Watchman Nee

So I've been recommended the Normal Christian Faith by Watchman Nee as something to read. While I have not read the entire tract, I do not like the tone he suggests. He writes and talks like a politician, using circular reasoning and fear tactics to 'scare' you into believing in Christianity.

Neither are his arguments new. The only problem is that he butchers them, and instead rely on cheap presentations of coinciding evidence to convince the reader. He brings into the extremes of any argument to make his point and picks at diction in order to satisfy his arguments.

He derides all atheists as immoral. Looks at patterns as if they were the will of God. And he picks at language out of context so that it would make his point. He is certainly good at rhetoric for the uninformed or as a preacher not giving his congregation a chance to think. But it is a argument filled with seams and bias. And I'm only on chapter 1.

Converting to Christianity is all well and good, but this would not be the way to do it. And no, I'm not converting to Christianity. But I would read stuff like this in order to support my arguments against organized religion.

And to counter his points. True atheists are moral. It does not fit his side's definition of morality, so he dismisses it. And some Christians are just as immoral as atheists. At least Atheists don't rely on someone else to define right or wrong. And some people with the strongest conviction and morality I have met are atheist or agnostic by nature. A code of conduct or morality forced upon a person by a God is not as binding as one that is chosen by oneself. The very fact that there is absolute morality given by a God or the words of God would have less of an impact upon a person than a set of relative morality chosen by someone else. Morality with religion is a packaged deal. You don't treasure something that comes in a package as much as something you have chosen for yourself.

And he implied that the fact that there is order reveals the existence of God. I call bull. In my words, "Order is our imposition of will upon Chaos." Everything can be seen as chaos. It is only our brain, through our own perception, that groups things into perceivable 'order'. And note here, that the order I'm talking about, is not entropy. I'm talking about metaphysical order. If you want to talk about God as order though, then God will eventually die, because the second law of Thermodynamics projects that we'll all end up as meaningless sameness with no energy and total chaos.

Plus, it could very well be that the leaf or cells or organisms could only be built one way. And the mathematical laws that bound us only allow one way of making something in the world. Correlation does not imply Causation! That's a very common sidestep in logic that allow us to claim a lot of things. It's hard to prove causation, but that is what must be proved here, not correlation. Watchman Nee also sprouts off examples such as ones about individual prayers being answered. Correlation does not prove causation.

Lastly, even if I accept the fact there is a God, it does not mean that the God of Abraham is the correct god. There could be a creator that plays the universe like someone playing Sim City or Life. It decides the rules ahead of time, and then let's the model run. There is no evidence or requirement that it cares for the individual lives of people.

Maybe there's something between the lines I should read. But it's hard to say. Should not a book instructing or persuading people to ascribe to a religion be straightforward and influence people directly rather than contradict or satirize itself? I really hope so. While I don't suppose that science is a replacement for religion or philosophy, I think that it allows better metaphors and analogies to what we're trying to express. Faith is always a touchy subject. But at least I know what I believe. I did so only after looking at religions, myth, legends around the world. How many people just follow their beliefs unquestioningly or just adopt the most convenient one?

Organized religion and faith is too dangerous and too subjective. It is a weapon in the right hands and can cause so much destruction and hatred. What we need is information about every religion and let people choose themselves. I respect the morality of the Christians, but I cannot accept their faith.