王夫之
The "Classic of Poetry" contains several catechistic poems in the "Decade of Dang" questioning the authority or existence of the God of Heaven. Later philosophers such as Xun Zi, Fan Zhen, Han Fei, Zhang Zai, and Wang Fuzhi also criticised religious practices prevalent during their times. During the efflorescence of Buddhism in the Southern and Northern dynasties, Fan Zhen wrote "On the Extinction of the Soul" ( "Shénmièlùn") to criticise ideas of body-soul dualism, "samsara" and "karma". He wrote that the soul is merely an effect or function of the body, and that there is no soul without the body—after the death and destruction of the body. Further, he considered that cause-and-effect relationships claimed to be evidence of "karma" were merely the result of coincidence and bias. For this, he was exiled by Emperor Wu of Liang (502–549).