MCLC: Putin wins Confucius Peace Prize (5,6,7)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: lucas klein <LRKlein at cityu.edu.hk>
Subject: Putin wins Confucius Peace Prize (5)
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In response to Bill Goldman's posting:

I'm an atheist, which I define as the active belief in the absence of any
god or deity. I'm not interested in being told that my beliefs are
fundamentally immoral or unconscionable, just as I suspect you don't like
being told that your beliefs are fundamentally immoral or
unconscionable--particularly when based on specious circumstantial evidence
along the lines of immoral or unconscionable acts being committed by people
who share some of your beliefs. There is, no doubt, a time and place to
debate the morality of the existence of gods and spirits, and to risk
offending each other as well as any observers there may be, but I bet most
subscribers to the MCLC list do not think that this is that place.

If Bill had argued that China deserves freedom of religion, I
wouldn't object. But by condemning those unlike him, he shows an
intolerance that is similar in kind to that of the CCP itself. In my mind,
it makes him less credible as a judge of morality.


Lucas

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From: john sexton <cloudtrapezer at hotmail.com>
Subject: Putin wins Confucius Peace Prize (6)

I am sorry but I don't follow Bill Goldman's logic. How does noting that
the Confucius Prize Committee relocated to Hong Kong imply that Hong Kong
is "more anti-dissident" than the mainland? Surely it's obvious that all
shades of opinion - nationalist and maoist ultras as well as liberals -
enjoy more freedom in Hong Kong than on the mainland. The idea that I
suggested Hong Kong is more repressive than the mainland is simply absurd.

And it is surely clear that the disowning of the prize by the Ministry of
Culture (as reported by the Guardian) undermines the view that the prize
was awarded to Putin by what Goldman calls the "CPC atheist tyranny"?

On the broader question raised by Goldman - does religion restrain people
from dreadful acts? Possibly, but we should also remember the 30 Years
War, and more recently the Sunni-Shia civil war in Iraq that followed the
US-led invasion, the crushing of the Tamil separatists by the Buddhist
government of Sri Lanka - wholeheartedly backed by China by the way, and
so on. The world is complicated.

Finally - in case it is'nt self-evident, I do not endorse the award of any
sort of peace prize to the butcher of Grozny. The logic of the tinpot
Confucius committee was in any case absurd since, far from opposing NATO's
attack on Libya, Russia - as well as China - facilitated it by failing to
use their veto in the Security Council.

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From: sean macdonald <smacdon2005 at gmail.com>
Subject: Putin wins Confucius Peace Prize (7)

Indeed, I found myself shaking my head over this award at first. These
postings offer an opportunity to view the award from different
perspectives.

Using a euphemism like "atheist" for any political system smacks too much
of cold war rhetorical exaggeration. With regard to the PRC, you risk
ignoring the multiplicities of popular religious belief in Chinese
culture(s) that have withstood anti-superstition campaigns that go back
well before the founding of the PRC, through the Republican period to the
late Qing period  (Duara has written about this). And how about those
"bureaucratic" pantheons of gods and bodhisattvas? Dean and Zheng's Ritual
Alliances of the Putian Plain (2010) is an eye opener in the context of
contemporary religious studies.

And I wonder, couldn't the term "satirist" (or fengci 讽刺) be used to
describe the committee of an award that purposely sets itself up in
opposition to another award, so that award B is commenting upon award A by
choosing an alternative. I personally find it hard to hold up any
particular nation, or leader, as a moral paradigm these days. There's just
too much going on behind the scenes.

Anyways, it's certainly worth a posting or two.

All the best,

Sean