Ladies and gentlemen, uh, we've just lost the picture, but what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has apparently been taken over, 'conquered' if you will, by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Earthmen or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
Falun Gong is just completely bullshiz, plain and simple. I tend to believed the founder is mental retarted after reading the interview with TIME, I don't know why people are following his shiz, are they that dumb????
Yeah, that dude's gotta be crazy. But like others have said, alot of the people practice it kinda like Tai Chi. My father-in-law is like that. At least I've never heard him spout any of these cultish things to me. But he does do the health practices that they teach.
I wouldn't belong to a cult that would have me as a member. (just trying to be consistent) Keep D&D Civil.
Falun Gong certainly has many cultish aspects, outlandish beliefs, and many of the Falun Gong followers I've met seem cultish, wild eyed devotion and lack of critical thinking. That said the success of Falun Gong is due to Li Hongzhi's packaging of traditional Qi Gong and Buddhist beliefs into simple practices and messages that are easy for people to do and follow along with mass communication. Not much unlike how someone like Joel Osteen has packaged a Christian message into something that is relatively simple with wide appeal. The real underlying issue aroudn Falun Gong is whether they are a threat to the PRC, and judging by the tone of posters here, to US society also. From what little I know of them they seem overall harmless and about on the level of Scientologists, maybe a little crackpot, but not a big problem. The PRC sees them as part of a long line of religious / political groups that caused have arisen in times of crisis in China to challenge the government. In some ways they are but at the sametime the PRC government's paranoia towards them has also helped to strengthen their appeal by them martyr status. Another problem that I see with the widespread appeal of Falun Gong in the PRC is that they are a symptom of the PRC's persecution and attempt to control religion that led to a lack of spiritual depth among Chinese. The generation that came of age following the revolution were brought up with a Marxist viewpoint while the generation after that has been brought up with a capitalistic viewpoint focussed on gaining material wealth. Spirituality in China has been dealt serious blows by the Cultural Revolution and then by the ideal that "to get rich is to be glorious." This has left many Chinese spiritually shallow and more susceptable to something like Falun Gong than more mature or traditional spiritual practices.
