but don't try and be a devout believer in it

[xiao633c]

I'm worthless.

[meekon5]

I'm worthless.

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

or are you refering to:

chapter 42 (the English/Feng translation)

Men hate to be "orphaned," "widowed," or "worthless,"
But this is how kings and lords describe themselves.

For one gains by losing
And loses by gaining.

or even

chapter 41 (the John Wu translation)

When a wise scholar hears the Tao,
He practices it diligently.
When a mediocre scholar hears the Tao,
He wavers between belief and unbelief.
When a worthless scholar hears the Tao,
He laughs boisterously at it.
But if such a one does not laugh at it,
The Tao would not be the Tao!
The wise men of old have truly said:
The bright Way looks dim.
The progressive Way looks retrograde.
The smooth Way looks rugged.
High Virtue looks like an abyss.
Great whiteness looks spotted.
Abundant Virtue looks deficient.
Established Virtue looks shabby.
Solid Virtue looks as though melted.
Great squareness has no corners.
Great talents ripen late.
Great sound is silent.
Great Form is shapeless.
The Tao is hidden and nameless;
Yet it alone knows how to render help and to fulfill.

[DigitalBuddha]

That is definitely some kind of Eastern thing.  

[Rev. Ed C]

I devoutly believe that we should not believe devoutly!  Total faith in faithlessness, hope in the hopeless, truth in the truthless...

It's always a good thing to keep in mind, but Dudeism itself is a philosophy that deals in faith in the unproovability of anything.  And I do have pretty solid faith in things uncertain and unknowable and not worrying about them as much as possible.

Most religions take comfort in having faith in iron-clad stone.  We take comfort in true belief in jellified protoplasm   Our concept of what is will always bend and reshape, an unending uncertainty, and that I can be certain of... well, sorta

[Rev. RJ Dudemiester]

Faith/Belief is a tricky thing...

for years now, given my secular Buddhist world view, i have often argued that Faith should be removed from religion. As it is used by organized religion now; Faith implicitly requires acceptance of a belief structure without any proof.

But- with Buddhism (which never really was a religion, at least not a theist one) there is no need to have Faith or Believe in anything- because Buddhist experience provides personal knowledge of the divine nature of the entire universe through direct experience of it through the catharsis of satori- there is no need to believe or have have faith in the Atman, because when you let go of your ego (which any human being is capable of doing) you directly experience the fact of Atman. A Buddha knows he is the Buddha, and that the human individual is the result of the Atman manifesting individual identity by interacting with the unique qualities of the body's neural interface.
a dude, knows he is the Dude, and yet is still a fucking moron!
at least, this is how i understand things to be.

[cckeiser]

Faith/Belief is a tricky thing...

for years now, given my secular Buddhist world view, i have often argued that Faith should be removed from religion. As it is used by organized religion now; Faith implicitly requires acceptance of a belief structure without any proof.

But- with Buddhism (which never really was a religion, at least not a theist one) there is no need to have Faith or Believe in anything- because Buddhist experience provides personal knowledge of the divine nature of the entire universe through direct experience of it through the catharsis of satori- there is no need to believe or have have faith in the Atman, because when you let go of your ego (which any human being is capable of doing) you directly experience the fact of Atman. A Buddha knows he is the Buddha, and that the human individual is the result of the Atman manifesting individual identity by interacting with the unique qualities of the body's neural interface.
a dude, knows he is the Dude, and yet is still a fucking moron!
at least, this is how i understand things to be.

LOL! Welcome to our nice quiet beach community dude!

[Rev. RJ Dudemiester]

Thank you kindly!

[SagebrushSage]

*deleting old posts*

[jgiffin]

Rigid faith prevents the mind from considering new ideas, and thus is anathema to the dudeist's vow to limber one's mind.  However, there is something in academia called provisional faith, or accepting the scientific consensus on a matter as true for practical purposes until proven otherwise, especially outside of one's specialization.  Provisional faith reduces the need to worry about the correct answer to a variety of problems, since someone smarter and more knowledgeable has already figured out a broadly-accepted answer.  This kind of faith reduces stress, and so should be welcomed under the dudeist's vow to take 'er easy.

Interesting. Yeah, it seems a pragmatic, if not completely necessary, concession to ever-deepening fields of studies. There was a time when a man (cause wimmins couldn't be scholars back then) could essentially subsume a given area of knowledge.  He could check his predecessors' proverbial math since there were only, like, four of them. That's not possible now in most fields. You'd get bogged down sometime around 1840 and never catch up to the status quo as of your own birth date.

Ya always gotta keep an eye out for Little Larrys of history, however, who may have not done their homework or rushed through and missed something. But, yeah, that's an interesting take on the modern world.