World Religions: Taoism (Daoism)

Stephen Prothero, the New York Times bestselling author of Religious Literacy, makes a fresh and provocative argument that, contrary to popular understanding, all religions are not simply different paths to the same end... and why this matters greatly for us. Readers of Huston Smith and Karen Armstrong will find much to ponder in God Is Not One.
Book Description

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, dizzying scientific and technological advancements, interconnected globalized economies, and even the so-called New Atheists have done nothing to change one thing: our world remains furiously religious. For good and for evil, religion is the single greatest influence in the world. We accept as self-evident that competing economic systems (capitalist or communist) or clashing political parties (Republican or Democratic) propose very different solutions to our planet's problems. So why do we pretend that the world's religious traditions are different paths to the same God? We blur the sharp distinctions between religions at our own peril, argues religion scholar Stephen Prothero, and it is time to replace naïve hopes of interreligious unity with deeper knowledge of religious differences.

In Religious Literacy, Prothero demonstrated how little Americans know about their own religious traditions and why the world's religions should be taught in public schools. Now, in God Is Not One, Prothero provides readers with this much-needed content about each of the eight great religions. To claim that all religions are the same is to misunderstand that each attempts to solve a different human problem. For example: --Islam: the problem is pride / the solution is submission --Christianity: the problem is sin / the solution is salvation --Confucianism: the problem is chaos / the solution is social order --Buddhism: the problem is suffering / the solution is awakening --Judaism: the problem is exile / the solution is to return to God

Prothero reveals each of these traditions on its own terms to create an indispensable guide for anyone who wants to better understand the big questions human beings have asked for millennia—and the disparate paths we are taking to answer them today. A bold polemical response to a generation of misguided scholarship, God Is Not One creates a new context for understanding religion in the twenty-first century and disproves the assumptions most of us make about the way the world's religions work.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• world
• religions
• religion
• faith
• Taoism
• Daoism
• philosophy
• yt:stretch=16:9

[jcahweng]

The questions asked are very good, but I am afraid to say that the speaker’s knowledge of Daosim and Confucianism is very much distorted and superficial. I do not like to say so, but I feel a sense of responsibility to say so because people who do not know much about Daoism and Confucianism will get misinformed and misled.

[IKNFLY666]

@jcahweng You are quite right. But I think the author's main consideration is that, the audiences of his book are mainly for general Western readers, and he does need to make his book easier for the Western readers to understand, he got the main ideas right and is suffice for the beginners of Eastern philosophy. If he's writing for a academic research, perhaps he could be more specific on the topic.

[ComradeFlorian31]

@Buuub08 yes I use Waley's translation but I've also checked others and in the main they seem to agree with each other. Daodejing has been translated in Romanian as well but this translation seems rather poor to me so I stick with Waley's.

Great Book anyway, one of the best I've ever read. It easily beats the Bible and it beats the Quran too

[Buuub08]

@ComradeFlorian31 makes no difference. You are still reading his interpretation not your own, its his path not yours. As a result you will at best be like the guy in the vid who thinks he knows something while not actually knowing or understanding anything.

Like the taiji example, its not even a matter of knowing but a matter of logic and understanding that taiji (being rooted in taosim) MUST have sharp and strong stuff opposed to the soft and fluid = yin and yang, BASIC stuff

[ComradeFlorian31]

@Buuub08 I use Arthur Waley's translation

[SanguineBullet667]

The speakers sound like pretentious evangelicals.

[MrOldestPerson]

@IKNFLY666 Yeap, he might still be learning too. 

[Buuub08]

Western society understands squat about Dao.

Reading Dao De Jing in English loses the whole idea as its subject to interpretation. The whole purpose is to understand it in your own way, interpret it for yourself. When you read a translated text you inject the translators interpretation, makes it confusing and thats about it.

Also, Taiji has plenty of sharp and aggressive movements, but as typical in the west you were subject to 2ndary sources, thus you never heard of the 2nd routine of taiji.

[Buuub08]

Western society understands squat about Dao.

Reading Dao De Jing in English loses the whole idea as its subject to interpretation. The whole purpose is to understand it in your own way, interpret it for yourself. When you read a translated text you inject the translators interpretation, makes it confusing and thats about it.

Also, Taiji has plenty of sharp and aggressive movements, but as typical in the west you were subject to 2ndary sources, thus you never heard of the 2nd routine of taiji.

[MPedroful]

My understanding of tao is best illustrated by a quote from the Tao the Ching by Stephen Mitchell-" the clearer out insight into what is beyond good and evil, the more we can embody the good."

[surfkost]

@IKNFLY666 I had the feeling that he gave everything but he sounds like he read something about daoism in wikipedia and did not understand the whole thing. right in the beginning "living live to the fullest", "death end job", "back to nature" these are just wrong interpretations. what should the western reader learn from wrong information?