Talk:Teachings of Falun Gong

Copyright of Li Hongzhi’s teachings

Notice from Falun Dafa Association en.minghui.org Retrieved 4 Feb 2015

Please help to inform practitioners around the world: Please remove Master Li’s teachings posted to non-Falun Dafa websites immediately; in other words, besides the Dafa websites Falundafa.org and Minghui.org, all other online media, websites and web pages owned by individuals, groups, or institutions are not permitted to publish or re-post Master Li Hongzhi’s teachings, including the printed and audio-visual materials.Aaabbb11 (talk) 11:32, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

@Aaabbb11: "Fair use" does allow for Wikipedia to have limited quotations of copyrighted material. Wikipedia:Non-free_content#Text explains this. This article can and should continue to include brief quotes of any copyrighted Falun Gong materials so long as they are in compliance with United States fair use provisions. WhisperToMe (talk) 18:29, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@Aaabbb11: Also please note that copyright is not a protection of ideas. So "teachings" cannot be copyrighted, unless by "teachings" you are referring to the exact form of the expression of the teachings. Copyright can protect the way an idea is expressed, but not the idea itself. In addition to "fair use" (e.g., brief quotations), summarizing or describing a teaching or other idea using substantially different wording does not require permission. —⁠ ⁠BarrelProof (talk) 00:47, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Weight for alien and/or science views stuff?

I'd like to account for the number of pages dealing with aliens in both Penny and Chang + others.

• Penny, Benjamin. The Religion of Falun Gong. University of Chicago Press, March 1, 2012. ISBN 0226655024, 9780226655024.

• p. 130 - Not in preview - but since alien stuff seems to continue onto p. 131, presumably it seems to begin there.
• p. 131: Elaborates about Li Hongzhi's alien beliefs as of 1999. Mentions the 1999 interview.
• p. 132: Elaborates about Li Hongzhi's alien beliefs and how they changed from 1995 to 1999. Penny states that X-Files aired in the China region by 1995 and this may have influenced Li Hongzhi's beliefs.
• p. 133 - Not in preview - but since alien stuff seems to continue onto p. 133, presumably it seems to end there.

Index p. 261: "UFOs, 126, 130–33, 148" (p. 148 does not bring up the alien belief)

While Penny did say on p. 124 "Li Hongzhi's understanding of the cosmos is central to his teachings,[...]" - that doesn't necessarily mean aliens...

• Chang, Maria Hsia. Falun Gong: The End of Days. Yale University Press, October 1, 2008. ISBN 0300133170, 9780300133172. p. 71.

• p. 61 - One sentence says "To this amalgam are added some modern touches: just as the ideology of the Taiping rebels was modernized by a banal Christianity, the beliefs of Falun Gong are given a contemporary veneer via references to science and UFOs."
• p. 71 - Li Hongzhi does not believe in evolution, believes that human history is longer than depicted in mainstream science, that there had been multiple civilizations always destroyed by decadent culture
• p. 72 - More stuff about civilizations.
• p. 73 - Civilizations continued, begins discussion on his belief in "Space people" or "waixing ren" (aliens)
• p. 74 - Aliens continued, discusses 1999 interview. States alien did race mixing
• p. 75 - Discusses race mixing, states aliens were responsible. Alien section end?
• p. 96 - One sentence says "Admittedly, the beliefs of Falun Gong—concerning earth's previous civilizations, space aliens, multiple dimensions, reincarnation,"three flowers rotating above the head," and so forth—are esoteric and nothing short of extraordinary."
• Index p. 187. - "Space people or aliens. See UFOs."
• Index p. 188. - "UFOs, extraterrestrials, space aliens, 61, 70-72, 96."

• Farley, Helen. "Falun Gong: A Narrative of Pending Apocalyse, Shape-Shifting Aliens, and Relentless Persecution" (Chapter 13). In: Lewis, James R. and Jesper Aa. Petersen (editors). Controversial New Religions, Second edition. Oxford University Press, July 16, 2014. ISBN 0199394369, 9780199394364. (the chapter title is stated in the table of contents)

• Section on alien theology begins on Google Books PT297 - Starts with: "Perhaps the most striking and controversial characteristic of Falun Gong belief is the complex theology around aliens and masters." - discusses aliens using science to control people
  • PT298 - elaborates on aliens replacing people with clones and using serial numbers
  • PT299 - alien stuff ends

• Farley, Helen. "Falun Gong and Science: Origins, Pseudoscience, and China's Scientific Establishment" (Chapter 5). In: Lewis, James R. and Olav Hammer (editors). Handbook of Religion and the Authority of Science. BRILL, November 19, 2010. Start p. 141.

p. 157: Talks about how he believes aliens control people with science

In addition p. 158 talks about how it uses language of science to promote its beliefs.

WhisperToMe (talk) 15:37, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: It indeed seems like a lot of scholars covered these topics.

But as to how these topics are weighted in Falun Gong's own teachings, it seems that these topics have very rare appearances in the FG literature as well as FG adherents' sharings on their websites. You can do a quick catalog search on their teachings' website and on their sharings' website, and I'm quite sure that you will get very few "aliens" mentions but plenty of mentions on improving their own morals, since their fundamental principles are moral values.

And my presumption is quite well backed by David Ownby here in this interview at Rice University.

Ownby says:  "In my reading of what other people have said about Li Hongzhi [Falun Gong's teacher] they are very quick to single out strange remarks that he has made and to make fun of him … too often I feel that the journalists who have done this, or the scholars who have done this, have done this at the expense of careful analysis."

“Modern journalists...find all the discussion [in Falun Gong] about being good to be irrelevant because it’s boring. So they focus  on something else...But when you read Li Hongzhi’s writings, when you talk to Falun Gong practitioners, over and over and over again they come back to the notion of being good … there is a great pleasure in being able to devote oneself to being good.”

Also, based on my research of FG, I find that those topics are things that Li mentions occasionally mentions in the passing, but are taken out of context when we mention it in this wiki article, which leads to misrepresentations though, as this is not what FG is about.

In short, I think even though a lot of academic scholars wrote about these topics, but since this wikipedia page is about "Teachings of Falun Gong" and not "coverage of teachings of FG in academic research", so I think we shouldn't include such rarely mentioned topics here according to WP: UNDUE​​--Thomas Meng (talk) 17:46, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@Thomas Meng: this article should be about "coverage of teachings of FG in academic research" (and books, and newspaper articles). WP:WEIGHT states: "Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Wikipedia editors or the general public."

• WEIGHT is about what Wikipedia:Reliable sources (published books, academic journals, and newspaper articles) say about the subject. What the Falun Gong says about itself is not considered in weight as such materials are not independent (of the subject) sources (as per the statement "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. ").

If Ownby's point of view is shared by most Reliable sources, the reliable sources will have their coverage accordingly. If Ownby's point of view is a minority viewpoint, it should be stated as such, with most coverage reflecting what the reliable sources say.

From WP:RS: ":Paraphrased from Jimbo Wales' September 2003 post on the WikiEN-l mailing list:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article."

WhisperToMe (talk) 18:17, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

@WhisperToMe: Okay, thanks for pointing that out. I will do more research on how Ownby's view is shared among scholars along with the weight of Ownby's view (his reputation/expertise on such a topic).--Thomas Meng (talk) 19:28, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

@Thomas Meng: You're welcome! An important thing to do is a literature review: consider the entire body of work written on a subject. It can be somewhat daunting though one of the authors of the FLG books stated that relatively little is/was written about the FLG beliefs. Ownby's reputation/credentials are important, and so are the prevalence of Ownby's views compared to the views of everyone else who has written about the FLG beliefs.

• Quote from the Penny book's webpage: "But while much has been written on Falun Gong’s relation to political issues, no one has analyzed in depth what its practitioners actually believe and do." (I would "translate" that into meaning that there are relatively fewer independent reliable sources about the Falun Gong beliefs compared to those about the politics surrounding the movement)

WhisperToMe (talk) 19:31, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Messy

This is not a good article. 'Influences' contains too many vague quotes from Li which explain nothing. The article seems to quote David Ownby an awful lot. He may have useful insight, but it comes across as being used more like propaganda here. It’s very had to see what some of the quotations tell you about influences; it all just reads more like spruiking the religion or refuting CCP propaganda. E.g. what does…

He [Stephen Chan] concludes that Falun Gong is banned not because of the doctrines, but simply because Falun Gong is outside of the communist apparatus.

…tell you about the Buddhist/Daoist influences on Falun Gong? Precisely nothing! —⚜ Moilleadóir ☎ 03:57, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

I agree. The descriptions are vague. In my opinion, when "truthfulness-compassion-forbearance" is mentioned, it is not explained. We should add an explanation somewhere if there's a reliable source for that, because their meaning is a bit different from the literal one and their role is overstated like in Falun Gong ada. AAAAA143222 (talk) 02:22, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Ownby is a propagandist. He just constantly whitewashes what Li actually teaches and is just a source of puffery of how great LI is, and not telling the truth. Li couldn't be more anti-modern science when he is constantly scaremongering that all science was created by evil aliens and that he is literally the only one to save others. Yet Ownby doesn't disclose that but just gaslights that Li is somehow above all scientists and not anti-science. He shouldn't be seen as reliable neutral source as his words contradict the facts and sound like propaganda to me. ArrowSake (talk) 00:54, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Don't assume any intention AAAAA143222 (talk) 02:20, 16 November 2023 (UTC)