Christianity and worldview, as well as the position of “God”
Personal masturbation and lust
For the first question, since I previously believed that the Big Bang theory was not very reliable, if God exists, then the position of my God must also change. I think God is a part of matter, self-existent and eternal. You criticize that the existence of God is subjective idealism for me, and I admit it because there is no experimental proof to show whether praying makes a difference in the outcome of something. But in a similar matter, does whether I pray affect my results? I feel it has a noticeable impact. For example, when I do something I am completely unsure about, I have no confidence if I don’t pray, but after praying I generally have a vague feeling of whether it will succeed. Maybe you will say this is due to subconscious inference from various things you see, but I believe this is the effect of God acting on me. Because I am not very devout, and I have many petty bourgeois vices, so perhaps you won’t believe what I say. There is a person, Ni Tuosheng, who is highly respected within the church I have contact with. He is Chinese, with a poor background, his family were officials of the Kuomintang. His writings do not focus much on national affairs. He wrote that after he devoted himself to preaching, although he didn’t work, he was always helped by believers when his money was just about to run out, believing this was evidence of God’s care for him. He lived simply and was imprisoned until his death after the founding of the country. My mother and others advocate agnosticism, that God is unknowable, but I want to say if God is unknowable, what am I supposed to do with him? Isn’t he just a symbol or sign? In my subjective world, God watches our every move, without obvious joy or anger. When someone prays, he shows his existence through what you think are coincidences or luck, but he cannot replace human subjective initiative. We still need to use Marxism to fight the exploiters. I want to retain the belief in God’s existence; he is also a knowable part. I believe science will eventually prove his existence and overthrow all writings that use his name to oppress and exploit people. Religion will indeed disappear, and God will be proven to exist. This is also the biggest principle within our church: acknowledging the existence of God. I think I can discard most other things because Mao, Marx, and Lenin have methods to prevent illegal activities—mobilizing the masses. If you insist that I say God does not exist, I feel uneasy. Because I challenged this many times as a child, and God always reminded me in various small ways. You can interpret this as coincidence, but I was very naive then. I believe that something truly believes as I do, and my thoughts about God have indeed influenced what you call luck.
Regarding masturbation, I average about once a week. My fantasies are never about people I have met in real life but are always about real people or characters I saw online. My masturbation vividly reflects the toxicity of capitalism because when I first learned to do it, there were many easily accessible porn sites online, and I masturbated frequently, up to ten times a day. Later in high school, I realized the harm of masturbation, but I couldn’t stop because I was too spiritually deprived. Everyone told me to score high, but I didn’t see the point of high scores. I wasn’t nihilistic because of bourgeois despair (at that time, I didn’t have such theoretical understanding). Looking back, I think it was because I felt education was detached from practice, that studying was meaningless, and I fell into the cycle of aiming for high scores, good jobs, marriage, and children. But I didn’t want to get married at that time. After the exams, my spirit was even more depleted; I masturbated once a day, then every two days when I couldn’t stand it. I usually don’t look at triggers like attractive women or sexual hints; I deliberately avoid them. But I have no one to play games with or talk to my parents, so I keep thinking about masturbation. In the last two weeks, I played Go with classmates, which was better. After starting school, I could talk and play games with classmates, so my frequency returned to once a week, but the profound sense of emptiness and disinterest in the future remained. I am still immersed in hedonism, so I can’t eliminate masturbation; instead, I indulge in rebellious late nights trying to numb myself because when I am more sober, I feel emptiness. Sometimes, even when I don’t want to masturbate, I do it out of nihilistic instant gratification, using pleasure as an excuse to avoid guilt. Also, I fell in love with Huangquan from Bengtie (symbolized by a black hole representing nihilism), because he is a nihilist, fitting my despair about nihilism I described earlier. Not because she is the most beautiful or closest to XP, and for a while, I could only masturbate to her. But her resources are too scarce, which makes me very uncomfortable. Now that I have found the great goal of communism, I feel better, but I still crave ideological debate with comrades. The contradiction with my dormmates who just play games and scroll Douyin continues. Plus, I can’t help but watch videos, mostly about the current state of the middle class and nostalgia for Mao’s era, which I comment on intensely, making it hard to post comments on Bilibili. This also reveals a corner of the white terror. It has also stimulated my rebellious psychology.
Regarding the question of whether God exists, you say that you believe God is material and that science should be used to prove God’s existence; however, you also say that the way God acts on you is through prayer and subjective ideas, isn’t that a contradiction? If you leave room for this idealist God by saying “science has not yet explained it, but will in the future,” this goes against the principles of dialectical materialism. The relationship between matter and spirit is not one of independent existence. Spirit is only subordinate to matter, merely a function of the human brain. If spiritual activities like prayer are elevated to a mysterious God, it is nothing more than saying that spirit can detach from the body, that it can be transmitted just by thinking without speaking or doing anything? You say that subconsciousness tells you that you are confident about something, but this is just a change in your own ideas, not beyond the limits of your personal thoughts. You say that some things succeed because of luck or God’s blessing, but without material conditions, can these things succeed? And all these material conditions can be explained by the movement of the material world, can’t they? If you choose to explain luck and coincidences with God merely because of narrow-mindedness, is that still materialism or Marxism?
So you think that God is an eternal, thoughtless, knowable matter, and you also admit that humans have subjective initiative. Based on what you said in your previous post that prayer to God cannot be “delusion,” it must have a certain possibility, so you believe that God cannot turn the impossible into possible; prayer is at best giving oneself a good luck buff (and it might not even be real, you just have a vague feeling). Don’t you feel uncomfortable? You are just establishing a false name “God” before “matter.” All the properties you attribute to God are inherent properties of matter, and your so-called “challenge” to God is essentially a challenge to the existence of matter. The failure of such a challenge is not a matter of “coincidental luck.” It is an inevitable failure. Clearly, you call “matter” “God,” even though it could be directly understood, you choose to take an extra step. This is both pointless and unnecessary.
Alright, I have thought about it. I believe in God, largely because I cannot control my life. My life within the education system is not something I master myself; I can only pray for God’s guidance. To make my mother happy, I will proactively discuss related issues with him, although we have never been in agreement. Even now that I understand dialectical materialism, I still cannot master life; I am still in the pain of being overwhelmed. I hope there is a God-like figure who always watches over me. My mindset reflects my status. Moreover, I pay the Tithes (纳十一税), hoping to get more money, but this is not God’s intention; it is a means by which religion exploits people’s greed. But I feel that it is still very difficult for me to overcome this mentality soon. I feel very distressed and conflicted.
Alright, I have thought about it. I believe in God. A large part of it is because I cannot control my life. My life within the education system is not in my own hands; I can only pray for God’s guidance. Also, to make my mother happy, I will proactively discuss related issues with him, although we have never reached an agreement. Even now, I understand dialectical materialism, but I still cannot master life, and I am still in the pain of being overwhelmed. I hope there is a God-like figure who always watches over me. My mentality reflects my status. Moreover, I pay the Tithes (tithing), hoping to get more money, which is not God’s intention at all, but a means for religion to exploit people through greed. But I feel that it is very difficult for me to overcome this mentality right now; I feel very distressed and conflicted. 111111
I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Internationale, which has a line that goes, “There is no savior, no fairy emperor, to create happiness for mankind, it all depends on us.” You have a ready example in your post: to you, praying to God for some coupons seems like a delusion, but such “delusions” can be realized through the labor achievements of human programmers, like “Hulu Xia.”
I think your understanding of dialectical materialism is superficial, mainly because the words “material” and “dialectical” are not prominent in your speech. Knowing a term alone doesn’t accomplish much; you need to understand it and apply it to guide your actions. Also, the phrase “master life” is a bit abstract—what level of mastery are you talking about? Even if the whole world only had you, with no exploitation, you still need to eat and live, which requires exchanging matter with nature—that is, labor. Nature will not spontaneously satisfy human needs. Do you see this as “futile toil”?
That’s the case; you are nostalgic for a parasitic life of exploitation.
Ideological remolding is a long-term process, and backward thoughts may recur. Feeling conflicted is normal; contradiction is the fundamental driving force of the development of things.
I don’t know much about the October 11 tax. Aren’t you a student? Where does your income come from that you pay this tax? The taxpayer should be the exploited party, so why do you hope to get more money?
My previous understanding of life was that as long as I had enough money and financial freedom, I wouldn’t have to sell my dignity, work, or constantly enjoy life. My mother said that even the money she gave me should be given as tithes, even though she had already contributed. I feel this is very unreasonable.
Religion is merely a tool used by the ruling class to govern the people; gods are just incarnations of the ruling class. “Revolting under the guidance of gods” is a method only used during peasant revolutions. Moreover, revolutionary peasants wear religious disguises; here, gods and gods are also representatives of revolutionary interests. Without an abstract “guiding role,” one cannot fall into religion just to deceive oneself and maintain narrow horizons.
Regarding your above point, due to my limited knowledge, I can only give a rough critique of your view.
First, the issue of your faith:
You believe that God is a part of matter, self-existent and eternal, but Marxism and natural science have already proven to us that there are no eternally unchanging concrete things; humans experience birth, aging, illness, and death, and trees grow and decay.
What you call prayer is actually just a psychological suggestion or spiritual self-encouragement and comfort you give yourself, but you add a nonexistent source to this self-encouragement and comfort — namely, the God you mentioned.
Additionally, regarding God, if you want to acknowledge His existence, you must prove His existence in reality and show specific things influenced by Him. Those so-called accidental events are actually just you imposing a suggestion on yourself. You might say it’s impossible not to encounter some misfortunes in a day; the development of history is tortuous, and human development is similarly tortuous.
Second, the issue of masturbation (and the underlying problem of spiritual emptiness):
I will not elaborate much on this, as many people with higher theoretical and practical levels have already responded on forums. You can look them up.
Your attitude towards Christianity is very obvious; it is merely pragmatic philosophy. What is useful to oneself is spiritual, which is also subjective idealism. Moreover, just because you cannot control your life does not mean you can only pray for God’s guidance, because clearly, what you want from so-called God’s guidance are all petty bourgeois personal gains, such as achievements in academics or directly obtaining more money. However, such petty bourgeois daydreams are impossible to realize, not because you are not devout enough, but because you lack a scientific worldview, namely the guidance of Marxist worldview. The petty bourgeoisie in capitalist society will inevitably go bankrupt and perish; there is no other way out but to follow the revolutionary path of Marxism.
Regarding your discussion about masturbation, I think you should learn about the current capitalist pornography materials. Ultimately, they are all oppressions of women. You should understand the current situation of Chinese women and how these pornographic materials corrupt people to further transform their thoughts. There are many related articles in the forum’s “Dawn” magazine. Also, I want to ask how you came into contact with the forum, and whether you read the first issue of the magazine “The Road to China’s Future Revolution,” which is a guiding document of the association.
I join various groups on Bilibili, and then someone in one of the groups introduced this website. I looked at the articles here and knew I was in the right place. I watched the first issue, but I didn’t remember it very well because I watched it late at night. I need to watch it again.
Well, I really hope to communicate with advanced comrades, but in my classes or dormitory, I am surrounded by playing games or watching videos. Typing and talking to you feels out of place. Even in a quieter place, I still feel anxious, always unable to resist watching videos or playing games. The contradiction between my desire for change in my thoughts and the lack of change in real life makes me feel very uncomfortable.