Rationale 2: For Those on the Fence

The “Consumer Reports” Approach to Belief For those seeking a faith, we can evaluate religions using a pragmatic, consumer-style review: rating them based on which systems caused the least historical harm and yielded the best record for the long-term well-being of their believers over the millennia.

Knowledgeable consumers rely on reviews and comparative data before buying a product, subscribing to a service, or joining an organization. Naturally, you do not want to align yourself with a religion that possesses a poor historical track record of protecting its adherents.

Unfortunately, looking back at the long history of traditional faiths, the “Big Three” monotheistic religions show an incredibly poor record regarding violence committed on behalf of—and suffered as a consequence of—their doctrines. This dogmatic slaughter continues to this day. The historical shift toward monotheism was actually a massive step backward for human tolerance, breeding the most fanatical behaviors in history. Conversely, polytheism—which naturally accepts multiple deities—rarely led to such virulent, religiously justified violence.

Fortunately, there is a major belief system that does not subscribe to any anthropomorphic, personified deity. In this framework, only the forces of nature (such as Feng Shui) sit above the power of individual human spirits. This pragmatic system derives directly from the teachings of Confucius over 2,000 years ago. Confucius taught generations how to live a harmonious, civil life rooted in deep respect for elders and ancestors. This philosophy forms the coherent foundation of the ancestral worship practiced by the vast majority of Chinese people today.

Historically, this ancestral belief system boasts the best record of structural tolerance and the fewest casualties resulting from religious dogma. While there is a severe lack of religious freedom in modern China, that oppression is entirely the fault of a totalitarian communist government rooted in the theories of Karl Marx; it has absolutely nothing to do with traditional ancestral worship.

Because the historical population of China did not adhere to a single anthropomorphic deity, they were remarkably tolerant of religious immigrants and foreign conquerors. Over the ages, Jews, Tartars, and Manchus were all peacefully assimilated into the general population. While the present-day Uyghurs and Tibetans living far from central China did not historically assimilate—and are now suffering under the rapid, forced assimilation of current authoritarian Communist rulers—the historical baseline remains one of tolerance.

In conclusion, if you measure the “best” belief system by empirical survival—evaluating which historical system protected its adherents well enough to yield the highest baseline population before the advent of modern birth control—the answer points directly to the Han Chinese, who predominantly practice ancestral worship.