From: FutureQ (futureq@attbi.com)
Date: Mon Oct 14 2002 - 13:51:53 MDT
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> FutureQ wrote:
>
> > Personally I don't think China is that far from religion. Looked at a
> > certain way communism is the twin of Taoism. Think about. In Taoism you are
> > born into your lot in life and that just as nature is unchangeable. Sound
> > any different than the state prescribing one's profession and station? I
> > think the chinese so readily accepted communism because to them it was
> > little different than what they knew for thousands of years.
>
> Quite a bit of religion is certainly not about accepting one's
> current situation as divinely ordained.
I wasn't referring to any other religion here but Taoism. You seem to feel it
necessary to appologize for all religion period. It falls upon deaf ears here. I
have studied several and when weighing the good they do with the bad they do the
bad has it hands down every time. We'll be far better off without it and that day
will come.
> Whether one agrees with
> the packaging or not, there is a strong push for transcendence
> of the status quo at the heart of many religions. There are
> also twisted variants of most of them that put off real
> trancendence to the heareafter or one's next incarnation.
>
> I don't think religion per se is an enemy.
You are certainly intitled to your opinion and I to mine. I'll take reality over
false hope.
> I think human
> inertia and serious programming not to rock the boat is the real
> difficulty.
And how is religion not empowering this inertia? It's always the crutch to fall
back upon, the justification for misdeeds. Can you really deny that belief in an
afterlife impedes life affirming science, medicine and peace?
> Sometimes that has a religious wrapping or
> rationalization but I believe it is a confusion to confuse the
> wrapping with the root problem.
>
> >
> > They could easily slip back into Taoism if the communist state failed as I
> > see coming anyway. Look how quickly the Orthodox Russian church gained
> > ground when the USSR fell out of favor. Weak people need their crutches
> > either religious or governmental.
>
> Here we go again. The old religion is for "weak people" line.
> Sigh.
An atheist must stand upon ones own strengths. If that is not strength than what
is it? The opposite of strength is weakness. An inabilty to take responsibility
for ones own life and actions, to me, is weakness. If not to you then call it how
you like. For me going from xian to atheist was a struggle and took some decided
strength of character and will. Much easier to have kept the crutch.
> > The trouble with Taoism is that it's the
> > ultimate luddite religion. The chinese could have developed rocketry to the
> > point of world conquest and even perhaps taken humanity to space several
> > thousand years ago but they didn't because Taoism teaches that nature is
> > unchanging so why try? It would be interesting to see how readily or not
> > transhumanism takes in China.
> >
>
> Actually, the highly intellectualized and rigid Imperial Chinese
> court grew more from Confucianism as I understand it. Thousands
> of years ago?
And Taoism had no influence on Confucius? How confusing. To witt, I quote,
"Taoism is a Chinese philosophy that first began, scholars believe, sometime
around the time of Confucius, perhaps the most infamous Chinese philosopher, who
lived around the years 500 to 600 B.C.E.". Available here:
http://users.ntplx.net/~bbarrett/intro-tao.html#2
FutureQ
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