(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Matthew Stuckey here and I want to make a quick video giving you three common myths of the religion or philosophy of Taoism. Three common myths of the philosophical system of Taoism. Now myth number one is this that Taoism is not that common it's just very rare and so if you tune into our ministry you might wonder why we've made so many videos and talked about Taoism so much and you might think this isn't even a big thing but I would say that's actually quite a big myth and I want you to realize part of the confusion comes because it's really hard to determine how many people you would actually call as Taoists because what happens with these kind of Eastern philosophical systems is they're known as syncretic religions meaning that you can worship one thing while being also another religion at the same time. For example you could be Buddhist and Taoist at the same time and many people that are Buddhist are also Taoist as well they practice those philosophical systems so it's not really like the Bible where it's like I am the way the truth and the life but they accept you being part of a couple different philosophical systems or several there's really kind of no limit and so that's kind of part of the confusion because if you look at Taoism on charts of the most common religions they're not going to appear there except they're going to appear under Chinese traditional religions and so they are one of those and how you really determine how many people are part of it it's hard to tell but I would say hundreds of millions of people actually follow Taoism to some degree but just give you some kind of proofs that Taoism is pretty common actually their book the Tao Te Ching is actually the second most translated book ever the second most translated book ever behind only the Bible and so being the second most translated book ever well that's definitely very common above the Quran above you know scriptures of other religious systems above any you know literary works of art it's the second most translated book ever so that definitely shows that it is actually pretty common this philosophical system how strongly people believe in this philosophical system that is up for debate however their their biggest sacred scripture is the second most translated book the other thing is this the movie Star Wars is based off of Taoism and so that's something that you know a lot of people probably aren't aware of but Star Wars you know watching it as an American growing up in the u.s. it's an entertaining movie you know I enjoyed it as a kid and everything like that and I always took it as something that was just kind of fake and it wasn't really real you know of course this stuff can't really be true and stuff like that and yet the movie Star Wars is actually based on the philosophical system of Taoism now one thing I'll say is this that people are very who are very strict Taoists would listen to that statement and they would basically kind of criticize Star Wars a little bit and the reason why is because although Star Wars is based off Taoism they do get some things wrong for example in Star Wars the ultimate goal is to you know get rid of the dark side however in Taoism you know you actually need both sides both the good and the bad and I'll talk about that here in a little bit so it's not actually the goal to get rid of evil because evil and good are basically you know intertwined okay which we'll talk about here but Star Wars is based off the philosophical system of Taoism and you know you you might say man that you know the the the fights and all this you know using the force and everything like that but if you've ever paid any attention to Chinese martial arts and you know Chinese martial arts is you know very much based on a similar sort of system because Star Wars is based off of the philosophical system of Taoism of course there is crossover with other Eastern philosophical systems but Taoism is what it is based off of and another thing that shows that it's actually very common is you say I've never heard of Taoism but I'm sure all of you have seen that circle of the yin and the yang where you have the black and the white on different sides and you've got that curved line and in the black side you've got this little white circle and on the white side you've got this little black circle the yin and the yang and so that is actually with Taoism that's where it comes from of course as a kid I just thought it was a cool little drawing cool little picture but it actually comes from Taoism so myth number one is that Taoism is not that common it's actually a lot more common than you realize and people that you know love the movie Star Wars are subtly being influenced by this philosophical system myth number two is this that in Taoism with that yin and the yang with the black and the white that the black and the white are opposed to one another opposed to one another that the black and the white are against one another that the bad and the good are against one another but that's actually not the case see in Taoism the black and the white are both necessary to complete the whole and so basically they are intertwined they intersect with one another that's why you see the white circle on the black side with that curved line there's that little white circle in the section with the black and there's that little black circle in the section of the white and what Taoism teaches is there can be no good without bad and so good and bad are basically necessary things you can't have good without bad you can't have bad without good so there's really no bad there's really no good they're actually both necessary they're actually the same and so yes that's contradictory but Taoism has no problem with things being contradictory and I'm not just saying that to criticize their philosophical system but they would say yes you know there are contradictions that that is okay actually and so good and bad are not opposed to one another and that yin and the yang but they actually complete one another day and night they complete one another male and female order and chaos these are some of the things where they would say you cannot have one without the other and so basically you know there are two sides of the same coin you can't have that coin unless you have both and so in that yin and the yang the black and the white are not actually against one another they actually complete one another so in the system of Taoism even though they believe that they are the way and the true religion they say that all these other false religions were actually necessary to bring about everything that has actually happened in this world and so those systems are not necessarily like a bad thing that we should not want them but they're actually necessary to bring us about to our present state and they would say that there's really no such thing as being a sin or something because sin or being you know evil or a moral law because they don't believe in a moral creator they believe that basically a big bang sort of beginning and basically the rules are governed by the laws of nature and things such as that so they don't believe in a creator God but they believe in this this overriding Taoist system and this this mystical philosophical idea but they do not believe that the black and the white are opposed to one another and that they're fighting one another they actually complement one another and are basically one in the same in their teaching so myth number one is that Taoism is not that common Taoism is actually pretty common myth number two is that the black and the white are opposed to one another in that drawing of the yin and the yang but it's actually showing you that they complete one another and they intersect and they're essentially the same thing myth number three is this that Taoism was created by Lao Tzu that Taoism was created by Lao Tzu there's many many pronunciations I've heard of this man's name obviously I'm not a native Chinese speaker but Lao Tzu is is one of the the pronunciations and he is credited by most people to having created Taoism what's interesting in you know Chinese philosophical systems is another common system is it was created or is known or represented by Confucius Confucianism Confucius never claimed to be the originator of his beliefs he said he was basically bringing back traditions that had been kind of forgotten kind of misplaced and he was bringing them back to being popular but he did not claim to be the creator of his philosophical system well it's actually the same with Lao Tzu although a lot of people don't really realize that that when he wrote the book the Tao Tei Ching he did not claim to be the originator he is basically gathering together this old philosophical system and bringing it back to the forefront and making it popular but you can actually see that this philosophical system predates Lao Tzu and so some of the examples of this are that in the Tao Tei Ching which you know there's kind of a debate about when this was written between the 8th to 3rd century BC but in the Tao Tei Ching he talks about the Tao masters of antiquity in chapter 15 of the book so he refers to the Tao masters of antiquity and what he's referring to is the fact that there were people that were already practicing this and so basically he wasn't taking something brand-new but he was taking something that already existed and he brought it back to popularity and he wrote the book the Tao Tei Ching and became very popular and very widespread but he's not actually the originator nor did he ever actually claim to be the originator and not only that but you know the Yellow Emperor who H-U-A-N-G-D-I Huangdi if that's how you pronounce it who was said to be between 2697 and 2597 BC before Christ was actually associated with the origin of Tao as well and associated with that philosophical system now of course I'm not claiming that every single date is correct obviously things were not written down perfect historically I believe that date would actually be have to be inaccurate when you look at the biblical flood which was approximately 4,400 years ago but I would say that you know and whether or not he fully existed or not you know there's a lot of debate about these historical figures because quite honestly you know history was not really written down that well the Greek Empire was pretty much the first ones with Herodotus known as the father of modern history who really you know wrote everything down and that's why we know that the Bible is the best source of knowledge because the Bible is pure and is perfect so whether that Yellow Emperor existed or not it said that you know in the middle of the third century or third millennium BC between around 2500 BC which that date could be off of when this person actually existed that he was associated with the Tao however we do know from chapter 15 of the Tao Te Ching written by Lao Tzu that he does talk about these Tao masters so he did not claim to originate this system and so three myths of Taoism are this number one that it is not a very common system that's actually not true Star Wars is based off of it everybody knows the yin and the yang and the Tao Te Ching is the second most translated book myth number two that the black and the white and the yin and the yang are actually opposed to one another they actually complement one another in their philosophical system and myth number three is that Lao Tzu was the creator of Taoism he actually made it popular but he didn't actually created now I want you to understand this though Taoism is a wicked philosophical system I haven't really said anything against their philosophical system in this video because I'm just giving information but Taoism claims to be the way and they claim that there are syncretic religion and you can be Taoist in something else as well however they still claim to be the way and here's the thing Jesus Christ claimed to be the way he said I am the way the truth and the life no man cometh unto the Father but by me and if you follow the way of the Tao not only will you destroy your life but you're going to send yourself to hell forever because you rejected the actual way which was Jesus Christ who died and paid for all of our sins thank you and God bless