It Is Not Science, It Is Sheer Superstition
---- Criticism of "It Is Not Superstition, It Is Profound Science"


By Wang Yusheng, a research fellow with the Institute of the History of Natural Sciences of the Academy of Sciences

Recently, a Chinese newspaper based in the United States opened a column called "Window on Dafa," and published in the column an article titled "It Is Not Superstition, It is Profound Science" signed by "some 'Falun Gong' practitioners at the Chinese Academy of Sciences." Its subtitle was "Our personal experience as scientific researchers in practicing 'Falun Gong'." The article also listed a dozen references to make itself more like a "scientific essay." But there are obvious mistakes, such as "jumping over 20 quantity grades from 10-14 cm to 106 cm" and "diseases curing themselves without medical treatment," and its listed references of God's Fingerprints and Trial of Darwin give rise to a feeling that we were back to the medieval Dark Age in Europe, when Galileo was tried by the Inquisition. This article simply does not read like one written by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is obvious that it usurps the name to concoct a "scientific" basis for the heretical "Falun Gong" cult. However, science and heretical cults are irreconcilable. Science adheres to materialism and atheism, and pursues objective truth to push forward the progress of human civilization, while "Falun Gong" advocates idealism and theism, and spreads false reasoning to confuse and poison people's minds and jeopardize social stability. That newspaper's action of opening the "Window on Dafa" column to give voice to a heretical cult is simply dishonorable and inglorious.

In recent years, some extreme, fanatical and heretical organizations have shown up all over the world, and brought about a number of tragedies that have stunned the world. Their perverse acts are held in abhorrence by the international community. It is a common call and a necessary action of the world community to crack down on and abolish heretical cults to safeguard social stability and world peace. Just two days before the publication of the article mentioned above, the massacre of about a thousand of his followers by the founder of a cult known as the "Movement for the Restoration of God's Ten Commandments" in Uganda was exposed, and the world once again realized how abominable a heretical cult is! Now, facing the 1,000-odd bodies in Uganda, the fact that the cult founder fled with money and the wanted notice that the Ugandan government has issued worldwide, everyone with a conscience, whether Chinese or not, will support the Chinese government in its efforts to unveil and suppress the evil cult of "Falun Gong" in accordance with the law.

The article tries to prove the so-called "profundity" of "Falun Gong" from the perspectives of prehistoric civilization, the origin of mankind, "other" spaces, materialization of the energy attained through practicing "Falun Gong," different ways to develop science and even with stories more fantastic than science fiction. After analyzing these claims, we say that "Falun Gong" is sheer superstition (strictly speaking, "Falun Gong" is not a simple issue of superstition but an ill-intentioned cult to bully people). And do we wrong them by saying so? Let's look at it from the following aspects:

First, is there anywhere on earth a so-called "other space?"

Li Hongzhi, founder of "Falun Gong," says that in the outer space of the first universe we live in are second and third universes: that Li himself stands at the highest point while all other humans are trash which has fallen onto the earth from other universes: and that the earth will explode from time to time. Li Hongzhi repeatedly talks about the universe, yet in fact he doesn't know a thing about it either in a physical or in a philosophical sense. The article talks a lot about the existence of "other space" but at the same time fails to provide any evidence. Since the time of Galileo, human beings have realized that the earth is a planet revolving round the sun in the solar system. The sun itself revolves round the Galaxy, with each cycle lasting 200 million years, while the Galaxy is only a common member of millions of galaxies that break up and reestablish the universe rapidly. Li Hongzhi, on whom the article lavishes praise, claims that he himself controls the whole universe, which completely denies all the achievements in the field of astronomy since Copernicus, and brings people's outlook on universe back to the dark medieval age.

According to Newton's law of universal gravitation, to sustain an object thrown into mid-air speed is needed: the speed of a man-made satellite that revolves round the earth should reach at least 7.9 km per second (the first universal speed); the speed of a rocket to the moon or a space shuttle to Mars should reach at least 11.2 km per second (the third universal speed). If intelligent life exists on other planets outside the solar system and if it wants to visit earth, it must have the same or more advanced science and technologies than ours to break away from the gravitation of its planet. Otherwise, no matter how good it performs in meditation, it is impossible to "flee" its planet and come to our earth.

Modern science proves that life on the earth and birth of mankind were natural outcomes when the universe had developed to a certain stage. A great amount of evidence shows that about 15 billion years ago, the universe was in a state of high temperature and high density. It was impossible for life, even the basic molecules and atoms that shape life, to exist then. Later, following the expansion and cooling of the universe, light elements like helium and hydrogen appeared, and then stars were born. Following the birth of stars, particles of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and iron, the necessary elements of life, took shape. Species of different shapes appeared, and finally intelligent life -- human beings endowed with the ability to understand the universe -- gradually evolved. Although humanity hopes to find life similar to its own on other planets in the universe, no reliable information about life outside the earth has been found yet. But the development of space science and the invention of rockets and space shuttles provide better means for human beings to observe outer space and explore the universe. In the field regarded by theists as controlled by "God" only, human beings have left their footprints.

As we all know, everything goes through three stages of birth, development and death, but it takes an extremely long time, about several hundred million years, for a star to go through these stages. Li Hongzhi claims that he can postpone the explosion of the earth for 30 years. This is simply the raving of a lunatic. It is extremely farfetched for the article to use scientific terms like "dark matter" to "Falun Gong." Astronomy is a serious science. Only after long period of observation with advanced apparatus and strict analysis of first-hand materials can a tentative conclusion be made, but never an absolute statement. Therefore, all ideas not based on scientific research are unreliable, and all viewpoints not tested by practice are unbelievable. The article mentions time and again the theory of the so-called "multiple spaces" Li Hongzhi advocates, yet this proposition cannot stand the test of science at all.