>>This may be so but AFAIU it is clear to Daoists that these Gods are just symbolic and not real. Very unlike the God of the 3 Abrahamic traditions.
Rin, to many taoists, the gods are real. in the tao te ching ch. 4, it says "tao precedes the gods" (J. Hsu translation, for example). In the tao te ching ch. 39, it says that the gods get their powers from Great Yin and Great Yang (D.C. Lau translation, for example).
today, christian influence in china has changed some of that, so that tao in some religions is god and in other religions, tao is god's creation. however, in the original chinese conception, even the christian god is a child of tao. here is a quote from the introduction to the the tao te ching translation by paul carus (a theosophist from the early 1900s) that explains the original chinese understanding before 20th century modernism began to change it:
Quote:
We read in the Tao-Teh-King that the Tao, far from being made by God, must be prior even to God, for God could never have existed without it, and that, therefore, the Tao may claim the right of priority…. What a strange contrast! The Logos or Tao (i.e., the eternal rationality that conditions the immutable laws of the world order) is, according to the Lao-Tze, prior to God; it is God’s ancestor or father; but according to Christian doctrines, it is the son of God, not created but begotten in eternity. At first sight both statements are contradictory, but is not after all the fundamental significance in either case the same?
The highest laws of reason are universal and intrinsically necessary; we cannot even imagine that they ever have been or ever could be non-existent or invalid; they have not been fashioned or ordained, they have not been made either by God or man, they are eternal and immutable.
Carus, Paul, Lao-Tze’s Tao-Teh-King, London: Open Court Publishing, c. 1898, p. 13
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The conception of Tao prior to the gods means that all religions can be given equal respect, even those that do not have a deity that resembles the abrahamic god.