Earwicker wrote:
I suspect (though could be wrong which is why I was asking) a lot of people who would vehemently oppose the idea of religious faith would be quite open to the idea of Chi.
If so I'd like to know why?
the answer to this question can be used to point out a widespread misunderstanding of eastern thought on this thread: qi isnt tied to any religion. in fact, many things (like qi, or yin and yang) that americans perceive as "mystical" have been pursued by plenty of non-religous people in asia, the same way that there is a mutual fascination in the west between the fields of philosophy and science.
in east asia, there was ancestor worship for a while, that was religion.
then came the yi jing, which was not religion.
then came taoism and confucianism, which were not religion.
then came the religious morphing of taoism, "religious taoism," which was a religion but was worlds apart from the original taoist thought associated with lao tzu and chuang tzu.
then came buddhism, which was religion.
the big western misunderstanding is that the philosophies of qi and yin/yang, which emerge mostly from the non-religious schools of thought surrounding the yi jing, confucianism, and taoism (not religious taoism), are supposedly tied to religion on a very esoteric level. they are not. these practices, unlike ancestor worship and buddhism, are not religious. the yi jing was a system that was meant to decipher the nature of chance on a half-scientific level (i say half-scientific because in addition to the math involved in the chance/probability structure of the yi jing, there was also tons of narrative which gave people reason to use it for mystical semi-religious divination, but it was widely used for other purposes). the yi jing was not tied to any religion and was used by people in their day to day evaluation of decisions and chance occurrences and interpretation of their outcomes and what not. then there was taoism, which was really a bunch of philosophy and not religion, and was subsequently adapted as religious taoism which has little to do with original taoism (and scholars have long argued that religious taoism contradicts original taoist texts in many ways). at around the same time, there was confucianism, which was not religion.
so anyhow, taoist thought, confucian thought, and yi jing analysis, were all used in the formation of practices involving qi and yin/yang. so was moism, coming from mo zi, another non-religious philosopher. such practices were not religious by nature and even involved scientific endeavors. these people all had different opinions on the nature and behavior of qi. of course, scientific explanations can be offered, but examine this notion: east asian countries churn out thousands of highly proficient engineers a year, at rates that make the western scientific community seem stagnant; and yet, the interest in qi remains prevalent enough in east asia (including the scientific community) that, evidently, eastern scientists have had no problem reconciling their extensive scientific knowledge with their own understanding of qi. in fact, since so many in the east have differing opinions on qi, im sure they see science as a great opportunity to affirm what might be correct in their own understanding, and disprove what may be incorrect. and again, qi is not religious, so its not like "ok well its their religion, of course they would find a way to reconcile their understanding of qi with their scientific knowledge"... qi isnt considered a fresh new age controversy to "debate," the way westerners see it... theyve been having these "debates" for years! for instance, confucian thinkers and taoists have very different understandings of the nature and behavior of qi. for that matter, we should bring up acupuncture: some people in east asia really dont believe it works, some believe it works one way, some believe it definitely cant work that way and must work another way. hence the widely different ways that acupuncture is practiced (the easiest difference to point out is that between chinese and japanese acupuncture). such differences in beliefs can be accounted for by different understandings of qi.
this thread and its semi-anthropological discouse on the matter of qi seems to rely heavily on the notion that all people in the east view qi as the same thing, as though they all had some induction into an esoteric inner circle of "qi masters".... not the case. if you want to have such a discussion, however, the topic of "mana" might be of more interest to you, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mana) since that is a somewhat similar idea which does tend to have more of a universal common understanding of what it is, among its practitioners. unlike people who are interested in qi, practitioners of mana don't really differ so much in their opinions of just what it is, and it certainly involves much more of an appeal to esoteric understanding.