I did a school project on world
religions last year, and I chose
Taoism to study. I don't really remember why, but I remember that prior to doing to the project I had known pretty much nothing about it, other than that it was either
Chinese or
Japanese.
Anyway, if there's one thing I learned about it during all the research I did, it was that it is by nature an extremely non-static religion. By comparison, most Judao-Christian religions have remained essentially the same, in practice, for centuries. As for Taoism, I was hard pressed to find two reference sources that actually said the same thing. Most of them, of course, identified the founder as the legendary Lao Tzu - old master. The fact that his name is more of a phrase than a word leads me personally to suspect that he might have gone by something else, and when the book was written the name was changed, perhaps to protect the original philosopher, as he lived in a particularly violent and opressive time in Chinese history.
The coinciding facts pretty much stop there, though. Some website's I've visited claim that there are Taoist deities, not the conscious, vengeful ones of Judao-Christian religions, but symbolic ones for the various forces of nature. I've seen sites claim that all manner of things have significance to the Taoist religion, including statuaries, floral arrangements, and running water.
I've seen information saying that Tao is the lifeforce that flows through everything. When a friend of mine saw that, he said something similar to "Hey, George Lucas ripped that off for Star Wars!"
Anyway, I think the very nature of the religion is esoteric, so why would any devout follower of it want it to be strictly enforced? That would be un-Taoist. So I think, really, Taoism encourages you to find your own answers. Your own answers would be true for your questions.
Achieve results but never glory in them. That's the line I remember most from the Tao te Ching. I really should get my own copy of it. Taoism is much more fun that vanilla atheism.