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they don't believe in a certain god they believe that there is a "tao", or "dao." The tao is there divine being that created the earth, stars, skies, water, etc. their goal in life is to transform their life from disharmony to harmony and reunite with the tao. They have certain rules that they live by includes six characteristics.

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I would disagree with the above. The Tao is not a being. Nor is it a thing that creates things by itself. The existence of the Tao implies the Te.

The Tao Te Ching has references to a god or gods. For example, the last sentence in chapter 4 is translated as "I do not know whose offspring it is; it seems to have been before God." Chinese is a more ambiguous language than English, and the last word could have been meant to be "gods." Many translations make it "the Lord," or "the Sovereign" Bear in mind also that the final clause refers to appearance, not order of creation. Nevertheless, the Tao Te Ching and most other Taoist classics really do not address the nature, or even the name, of the divinity. Nor to they say anything about worship. So Taoism is much more a philosophy than a religion.

In practice, Taoists have religions as they choose, appending Taoist philosophy to the teachings of different religions. A person could easily be both Buddhist and Taoist or Shintoist and Taoist. Many Taoists in China practise pre-Taoist folk religion that includes ancestor worship, a form of polytheism, and/or animism, and there is a lot of variation in this. There are a number of people among my acquaintance who are both Taoist and Christian.

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15y ago

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