Talk:Falun Gong/Archive1

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Edited to increase the neutrality of the language

I have noticed several places where the article substitutes opinion for factual information. In an effort to respect the spirit of RationalWiki, I made the following changes.

Where allegations of wrong doing are made I have requested citations. Altered the language of statements of fact regarding wrong doing to allegations of wrong doing. Requested citations for allegations of persecution of Falun Gong for profit by Jiang Zemin which sounds credible but citations should still be made where such are made. Requested citations for ongoing mistreatment of FG by Hu and Xi. The bulk of allegations of persecution of Falung Gong come from Falun Gong sources, so it is important to make sure those sources are well researched and to present allegations of mistreatment as neutrally as possible. This is not to excuse any wrongdoing by PRC government officials; on the contrary, the best way to shine a light on misdeeds is to create a well cited list of abuses. When discussing Falun Gong, it is often difficult to find neutral party information because there is a very large amount of highly biased incendiary accusations from both pro-Falun Gong and anti-Falun Gong sources. This is a tough one. I have done my best to navigate the Falun Gong minefield while keeping in mind that neither Falun Gong media sources, anti-PRC, PRC controlled media and pro-PRC sources can be trusted. With that in mind, to be as intellectually honest as possible any allegation of wrongdoing should be treated as a potential untruth.

Also, it should be explained in some format that when Li Hongzhi makes reference to 'dharma ending period' in relationship to something else that he is directly saying that it is evil and immoral. Li is very good at hiding behind flowery language to espouse some rather discriminatory social beliefs. Pelican (talk) 22:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Organ Harvesting Claims

The claims made by Falun Gong about organ harvesting are highly dubious to say the least. While it has already been established that organ harvesting in China from prisoners that are executed by the state in its public executions, the Falun Gong claims being made are much, much more unlikely... the only evidence of which comes directly from Falun Gong members. Furthermore, the rehabilitation hospital in Shenyang where Falun Gong claims this harvesting to be conducted is open to the general public; I've even been to that hospital myself while visiting family. The claim that such a clandestine organ harvesting operation could possibly go on there with so much exposure to the public makes these claims even more difficult to believe and rightly so. This would be like someone claiming that a major metropolitan hospital had secretly murdered and cremated 2000 people. This is a REHAB hospital. Dead bodies are something that people would see coming and going. Furthermore, Chinese people tend to be extremely creeped out by corpses owing to deeply ingrained cultural superstitions regarding the dead meaning that a large influx of dead bodies would not go unnoticed by the public. Chinese hospitals typically constructs separate buildings to handle cremations and store the dead until they can be buried or cremated. Such a grand conspiracy involving so many moving parts would be almost impossible to hide and given that the sources of this come directly from the cult itself, the likelihood of these things having happened is therefore even more hard to believe. This is not to say that the PRC government is not capable of brutality, its just that this claim, based on the facts is just not at all likely and should be treated as such in a website that is dedicated to skepticism of extraordinary claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Pelican (talk) 22:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Adding citation for organ harvesting allegation

Proposed to add this citation:

http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2006/04/20060416141157uhyggep0.5443231.html#axzz3mg9z5pLA

"Officers and staff from the U.S. embassy in Beijing and the U.S. consulate in Shenyang have visited the area and the specific site on two separate occasions, the State Department said in a written response to a question taken at the April 14 daily press briefing.

"In these visits the officers were allowed to tour the entire facility and grounds and found no evidence that the site is being used for any function other than as a normal public hospital," the response said.

Bobby Fletcher (talk) 21:16, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

also read this: http://www.parliament.nz/en-nz/pb/sc/documents/reports/50DBSCH_SCR6012_1/petition-201184-of-sam-fang-on-behalf-of-the-falun-gong

"Neither committee members nor the Government are aware of any independent evidence verifying the Falun Gong claims on organ harvesting. This conclusion is based on both New Zealand and foreign inquiries. New Zealand officials discussed the allegations with Kilgour and Matas; the office of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture; human rights non-governmental organisations; and other countries interested in the human rights situation in China. Other international organisations also attempted to verify whether the claims on organ harvesting made in the Kilgour/Matas report had substance. This included a significant US State Department investigation that concluded that there was no evidence of the practice. Officials are not aware of any independent assessment that supports the Falun Gong’s claims of forced organ harvesting."

Seems that Falun Gong practitioners are apt to lie, like the officials of the Communist Party of China.--ラステイションの女神候補生、ユニよ。 00:40, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Comparison to Aum Shinrikyo

That needs to be explained or removed. Is it doctrinal? Are they similar based on tactics? What iteration of Aum Shinrikyo are they similar to?--"Shut up, Brx." 05:50, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

It was intended to be implied in the second half of the sentence as a combination of traditional folk religion and eschatology. At least, I think that's what I meant when I wrote it. To clarify: a cult of personality taking traditional folk religion and throwing in a bunch of doomsday rhetoric. In general I'm thinking Aum Shinrikyo pre-name change but to some extent the comparison is still accurate. — Unsigned, by: ORavenhurst / talk^{Do You Believe That?} 13:42, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Cult of personality? --"Shut up, Brx." 15:03, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

None of you have ever read a serious book on this, eh? The Aum Shinrikyo comparison is completely bogus, and their leader takes great pains not to become the focus of a 'cult of personality'. He actually tells people not to worshiping him in any way or engage in any kind of rituals. And yea, he does talk about a the 2 billion-year-old nuclear "reactor" at Oklo, but this stuff about believing it was constructed by Falun Gong practitioners is made up by some editor who apparently thinks it's fun to propagate misinformation about a group of people who are regularly tortured and killed in China. Har har. Iroh (talk) 06:22, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I take it you mean a "serious book" written by Falun Gong practitioners or their U.S. fundie cronies. It may not be on par with AS, but FG is still a pretty reprehensible belief system. They certainly aren't treated well by the Chinese government, but neither is any group with similar teachings. They're just better at politicizing the situation for their own ends. — Unsigned, by: ORavenhurst / talk^{Do You Believe That?} 14:59, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

1. Look up the term "cult of personality." It's clear from the section you insist on that you don't know what it means.
2. It's unacceptable to compare Falun Gong Aum Shinrikyo without backing it up somehow. And unless Falun Gong is prone to poison gas attacks, you'd best find another Eastern cult that you can liken them to.

--"Shut up, Brx." 00:39, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm unsure as to how a group that claims that its living, human founder is infallible can be rightly characterized at anything else. You're also completely missing the point - their theology is constructed more or less identically to AS (which is still around and no-longer violent) It's like claiming that no religion can have similarities to Christianity if they don't have a history of "holy" wars. — Unsigned, by: ORavenhurst / talk^{Do You Believe That?} 17:12, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

According to your definition, Christianity is a cult of personality, since Jesus was infallible and had magic powers. You don't understand the term. Stalin had a cult of personality. Mao had a cult of personality. Plastering photos and memorizing memoirs is a cult of personality. Secondly, it's downright rude to compare these people to a group of homicidal maniacs. You can do better.--"Shut up, Brx." 17:15, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll be reverting you tomorrow. Heads up--"Shut up, Brx." 18:15, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Since AS is still around and is now nonviolent, and the nonviolence is specified IN THE FREAKING TEXT I'm failing to see what the problem is. A cult of personality is "arises when an individual uses mass media, propaganda, or other methods, to create an idealized, heroic, and, at times god-like public image" which is exactly what they do. I don't understand where you're coming from. — Unsigned, by: ORavenhurst / talk^{Do You Believe That?} 16:11, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

"I take it you mean a "serious book" written by Falun Gong practitioners or their U.S. fundie cronies."

--No, I mean books written by Pulitzer prize-winning journalists, or those published in the Oxford or Columbia University Press. People who've studied Falun Gong in depth--scholars of Chinese history and religion or of sociology or anthropology--are in broad agreement that there is no such thing as a "cult of personality," and indeed, that Falun Gong doesn't resemble a "cult" at all. There is no leader worship; its teachers tells people emphatically that they should regard him as an "ordinary man." There are no fees, rituals, obligations, churches or temples, and no forms of coercion or membership. There is no violence at all; it's a passive meditation practice with a slightly esoteric Buddhist philosophy. I changed the template as well to reflect the consensus among scholars, who generally refer to Falun Gong either as a type of qigong or as a religion (eg. ANU professor Benjamin Penny just published a book titled "The Religion of Falun Gong"). You cannot declare something to be a cult by fiat. Iroh (talk) 16:58, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I would agree that the term "cult" is not appropriate from an anthropological perspective and in my day-to-day life I hesitate to describe ANY NRM as a cult, but in the context of RW it fits in nicely with what we call cults, which consists of basically any religious group that isn't one of the major world religions. My goal when I wrote this article wasn't to paint FG as violent, it was to point out that FG isn't special. The persecution they face is more or less identical to that faced by other NRMs in China, but the way they have politicized themselves (I walk past the Chinese consulate almost every day, the number of noisy, mean, raucous FG protestors I encounter is really unpleasant - although the "free Tibet" protestors are worse). I think you're reading too much into what I wrote. — Unsigned, by: ORavenhurst / talk^{Do You Believe That?} 15:49, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

On media representations and public perceptions

The article currently suggests that Falun Gong has received unduly sympathetic coverage in the West because of a combination of Falun Gong's sophisticated PR campaign and a visceral paranoia about the Chinese government. I'm not sure what this is based on, so I would like to discuss it further. Personally, I haven't found Falun Gong's PR campaign to be terribly sophisticated. Especially in the early 00s, you were dealing with a group of mostly first-generation Chinese immigrants with no ability to craft effective narratives for public consumption, who had generally poor english skills, and who did an exceedingly poor job of explaining to a Western audience what Falun Gong is, let alone exploiting popular sentiments about human rights in China. Ethan Gutmann, an author and investigative journalist specializing in China, described it as follows:

"Unlike the Tiananmen student leaders and other Chinese prisoners of conscience who had settled into Western exile, Falun Gong marched to a distinctly Chinese drum. With its roots in a spiritual tradition from the Chinese heartland, Falun Gong would never have built a version of the Statue of Liberty and paraded it around for CNN. Indeed, to Western observers, Falun Gong public relations carried some of the uncouthness of Communist party culture: a perception that practitioners tended to exaggerate, to create torture tableaux straight out of a Cultural Revolution opera, to spout slogans rather than facts. For various reasons, some valid, some shameful, the credibility of persecuted refugees has often been doubted in the West."[1]

The self-understanding of Falun Gong is that it's a type of "inner cultivation" practice (Xiulian in Chinese)--a very common concept in Eastern philosophy, but with no equivalent in the West. Hence, a lot of reporters struggled to accurately describe the group, variously referring to them as qigong, quasi-religious, meditation, martial arts, eastern mysticism, etc. Adam Frank observed this in a book chapter he wrote on media coverage of Falun Gong -- namely, that the practices and beliefs which are regarded as quite normal in the context of Eastern religious tradition were cast in Western media coverage as exotic and bizarre. Further discussion of this trend is found in this academic conference paper[2], which provides an overview of the debate and evidence surrounding media discourses on Falun Gong. It notes, among other things, that the vast majority of coverage of Falun Gong in Western news organizations actually followed the frames of the Chinese government--not Falun Gong, not human rights organizations. This is largely a consequence of power dynamics I imagine.

There is also a lot of evidence that the most influential Western news organizations have succumb to diplomatic or commercial pressure from the Chinese government in their coverage of Falun Gong. For instance, in 2008 a documentary about the practice and persecution in China that was set to air nationally in Canada was pulled from the air at the last minute because the Chinese embassy demanded it. The Chinese government dictated the edits that should be made to soften and whitewash the coverage before it could be broadcast. In 2010, the Washington Post pulled a feature article that depicted Falun Gong sympathetically after their executive editor got a call from the Chinese embassy in Washington. An expanded discussion of the political pressures faced by journalists is found in Danny Schechter's book "Falun Gong's Challenge to China". Iroh (talk) 17:25, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

The Epoch Times

It needs a section here or a separate article. Partially because of shit like this.--ZooGuard (talk) 18:42, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Seconded! --Teslashark (talk) 20:34, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

Li Hongzhi on evolution, ancient civilizations and science in general...

From a 1996 lecture in Sydney:

Some people claim, "Our human race evolved from apes." In fact, let me tell you that man did not evolve from apes at all. Darwin proposed a theory, which says, "Man has evolved from apes." When he made public this theory at that time, he brought it out with great trepidation. His theory is full of loopholes and is incomplete, and yet, it has been accepted by people to this day. Please think about it. The evolutionary process that he proposed of apes evolving to man, a process of tens of millions of years, cannot be found. There isn’t one. Why weren’t there such people between apes and human beings? Not just human beings, but other things as well. None of the evolved animals that he referred to had the transitional process. In addition, why are the species that exist on the continent of Australia different from the species that exist on other continents? He could explain none of these. Nevertheless this theory of evolution with all its loopholes has been accepted by human beings. This is indeed strange!

In the rest of the text, he seems to be endorsing a view similar to Vedic creationism, talking about ancient civilizations from "from tens of million years ago". Atlantis, Mu and Lemuria are implicitly mentioned. Most of the text is something that, if produced by a Westerner, would be called "New Age mumbo-jumbo".--ZooGuard (talk) 09:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, and his view of race is.... interesting.

Of course, because of the differences and variations in appearance, people in Jesus' paradise all dress in white robes while people in a Buddha's paradise all dress in yellow robes. The hair is also different, and the greatest difference lies in the hair variations.

Where did this guy learn about Christian theology? Apparently, in a hair saloon...

I remember that Jehovah and Jesus all said in the Bible or books as such, "You should not go to the East." There are other things said, but I only remembered this sentence, "You should not go to the East," telling his disciples not to pass on the teaching in the East. His disciples did not listen to his words and followed the expeditionary forces to the East.

I'd like very much chapter and verse for that claim, please.

A problem then occurred. The races in the world are not allowed to be mixed up. Now, the races are mixed up and it has brought about an extraordinarily serious problem. Once races are mixed up, one does not have a corresponding relationship with the higher levels, and he has lost the root.

A little known fact: there are no mixed-race sysadmins, because they tend to forget the root password. /badjoke

However, there is an extraordinarily large number of yellow people and Buddhas' paradises as well as Taoist paradises. They have almost filled up the entire universe. There are as many Tathagata Buddhas as the sand in the Ganges River, who are extremely plentiful and extraordinarily big. People with the appearance of the yellow people are particularly plentiful. Thus, races are corresponding with one another from the top to the bottom.

FFSMS, we have spiritual racial supremacism now? And what is the last sentence even supposed to mean?

Jesus said that you should not pass on the teaching in the East, which was meant to say that they do not belong to us. Jesus told people not to spread the teaching in the East. I have also found no oriental people in Jesus' paradise.

No shit? That would be news to a lot of fundies in, for example, South Korea. Also, I'd like to know how he penetrated "Jesus' paradise". And what does Jesus think about the intrusion.

I have also found no white people in a Buddha's paradise in the past.

Millions of NewAgers would be severely disappointed if this was true. Could you please check again? Also, I don't pretend to be an expert in Eastern religions, but since when does Buddha have a paradise?

However, why is it that what I'm teaching today is also passed on to Westerners?

Given all the things above, it's a very good question. --ZooGuard (talk) 10:14, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: the Buddha's paradise thing - it's largely a development of Chinese Buddhism - see Pure Land Buddhism that sees normal Buddhist practice as too difficult for the average person. — Unsigned, by: ORavenhurst / talk^{Do You Believe That?} 15:51, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Re: I read the Chinese transcript. He said his practice will send whites to heaven and asians to buddhist heaven. Selling to Xenophobes. Yeah, he's selling his belief to anyone with a price discrimination. --Teslashark (talk) 18:29, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Material taken from Wikipedia

This edit in particular [3] contains material taken from Wikipedia without attribution, see [4]--Alpharius (talk) 16:27, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia content does not require attribution. Iroh (talk) 05:26, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Yes it does. ωεαşεζøίɗ^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 06:51, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Heads up on some changes

Making a few changes, as explained here:

• Change 'cult' classification, because independent scholars pretty much universally reject the label as a rhetorical propaganda tool of the Chinese government. It's also way too easily for people unschooled in the sociological implications of the term to understand it in proper context.

• Removing this Aum Shinrikyo nonsense. There is absolutely no decent, reliable source that has ever made this equation; instead, serious scholars and journalists dismiss it as part of the Chinese government's campaign of misinformation. We're not here to be propagandize for the Chinese government.

• Falun Gong does not advocate against same-sex marriage; it does not involve itself in legislative or social debates of that nature, or try to impose its moral views on others.

• "Despite being general troublemakers...?" — I get that some people like to write facetiously, but seriously, what is this supposed to mean? Who are they bothering by meditating in parks and sitting quietly in front of Chinese consulates?

^{— Unsigned, by: Iroh / talk / contribs} 06:26, 3 May 2013‎

No. We're not here to call cults "spiritual practices." Cult is as cult does. Hipocrite (talk) 12:02, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

I am surprised that the Time interview never make it to the article.

This gem? [[User:K61824|]][[User_talk:K61824|]] 01:42, 18 June 2014 (UTC) A little bit hard to make an analysis out of it, but a really good laugh!--Teslashark (talk) 03:15, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

How do we get Falun Gong up to silver?

I think with close to fifty references. There's also the half a dozen points absent from Wikipedia, like the mixed race children needing the founders direct intervention to go to heaven, and gay people being described as demons. Or their views on the Oklo reactor and evolution. Amateur Encyclopedist (talk) 15:20, 9 July 2014 (UTC)

Ten greates evils in the world according to Li Hongzhi

• 世界十惡

• 人無善念　人人為敵(hostility)
• 破壞傳統　文化頹廢 (abandonment of traditions)
• 同性慾亂　心暗魔變 (homosexuality)
• 興賭興毒　隨心所欲 (gambling and drug abuse)
• 開放性亂　導向邪惡 (sex liberation)
• 黑幫亂黨　政匪一家 (gang influence on ruling body)
• 自主亂民　逆天叛道 (democracy, because it goes against the will of heaven)
• 迷信科學　變異人類 (science, apparently it leads to mutations)
• 吹崇暴力　好勇鬥狠 (violence)
• 宗教邪變　錢客政客 (money influence on religion)
• (07/07/1998)

http://gb.falundafa.org/chigb/hongyin.htm#68

The irony, it kills.

--Teslashark (talk) 11:37, 20 August 2014 (UTC)