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Canadian Professor of Philosophy criticizes Falun Gong again

2011-03-11 Author:By Udo Schuklenk

Professor Udo Schuklenk is a professor of philosophy at Queen's, and has recently been offered the Ontario Research Chair in Bioethics.

In August 2010, he posted an article Falun Gong Harmless Exercise Fanatics in his blog and said, "I agree with the authorities verdict that this is a dangerous cult. The cult is clearly racist and homophobic, not to forget outright crazy."

After that, he received a letter from a self-declared Falun Gong practitioner. The practitioner claimed himself "a Falun gong practitioner for 15 years",  "has seen countless silver lights flying and dancing all over the sky that appear to be Falun", and "Master's hint helped me to avoid a severe train accident." The practitioner asked professor Udo Schuklenk to "practice together" "for human."

On November 24, 2010, professor Udo Schuklenk posted another article attaching with this letter, in which he said, "I think the bits about flying Faluns are pretty funny. My personal favourite though, changing gays, mixed-race and computer engineers who were sent by extraterrestrial aliens to destroy earth. That's pretty cool as far as crazy stuff goes."

This article got some comments:

Saul Garcia Lopez commented that "Good script for a fiction movie", while Infidel753 said, "Bad enough to believe in nonsense. Worse to believe in such cliches, hackneyed nonsense." Another anonymous person said that "I wouldn't even call that religious - it's just plain foolishness."

However, a Falun Gong member Balance who also self-declared an American citizen and a grad student at a prestigious U.S. school argued for Falun Gong group. He said, "The 'compassion' and 'tolerance' aspects of the practice are universally held to prohibit any form of violence, or indeed any intentional harm to another living being, even emotional", so he asked Professor Udo Schuklenk "to take a balanced view".

Professor Udo Schuklenk replied Balance on the same day that, "You won't be surprised that I disagree with you." He thought "This Master bloke invented the cult and its ideology. Accordingly his views are held in very high regard. Unsurprisingly his no-harm teachings have not stopped him from watching his followers burning themselves in protests (non-violent, no doubt) to make their point. Interesting. I take it you don't mean to say that your guru will pass his skills on to whoever will take over the business from him? Certainly not while he can continue being guru. That's really not how gurus function."

About the "balanced view", professor Udo said, "Ask yourself, might it be a tad bit implausible to waffle on about tolerance and non-violence while your ideology espouses racist views? You don't mean to cause emotional hurt? Well, how about repudiating such harmful teachings? Not gonna happen, I know. We know the patterns from Catholicism and its homophobic agenda. 'Love the sinner'. Nonsense."

"There is plenty of evidence that Falun Gong followers omit to get health care believing their adherence to Faun Gong will sort it for them. No harm? Really?'

"What I think is that you'd consider doing those exercises (or any other for that matter), do your meditation and be tolerant and compassionate without supporting this cult.

"I'm always puzzled how otherwise bright folks manage to switch off their critical thinking skills the moment it comes to guru stuff. "

(Blogspot.com, November 24, 2010)

 

Original text from: http://ethxblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/conversing-with-falun-gong.html

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