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Chapter 14

The reason I choose to read chapter 14 is I was born an atheist, my country has no religions, it's not because we have nothing to believe, we believe in History. It is interesting for me as an atheist to figure out the argumentation behind religions. I still remember one of the most famous writers and scholars from China called Qiuyu Yu said: "历史被拟人化为一个生命,能看到一切、裁判一切、奖惩一切。这个历史,就具有亚宗教的人格力量。不错,历史在中国,不是太追求真实,而是追求着一种裁判和被裁判的权力。
不管是帝王将相,还是侠客游士、文人骚客,他们在做每一件大事的时候,都觉得自己的脑袋后面有一枝巨大的史笔,会记述自己所做的一切。这枝史笔在一定程度上控制了历史,从正面来说,这枝史笔传达了一种有关人间正义的基本界限."

Translated by Yi: "History was personified in China, which sees everything, judges everything, rewards and punishes everything. This endowed the word history with the power of personality. History in China is not so much the pursuit of truth, but the pursuit of a judge and the right to be judged. Whether they are emperors and ministers, swordsmen and tourists, literati and poets, they always feel that there is a huge historical pen behind their head to describe what they have done. This historical pen controls history to a certain extent. On the positive side, this historical pen conveys a basic boundary of human justice."

The reason why I post the Chinese version is that I am terrible at translating, I believe if you are interested in this, you can look up other translation by more intelligent people than me.
I found this philosophy from China suit the seven question provided in our textbook. These seven questions, according to the textbook " constitute a fair summary of what has to be explained for a system of theology to be complete. Not all religious argumentation will cover all seven questions, and other questions may arise, but these seven reasonably define religious argumentation: (1) what the nature of God is? (2) What is the nature of human beings? (3) What is moral behavior, religious life? (4) What are sin, evil, and the meaning of suffering? (5) What is the human’s relationship to God? (6) What is the nature of salvation? And (7) what is the role of the church? (P.223)"  Each question can be explained by history, history is the god in China, the one that records everything everyone has done, and judge everything has done, then finally stay in people's mind when people trying to do something and alert people about right and wrong.   

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