Dogma
- A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.
- a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof
Most organised religions are dogmatic to one degree or another, I personally consider dogma to be a fairly bad thing. From my perspective dogma gets in the way when trying to follow The Watercourse Way, what happens when your dogma tries to take you against the flow? It breaks. The problem is that dogma is inflexible, the eventual effects of flowing water on inflexible things in it’s path are well documented, eventually they have to give.
For me, part of the flow of Taoism is accurate correspondance with reality, if a doctrine or dogma contradicts reality, which is most likely to be in error? There are numerous examples of religious doctrine contradicting what science has revealed about the world, how then can anyone be expected to believe in a doctrine that is full of holes? Such doctrine does have wisdom in it, but that wisdom is not in the literal interpretation. Something religious dogmatists would do well to consider in my view.
This is the reason I stopped putting my faith in religious doctrine and one of the major reasons I find Taoism such a good fit.
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