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Originally Posted by Didymos Thomas  As for your comments about sin and the purpose of religion - sinners are not "people too screwed up to feel comfortable thinking otherwise than very traditionally", we are all sinners. Even wanted something that was not yours? |
If it is in someone's nature to do something bad, preaching in an effort to stop it won't do any good, and there isn't really any point in fighting against that tendency in oneself, because if you were that way yesterday, you'll be that way tomorrow too, presumably. Religion is only effective at reforming sins that aren't natural; e.g., alcohol may cause one to behave selfishly--in such a case, religion can be useful by convincing the individual that he is behaving unnaturally, i.e., contrary to his innate tendencies. One can behave selfishly from error, but the best antidote for that is moral philosophy. True, there are bits and pieces of insight in most religions just as in myths, but essentially by definition a religion must be traditional, and the ones I know of are each of them replete with outdated highly unlikely notions. In fact, if a religion doesn't have much superstition in it, people are likely to consider it a philosophy, much as some people think Taoism should be considered a philosophy or a way of life rather than a religion.
If people don't distinguish between good and evil, there will be no justice and evil will have a free reign. Then people won't need to distinguish between good and evil because evil will have destroyed the good. I tend to think of morality, of what is good, as trying to make the world more beautiful, and goodness is what beauty is mainly. You can't be very good without wanting to advance what is good. Nor is it reasonable to suppose that people would at all evolve to be good if good people didn't love fellow good people more than bad people, as they couldn't if there were no distinction. I would suggest that the overall spirit of Taoism doesn't so much suggest that there should be no distinction between good and evil, but just that we should not be very purposive or obsessively urgent when we make these distinctions, the way many people feel (for example) when making disctinctions about controversial political issues. But that's what I don't like about Taoism. Sometimes it is appropriate to behave extremely purposively, namely when one is fighting addiction; sometimes one's hindquarters actually do get screwed. Wu wei, purposiveless action, is only appropriate when not fighting addiction. Some moral action should be taken with a will.
True, Taoism tends to be against distinctions, but my impression is that it is only against distinctions mildly: mainly just if they are arbitrary, forced, or unnatural. E.g., the famous ideal butcher separates effortlessly, but he still separates.
If I remember right, when China was plagued with opium problems there arose a famous leader who was so fed up with the lazy indifference that he associated with Taoism that he called himself (in Chinese, of course) "purposive action" or "no purposiveless action", or some such thing (by changing the "wu" of "wu wei" to its opposite character?).