The TAO that can be spoken cannot be the eternal TAO.
Religious fundamentalism would have us read the Bible/ Quran as though they were intended as factual history. "Fact," as we mean it, didn't even exist until the 17th century. .... It's as though today's religious fundamentalists would read Melville's Moby Dick and say: "I wonder if we can find the Pequod," utterly missing the point.
Rational fundamentalist (atheists) are only the other side of the same coin. They, too, insist on reading ancient documents as though they were intended as factual so they can ridicule what they need to misunderstand in order to feel superior and oh... so ... urbane. It's all the same bullshit dressed up differently.
To atheists, if something doesn't occupy space and have weight, it doesn't exist. It's like reading Moby Dick and saying it's a fairy tale because it never happened, and missing the point as badly as the religious fundamentalists they deride. There is transformative power in myth and story.
Neither brand of fundamentalism can abide the concept of mystery, the unknowable TAO , and that's where religious faith lives, properly understood, anyway. (Core idea credit Michael Rivest FB)
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