In their effort to “exert total control” over religion and to “sinicise” Catholic and Protestant Christianity, the authorities have “ordered the removal of crosses from churches [and] replaced images of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary with pictures of President Xi Jinping,” the report said.
The report concluded that “every facet of religious life for Buddhists, Catholics and Protestant Christians, Muslims, and Taoists” was facing pressure to incorporate CCP ideology, and religious elements considered contradictory to the state’s political agenda were being eradicated.
Managed to make religion more believable by replacing the made up with real people.
I mean if you really don’t think there was a Jesus that existed, was popular, and was executed by the Roman empire, then I think you may be the mistaken one.
Saying that he wasn’t the son of God and his mother wasn’t a virgin is a different story however
Without the super powers, none of the rest matters.
The was a Saint Nicholas, doesn’t mean there’s a Santa Claus.
Okay, but Mao is treated like a pseudo-godlike figure in China, similar to how Jesus was a guy but is treated like a god by Christians.
Sure, but I know Mao existed. Son of God Jesus of Nazareth™ didn’t exist. A Jesus that might have caused a ruckus back in the day is not the same thing as a born of a virgin demi-god.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/the-china-diaries/understanding-the-deification-of-chairman-mao/article7307455/
Except there’s no contemporaneous record of jesus either existing or being executed by the Romans, despite them keeping detailed records of people they did execute.
It’s a pretty high bar to expect bureaucratic details of people executed in a far flung part of the empire to survive 2000 years
That’d be true for the vast majority of figures from that time. Also I’d like to see evidence for your implied claim that apparently the Romans kept vast swathes of paperwork concerning executions and that the vast majority of it was preserved until this day.
I’m first in line to make fun of basically all religions (ones that would have you take things on faith, anyway) but those that want to should be left alone to practice how they want.