Author: Eric Helland

the empty pot

empty-pot

The Emperor and the Flower Seeds

Long ago, in this very kingdom, there lived an Emperor who loved nature. Anything he planted burst into bloom. Up came flowers, bushes and even big fruit trees, as if by magic! Of everything in nature, he loved flowers most of all, and he tended his own garden every day. But the Emperor was very old, and he needed to choose a successor to the throne. Who would his successor be? How would the Emperor decide? As the Emperor loved flowers so much, he decided that flowers would help him choose.

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dogma

A doctrine or a corpus of doctrines relating to matters such as morality and faith, set forth in an authoritative manner by a church.

An authoritative principle, belief, or statement of ideas or opinion, especially one considered to be absolutely true.

A principle or belief or a group of them: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present” ( Abraham Lincoln).

An official system of principles or tenets concerning faith, morals, behavior, etc., as of a church.

A specific tenet or doctrine authoritatively laid down, as by a church: the dogma of the Assumption; the recently defined dogma of papal infallibility.

Prescribed doctrine proclaimed as unquestionably true by a particular group: the difficulty of resisting political dogma.

A settled or established opinion, belief, or principle: the classic dogma of objectivity in scientific observation.

Religious dogma and scientific dogma are sometimes at odds, as in arguments between those who believe in the biblical story of creation and those who believe in evolution. Since all dogma resists change, arguments of any kind are harder to resolve when both sides are dogmatic in their beliefs. Dogma and dogmatic are generally used disapprovingly; it’s always other people who believe unquestioningly in dogma and who take a dogmatic approach to important issues.