Li Shen is the example of a good and faithful servant of his master. He must be given credit for his perseverance, because it took him no less than six years to draft the new profession of atheism, which was supposed to be taught in all the higher educational establishments of the Middle Kingdom.
The Principles of Scientific Atheism is a timely 400,000-character manual to promote Comrade Xi Jinping’s instructions presented at the National Religious Affairs work conference a few weeks ago, in December 2021.
On this occasion, the Red Emperor wanted to be carried out, briskly, a work deepening the doctrine of Karl Marx on religion. The book wishes to hammer home his big idea, that Chinese culture is intrinsically atheistic.
Let’s return to our doctor of atheism: Li Shen was born in 1946. After obtaining his doctorate, he worked at the Institute of World Religions – a branch of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences – and was director of the Confucianism Research Bureau.
He then became a professor in the philosophy department of Shanghai Normal University, and vice-president of the Chinese Atheist Society.
He is also a member of the Academic Committee of the International Confucian Federation and in this capacity he promotes the theory, also supported by the CCP, that Confucianism is essentially a form of atheism. Which we could, in passing, also say about original Buddhism.
Li Shen’s book includes four sections that claim to “scientifically demonstrate” that God does not exist – which is nonsense as all the great philosophers of ancient Greece have shown, as well as all Christian philosophers – and emphasize “the harmful effect of religion.”
For good measure, there is also support for the idea that Karl Marx and the CCP have definitively established the principles of atheism contained in Chinese wisdom.
All of this is quite pointless and would make you smile, if “The Principles of Scientific Atheism” did not illustrate a new, worrying stage in the strategy of the Chinese regime: to move Chinese universities from the “neutral study” of religions, to much more aggressive active propaganda.
In their determined fight against religions, the red mandarins believe they hold a new weapon: a manual supposed to scientifically found atheism, which should eventually become the new “bible” for students. Proof, if it were needed, that the Chinese regime is taking a clearly anti-religious turn, likely to worry the Catholic minority who sees the noose tightening on them.