Is Confucianism a religion and why?

Confucianism is not a religion, has been debated for decades. This is the modern Chinese and Western culture collision and docking under the conditions of the times in the discourse shift in the misplaced and the problem, China does not have this problem in ancient times, or even if there is not sharp. Similarly, the question of whether Confucianism is a philosophy did not exist in ancient times. The classification of traditional Chinese national studies is popularly divided into "Jing, Shi, Zi and Jie"; there are also the study of righteousness, the study of evidence, the study of words and chapters, and there is no one study called philosophy. In the distinction between the worldly and the worldly, there are references to humanism and Shintoism. The study of righteousness is close to philosophy, but not the same as philosophy. Shinto is close to religion, but not the same as religion.　　Confucianism is a big system of thought, a system of beliefs, and its content includes philosophy, ethics, political science and religion in the modern academic sense, but it cannot be reduced to philosophy or ethics or political science or religion, because it is an interdisciplinary and comprehensive study, and morality is the sun of thought. Under the shadow of the Western discourse, the contemporary Chinese can at first reinterpret their own culture only through Western concepts, and so explain Confucianism in the context of the history of Chinese philosophy, with the result that the foot is cut to fit the shoe. Western philosophy has always had a deep and relatively independent tradition, with a clear line of succession, transformation and innovation. In China, there is no independent philosophical tradition like that of the West, but only a holistic tradition of thought and distinctive schools of thought. The "History of Chinese Philosophy" is in fact an artificial construction by Chinese scholars using Western philosophical theories and methods in order to realize the interface with Western scholarship, while there has not been such a succession of studies from generation to generation in Chinese history. The basic question of Western philosophy, namely, the relation between thought and existence, and the epistemological question to which they pay special attention, are not the focus of Chinese theoretical inquiry. However, our textbooks on the history of Chinese philosophy have for a long time imposed on Chinese spiritual history the framework of the Soviet model of the struggle between the two lines (materialism and idealism) and the four major parts (cosmology, epistemology, social history, dialectics), and then filled it with Chinese materials by cutting and splicing them together. The living body of Chinese thought has been dismembered, making the books written without Chinese meaning, the Confucianism unlike the Confucianism, the Buddhism unlike the Buddhism, and the Buddhism unlike the Buddhism. The book is not like Confucianism, Buddhism is not like Buddhism, Taoism is not like Taoism, and it is more like the Chinese version of Western philosophy. I have always believed that Confucius and Laozi are thinkers, and that Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism have philosophy and religion, and much more. Therefore, the history of Chinese philosophy should be reduced to the history of Chinese thought, and the history of Chinese thought should be written in accordance with the inherited schools and traditions and their interrelationships, and the thoughts of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuang, Cheng, Zhu, Lu, Wang, and Ch'an should be reproduced in their entirety. Of course, part of the modern Western discourse has become a universal mainstream discourse, which we should accept and use to become part of the Chinese culture, which is necessary for the modern transformation of Chinese studies. At the same time, when we use western culture to interpret Chinese culture, we should not erase the characteristics of Chinese culture, but should see the strengths and special values of Chinese culture, and examine western culture with the eyes of Chinese culture, so as to form a two-way interpretation and complementarity between the east and the west. Mr. Feng Youlan also realized this point, he explained the spirit of Chinese philosophy in "The New Original Way" as "extremely brilliant and moderate", and put forward the theory of four realms in "The New Original Man", which attributed the task of philosophy to the enhancement of the spiritual realm of human beings, and he expressed the spirit of Chinese philosophy in modern words, which transcends the Western philosophy.　　According to my understanding, philosophy is the study of the root of the problem, while religion is the religion of the life; the task of the former is to understand the world from a macroscopic point of view, while the task of the latter is to determine the beliefs of life. In the West, there is a clear distinction between the two, with people seeking wisdom from philosophy to grasp the world, and leaving faith and morality to religion. In China, Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism all combine the search for truth with a sense of security. Confucianism has the concepts of heavenly law and principles, the theory of heart, personality, ethics, bitterness, life and death, cultivation of the body and politics, the level of beliefs and values, the level of institutions and norms, the level of daily life and the level of folklore and culture. Its humanism includes the way of heaven, and the way of heaven integrates the way of humanism, the body and the use are the same, heaven and man are dependent on each other, and the philosophy of life is the most characteristic. In terms of explaining the relationship between heaven and man, the relationship between human beings, and the nature of the heart, Confucianism has a philosophy, which is a kind of wisdom of cognizing the world. In terms of setting up the direction of life, establishing values, and pursuing the transcendental source of truth, Confucianism also has religion, and its role in maintaining the moral heart in China is comparable to the status and role of religion in the West. The most popular religion among the Chinese is not Buddhism or Taoism, but is in fact the religion of Heaven and Ancestors and the religion of morality, whose basic doctrines are respect for Heaven, the law of the ancestors, and the five virtues of the Five Constant Principles.　　In today's world-wide dialogue of religions and civilizations, Confucianism can be used as a philosophy for dialogue with Western philosophy as well as for