anvi
anvikshiki
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Posts: 4,400
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« on: July 26, 2016, 06:27:40 PM » |
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Hmm...
As I understand Theravāda, the scriptures reject the notion that there was any eternal being that created the universe, but those same scriptures and practice acknowledged the existence of many kinds of spirits and demonic figures in the six loka-s (realms), including our own.
Confucian thinkers of many centuries are all over the map on the notion of "divine" beings. Many early and late Confucians acknowledge the person-like nature of tian and the persistent existence of dead ancestors, but at least one major early thinker and a number of medieval ones use such vocabulary only to talk about natural "patterns" that imbue material forms. So, there is no one view.
As far as Daoism is concerned, even the Dao De Jing makes mention in a number of places of natural spirits and their potencies. Daoists as early as the early Han attested to a whole panoply of spirits, and Laozi himself was one of them.
So, it's hard to call any of these traditions "atheist" in any blanket sense, as far as I know.
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