China Has Highest Percentage of Atheists in the World, Gallup Survey Says

[MineralMan]

59. Chinese culture has long included Confucianism, which

can be seen as a theistic religion or simply a philosophy. It has been seen as both at one time or another, depending on who is seeing it. It's a complicated thing, with even the Chinese Communist party trying to deal with and incorporate that historical religion/philosophy. There are also many folk religions that have been part of the larger Chinese culture. China is not homogeneous in its cultural heritage by any means.

But, as you say, theism, as we think of it in Western civilization, has not really been a large part of Chinese history. East Asian religions, for the most part, are quite different from our Western equivalents.

It's very difficult for most people to understand the role of religion in the overall Chinese culture. That's because it's very dissimilar to what we understand as religion. If we see China as an atheistic culture, with some traditional analogs to religious practices and philosophy, we can get closer to an understanding, but it's still confusing.

In any case, Chinese society and ours are, and always have been, very different. Without being immersed in it from childhood, it's pretty difficult to sort it all out, I think. Do Chinese atheists have the same philosophy as I do? Nope. Atheism has no doctrine. It has no scripture. It has no common meaning, except the rejection of belief in supernatural entities such as deities. Beyond that, there is no consensus on what atheism is.

We make a huge mistake when we try to put all atheists in one philosophical basket. Atheism has no universal philosophy about anything but supernatural entities. We don't believe those exist. Everything else about atheism is an individual response, or a cultural imperative, as it is in China to some degree.