Flagg

This is what I've been questioning myself on. My thought (as a mathematician) is the ol' proof by contradiction, i.e. taking something as true and then showing it leads to a contradiction, causing it to thereby be false. But I would still be arguing red herrings, since a malevolent God - what they accept as plainly good - is not disproven in this case, just simply stated as horrible.

Flagg

Yes, I think I meant that to be there.

The Calvinist is assuming compatibilist free will, meaning that God implants desires in our head, our choices follow from those desires (and thus not from God), thus God is only an intermediary, and not a direct agent, of our action. He takes "determinism" to mean God acting in every way, a concept which he calls heresy and Hyper-Calvinism (it is).

Flagg

Then explain Romans 9.

figuer

But I don't claim that their god is disproved, simply that their interpretation of their belief is self-contradictory.

Voice of reason

I used to be Calvinist. The Calvinist god is not malevolent but, sovereign. For an analogy bacteria to men are as men are to god.

Men have no problem doing experiments on and with bacteria and we do not consider ourselves malevolent for it. This is how it was explained to me.

As far as free will goes the Calvinist does not believe in free will concerning being with god god chooses men men do not choose god. There are different sects so to speak of calvinist and some have different interptations of scripture.

The biggest problem I saw is a contridiction in if men have no free will then how are they resposible for their actions? I was always told it is a paradox but you are, which made no sense to me and was one of the many reasons I left christianity.

figuer

Typical of Calvinistic analogies it is shallow and flawed. If men created the bacteria needlessly, for their entertainment purposes, just to torture some of them that is not simply being sovereign, it is being sadistic. If men implanted in bacteria the idea that a particular action is evil, and then performed such action in the bacteria, then from the bacteria's perspective men are evil.

In calvinist mythology god is a sadistic entity who creates some beings for the only purpose of torturing them, through no fault of their own since they are mere puppets without will, and who has also programmed some humans to view him as evil.

Toto

moving this to GRD

Reason

The only "shame" any of us should feel for "deconverting" from xitianity is that it took us so long--In my case, 40 years. But, thank Bob I am free, free, free from this world of insanity called xtianity; been washed in the light of reason, been born again.

Voice of reason

The Calvinist response would be something like this.

God did not create men needlessly god has a plan and man does not torture the bacteria but uses them for his purpose the same as god does with humans.

I would say that the bacteria who were of the elect would not call man evil but soveriegn? Now the non-elect would of course label man as evil.

One of the other reasons I seperated from christianity is when I went to look for concrete evidence to share the gospel (the existence of Jesus) I found no convincing evidence at all. Not even close to what I had been told.

Chadley Krakka

The reason why I'm "ashamed" is because when I was a Christian that issue seemed to trouble me so much when other Christians have no problem with it and are able to continue the faith. I thought that a "better" reason to leave Christianity is to cite the lack of empirical evidence etc etc.

I would like to ask this about Calvinism.... Isn't this discussion ultimately about the nature of God, as to whether it is logical for God to have all his purported three attributes of Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnibenevolence?