Hi George,

Actually I just grabbed the closest book to hand - a modern take of which I'm not sure which translation it's from.

Here's another from a book of Chinese philosophy, translated by E. R. Hughes.

"Thus it is when the Tao is lost, there is personal power,
When that is lost, there is human heartedness;
And when that is lost, there is justice;
And when that is lost, there are the conventions of ritual.
In relation to sincerity of heart and speech. ritual only goes skin-deep, and is thus a starting point of moral anarchy;
And foreknowledge of events to come is but a pretentious display of the Tao, and is thus the door to benightedness.
This is why the really grown man concentrates on the core of things and not the husk,
And thus it is that he rejects 'the That' and lays hold of 'the This'."

Dear George,

I wasn’t trying to contradict anything you wrote. It is just a subject that interests me, and I know a little about.

No Christians are actually “sola scriptura”. Protestants just refuse to recognise it.

AJ, there's no irony in my position. I'm not offended, I just can't see any point in trying to hold a conversation with someone whose purpose is to try to hold a debate. We saw a debate of the type you prefer a couple of days ago on TV. It was stultifyingly boring and nobody got anything at all out of it, despite lots of effort being expended by all concerned.

George, Poirot, I still see Tao as primarily a philosophy rather than a religion. Having said that, I'm intending to look more deeply into it. I may be jumping to conclusions on insufficient data.

George, I don't think morality and ethics are interchangeable terms. Ethics is an attempt to formalise morality as a rational process, or even to justify behaviour that is in any culture seen as immoral.

That's why I like Peter Singer, who likes to take such immoral behaviours (bestiality, for example) and show that they are not necessarily unethical. It's by the creation of dichotomies that difference can be illustrated. Set theory in action!

My musings about Mohammed and Confucius are more with respect to some of the commonalities of the philosophy, such as primacy of the group over the individual. He may not have read the analects, but he may well have met people who were Confucian, or heard of the way that they did things in China. Similarly, he may have got some of his inspiration from the Hindu concept of dharma, it seems to me. The Sikhs have no trouble melding Hindu and Islamic ideas. It would be silly to think that only the Abrahamic traditions had any influence when he lived in such a cosmopolitan part of the world at a time when great empires were forming to the north.

David, I have told you my reasons for making my claims about the US and immorality. Your response, as I predicted, is to pretend offence and ignore that post and you still haven't tried to tell me how you think religion is to be replaced as a morally educative model.

Dear Antiseptic,

You have called me dishonest and made other nasty statements about me. I don't operate that way and will not do the same. I don't feel like addressing anything to you any more. You are free to apologise to me. If not I want to have nothing more to do with you.

Goodbye David. No loss on my part.

Antiseptic,

It would be clear to anyone who has been reading that you had muffed it big time, so if you want out, then just say so or don't bother responding, but don't try to make your exit about me: that's an ad hominem.

<<I just can't see any point in trying to hold a conversation with someone whose purpose is to try to hold a debate.>>

Um... You do realise that's the whole idea of this site, don't you?

On Line Opinion: Australia's e-journal of social and political debate (http://onlineopinion.com.au)

Either way, the trick to holding a conversation, without it turning into a debate, is to admit when you are wrong. That way, the person you are having a discussion with won't have to put a case forth as to why you are wrong, and you won't have to resort to fallacies in a desperate scramble to cover your tracks and hope no-one notices.

It's win-win. 

This is why I muster the courage to admit when I'm wrong (as even you have seen), because THAT is what keeps a conversation moving forward while maintaining its casual style.

<<We saw a debate of the type you prefer a couple of days ago on TV.>>

If you are trying to imply that it is me who lowered the tone of the conversation into more of a debate-style discussion, then may I remind you (again) that it is only you who has used the rough-and-tumble language with insults and unsupported accusations of dishonesty. And what about the way you have been speaking to david f? Is that how someone, who desires a less debate-style conversation, speaks to others?

Forget pots calling kettles "black", this is a case of the pot calling the silverware "black"; yet another example of transference - specifically psychological projection. (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection)

I'm sorry, Antiseptic, but everything I said in my last post still stands. I hope you can appreciate why the ad hominem is a fallacy now too.