what he said, did or his biography.


Perhaps, but to the students, his ideologies were probably the most important thing given by Confucius to them. Even though, his disciples might have some items and original writings written by Confucius, I doubt they had survived the chaotic period at that time. In addition, Confucian ideology only started to take hold of China in Han dynasty. However, before that time, especially during the era of the first Emperor, the Qin Dynasty, they were branded as non-legalism philosophy and heresy. Hundreds of items and books were burned and millions of people were executed. Confucian ideology was already quite fortunate to have survived that era, but not so for the original "precious" items, historians are so keen about.

Furthermore, most of confucius' disciples were not literalists. They knew that copying the exact words from their teacher was not really important but the essence of his ideas were. In fact, some of his prominent disciples such as Mencius and Xun Zi developed (or changed) his ideas to even further heights. And from this indiction, we could easily deduce that despite receiving great reverance from his disciples, in the early stage of history, Confucius was not treated as god-like and his teachings as absolute dogmas.

Sturmrabe

Actually the chinese practise ancestor worship, so to say they worship him "as a god" if false and unfair to the way the chinese view honoring venerable ancestors and great historical figures in their culture

premjan

I would guess that this would be a good argument for the poor historical evidence for Jesus as well. Of course given the current political importance of Jesus and the importance many atheists attach to having him not exist I would not necessarily want to prevent them.

Dharma

Actually most people practice ancestor "worship" in some way or other...for example, Abraham is an 'ancestor diety" type figure...Hindus have this tradition as well...

actually that is why it is strange in any place to consider anyone else's ancestor as your ancestor or practice a religion that does not come from your ancestors...

so that is why it is all right for Chinese/atheists/non-Jews/ to not really give to cents of thought on whether or not Jesus Christ, who is not their ancestor, did or did not exist...and they couldn't care less...just as Jesus couldn't care less about gentile, non-Jewish"dogs"...(and he called the non-believing Jews satan..)

Answerer

Oh well, actually I think its safe to say that I know more than you. Why?

Because I had "convinced" (or rather forced) by my parents to pray to Confucius for miraculous great academic success and bestowment of great intelligent/ Wisdom on my brain since I was small. Of course, I don't believe in that kind of shit and remained a skeptic. And more importantly, I do know the differences between the formal ancestor worships that involved only reverance (plus a bit of superstitution) and godlike beings' type of worships. (that comprises mainly of miraculous deeds and superstitution) Oh, even the rituals involved during the both types of worshipping are different.

premjan

A good point, but often there is the "genetic" ancestor, and the "theological" ancestor where the latter is just the person who created the particular religious point of view to which you adhere. This is probably how some Afghans began to believe that they were a lost tribe of the Jews. And why such a large section of humanity seems to claim descent from them when they are evidently a smallish group of people now and before.

Answerer

I don't give a damn to race since all of us probably belong to the same sub-species and ancestors. I'm more concerned with religions.

I predicted that if nothing go terribly wrong, int he next few hundred years, our world will be largely populated by mixed blood Eurasians or African-Asians, etc. In that kind of world, race identities and ancient cultures (Not religious beliefs though) will not be of any concern to them. And I prepared to put my money on that.

Dharma

there was much ignorance passed around as "scholarship" in those days, particularly by Christian missionaries...the "Aryan invasion theory" of India too was one of them...and Indians who despite having a better documentation of Aryans than any other people, just accepted it since it came from so called "educated english speaking" missionaries... so now it is treated as fact in most history books to this day, even in India, despite evidence to the contrary...