[按]  美国匹兹堡大学校报2006年5月24日刊登了一篇揭批“法轮功”的文章，文章称“法轮功”为“疯狂异教”，李洪志的歪理邪说为“荒谬理论”。

2006年5月24日

正文：

　　你会不会支持一个宣传外星生物入侵地球，拒绝所有现代科学和医疗，并自夸能够救赎所有人类的异教？我猜大多数人都会选择否定的回答。但是在很多西方世界（特别是美国），这些年来大家都一直在支持这么一个异教。我不是在指科学论派。

　　我所指的异教是法轮功，近年来由于中国恐怖的人权记录一再被提起，法轮功受到了公众广泛的关注。近来，法轮功新闻部门的工作成果很令人惊讶，他们向国际社会宣扬他们自己，甚至取代流亡藏人成为中国受迫害最严重的人。

　　在大多数时间里，西方媒体都响应法轮功的做法，并乐于向他们提供他们所需的关注，我必须得说，现在媒体的关注点已经远离了以前关注的中国问题：中国社会巨大的贫富差距问题或台海争端。

　　就我个人而言，我既不支持中国对法轮功采取的迫害政策，也不是说法轮功没有权利发出自己的声音。但是我认为西方媒体对于法轮功的关注程度大大的超过了对中国其他问题的关注。也许有一天中国的运动会导致中国政权交替，但是我不希望这是一个疯狂异教，比如法轮功的功劳。

　　现在法轮功站在了西方媒体的面前，这是自天安门事件后，中国最有组织性的一次反抗中国政府统治的事件。根据“我对手的敌人就是我的朋友”的逻辑，很多西方人都认为法轮功一定有什么优秀的、很棒的地方值得挖掘。此外，法轮功之所以吸引西方人的原因，还可能是对于很多人来说，法轮功为他们提供了关于中国宗教的新视野。

　　从实质上来看，法轮功就是中国版的科学论派，当你查阅法轮功创始人李洪志的学说和著作的时候，你就会发现。

　　李洪志作为法轮功的创始人，他的理论是地球受到外星生物的入侵，外星人对人类进行克隆，并逐步取代人类。根据李洪志的学说，我们的所有现代文化和技术都受到外星人的思想控制，外星人支配我们只是时间的问题，因为他们嫉妒人类拥有宇宙中最完美的身体。

　　你甚至都不需要注意中国政府的反法轮功宣传，李洪志的这些荒谬的理论在他的著作中和他接受国际媒体的采访时就可以发现。李洪志关于外星人侵略的理论来自于1999年他接受《时代周刊·亚洲版》的采访。这篇文章还可以在《时代周刊·亚洲版》的网站上看到，如果你感兴趣的话，我建议你去看一看，这只是李洪志荒谬理论中的一小部分。

　　李洪志还在法轮功异教中扮演着类似于上帝的角色，他主张预知，和转移不可见的灾难，这些灾难在世界末日战争中威胁着人类世界的安全。这可以从法轮大法（法轮大法是李洪志核心信仰体系的名字）的经文《转法轮》看出，《转法轮》是法轮功的主要经文，这本经文读起来就像是一本宣扬世界末日的小册子，你可以在福布斯大街（Forbes Avenue）上一名声音嘶哑的街头预言者那里了解到：“师父（李洪志）弘扬大法10年，改变了人类社会的灾难预言。历史上预言的彗星灾难不会再发生，第三次世界大战得到了避免，1999年9星连成十字导致世界末日的危机不会再出现……这是多么奇妙，真的很神奇！”

　　在李洪志漫无边际的理论中，法轮功发展成为一个荒唐的异教信仰，而不是简单的太极吐纳练习体系。在四周到处都环绕着法轮功宣传的环境中，如果不脱离其在主流媒体上的宣传，以批判的观点审视法轮功自己的教条的话，就很难得到一个真实的印象。

Falun Gong not so innocent

By: Konrad Klinkner

Would you support a cult that preached imminent extraterrestrial alien invasions, rejection of all modern science and medicine, heavens separated by race and boasted a leader who claimed to have exclusive knowledge of how to save us all? I would guess that most people would probably not, but that's what much of the Western world --- and America in particular --- has been doing for some years now. And no, I'm not talking about Scientology.

The cult in question is the Falun Gong, which over the past several years has become a focus of public attention whenever the subject of China's grisly human rights record is brought up. The Falun Gong's PR department has done an amazing job over the past several years toward publicizing themselves internationally, even giving the Tibetans a run for the title of China's Most Oppressed People.

The Western press, for the most part, laps this all up and is happy to give the Falun Gong the attention it wants, and in doing so they are taking attention away from --- I'd argue --- greater concerns regarding China, such as its huge rich-poor gap or the whole wretched Taiwan controversy.

Having said that, I should also make clear that I'm not supporting China's draconian treatment of the Falun Gong, nor am I saying the Falun Gong doesn't have a right to voice itself. But I do think the media attention given in the West to the Falun Gong is overblown in comparison to other issues concerning China covered (or not covered) by the Western press, and that the popular perception of the group is candied and misinformed. Of all the movements in China that could someday hypothetically supplant the current regime, I hope it won't be a loopy cult like the Falun Gong.

What has made the Falun Gong stand out in the first place to the Western press is, of course, that it's been among the most visible organized movements in China to oppose the Chinese government since Tiananmen Square. Owing to some subconscious "my-rival's rival is my friend" logic, many Westerners assume that there must be something cool about the Falun Gong since it had the balls to stand up to China's bigwigs. With its quasi-Daoist, traditionalist aesthetics and philosophies, the Falun Gong perhaps also draws foreign appeal because it represents to the general Western public some neo-Orientalist vision of a benign, religious China.

Beneath that surface, the Falun Gong is really more like the Chinese counterpart to Scientology, and it has all the classic makings of a cult. The Scientology parallel comes out most strikingly when you look up the quotes and writings of the Falun Gong's leader, Li Hongzhi.

For starters, Master Li persistently claims that the Earth is under attack from extraterrestrial aliens who are getting ready to clone and supplant the human race even as we speak. All of modern culture and technology, according to Li, is the product of alien mind control, and it's only a matter of time before the aliens possess us all because they envy humans for having the most perfect bodies in the universe.

You don't even need to look to the Chinese government's anti-Falun Gong propaganda to find these snippets of Li's cockamamie insights. It's all there in his writings and in his interviews with the international press. The information above on Li's alien-invasion theories comes right from an interview he had with a correspondent from Time-Asia in 1999. The article is still on Time-Asia's Web site, and --- if this interests you at all --- I encourage you to look it up; I'm really only giving small glimpses here of the wacky stuff that comes out of Li Hongzhi's mouth.

Master Li also assumes the archetypal cult leader role of the great omniscient messiah, claiming the sole power to foresee and avert the many unseen disasters that threaten to have the world teetering on the brink of Armageddon. A sampling from the Falun Dafa's (Falun Dafa is the name of Li Hongzhi's core belief system) online copy of the Zhuan Falun --- arguably the Falun Gong's key scripture --- reads like a doomsday pamphlet you might get from a cracked street prophet on Forbes Avenue: "Master [Li] has spread Dafa for ten years. Even in the human world, predestinations have changed. The comet catastrophe predestined in history is no more, the third world war has been averted, and the peril in 1999 from the cycle of formation-stasis-degeneration-destruction of Heaven and Earth will never recur ... How wonderful. Wonderful. Truly Wonderful!"

After such glances at its leadership's own ramblings, the Falun Gong comes off more as a dingbat cult rather than a simple system of Tai-Chi-esque breathing exercises. Given the propaganda going both ways that surrounds this cult, it gets very difficult to get a realistic picture of them without a critical look at the Falun Gong's own dogma beyond what their PR usually presents in the mainstream press. In scenarios like this, having "both sides of the story" isn't always enough --- instead, what neither side cares to make into a story can be what counts.

(The Pitto News, May 24, 2006)