k, I am new here so I figured this post would be the best place to start...
I have been a Christian my whole life (and still am). I recently picked up a copy of the Tao te Ching and the Chuang Tzu and I fell in love with Taoism. Overall, Taoism matches up with Christianity pretty well (not judging, a time for everything, etc) except in a few arenas, the biggest being morality.
The Taoist version of morality, at least from how I see it, is: "If you want to be one with the Tao, accept where life takes you and do what your heart (the internal Tao) tells you. If you don't want to do that you don't have to, it is also a part of the way of things for you to not be "one with the Tao". the Taoist is content even with this.
The Christian version of morality is "love your neighbor as yourself. and love God with all of your heart and mind. which means following all of the commandments. Try to be perfect even though there is no possible way for you to even try to be perfect, so drive yourself crazy trying to be perfect"
but "good" needs "bad" else it wouldn't be "good" I could go up to a mountain and try to become the most sinless ascetic ever, but I would be doing the world less good than if I just did what I was best at. In my opinion.
Who says that abortion is immoral? isn't it more immoral to force someone to be "moral" if they don't want to? shouldn't people at least have the option to have a safe clean abortion lest they resort to more barbaric methods? wouldn't that be more loving towards the mother? this is my opinion at least
is the mere act of copying a cd illegal? were our founding fathers disobeying God by rebelling against the governing authorities and starting a great nation? it is like in
Chuck
Chuck (when reviewing Harry Tang's rules): No swearing, No expectorating, no fornicating... were people getting freaky in the break room?
Morgan: No, but I like to know I have the option.
Taoism says that when you impose more rules people become less and less moral, which makes some sense, they aren't doing what they are doing because they want to, just out of fear of getting in trouble.
So Taoist morality makes much more sense to me, "do what you do best because you are only a small fragment of mankind". However, I still wish I could reconcile the two systems. Perhaps I am looking at stuff the wrong way.
I hate thinking about ethics because it is so subjective, yet you don't think it should be. Does anyone have any food for thought?
