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To: betty boop; PatrickHenry
Umm.. Buddhism does not at all fixate on the precept: God is Truth. In fact, the Buddha dismissed the question of gods altogether as insignificant. His view was that people who indulge in such conjecture are like the man who has been shot with an arrow who then sits down to ask himself where the arrow might have come from and of what it has been made...

Similarly, the Tao of Taoism is not predicated by a godhead, nor is it contingent upon a godhead. Quite the contrary, the gods celebrated by Taoists are part of reality; it is not reality that is a part of them. The Tao is at its most basic "the Way" of reality; it is the pattern of space and time; and it is utterly detached from moral or normative doctrines.

The Greek and Viking gods lied, and did so quite regularly. While there was a spectrum of philosophical thought associated with each culture - too much to cover with any brevity - the gods were certainly not the source of Truth in any sort of absolute or ultimate fashion. In the former case, a swift review of Pythagorean, Platonist, and Aristotelian thought will inform you of the various strands of "truth" that were perceived within Greek thought, and none of them were attributed to the gods.

It's a gross oversimplification to condense the schools of Hinduism and the Amerindian spiritual belief systems in such a manner, but suffice to say that applying Judeo/Christian doctrine to them is no more applicable than is its application to the above.

143 posted on 04/06/2005 8:30:08 PM PDT by AntiGuv (™)
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To: AntiGuv
Similarly, the Tao of Taoism is not predicated by a godhead, nor is it contingent upon a godhead.

Mere semantics here, my dear man. Taoism stands or falls by the question of whether there exists a preexistent truth by which it can qualify its observations and researches in terms of a truthful standard -- an infallible standard of "measurememt" is what we'looking for here. IMHO. But the very name of truth in historical human culture has ever tended to be: God. (Go figure.)

And I, a student of human history and culture (for whatever that's worth) would be very surprised to learn that "orthodox" Taoism construes this problem otherwise.

In general, I find fewer "confrontations/contradictions" with Eastern philosophical modes than I do with those of the Western "secular humanist kind," these days.

FWIW. ZZZzzzzzz.....

162 posted on 04/06/2005 10:17:12 PM PDT by betty boop (If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking. -- Gen. George S. Patton)
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