Johnny Skeptic

Consider the following:

http://atheism.about.com/library/glo..._calvinism.htm

Unconditional Election is the doctrine which teaches that God chooses some to be saved and some to be damned. These choices are not, however, based upon any acts performed by those people or any merit which they have achieved (otherwise, there would be a violation of the principle of Total Depravity).

According to Calvinism, election and damnation are based solely upon God's will and nothing else. In fact, election and damnation were decided before the world was even created, which results in complete predestination for all humans. Somehow, though, humans are still responsible to believe in Christianity - not that this appears to do any good. Denying either is heresy, thus it is necessary to believe both, despite the fact that they contradict each other.

Johnny: Opinions please.

Toto

This is a GRD topic

EthnAlln

I have a couple of opinions. First, a great deal of the New Testament seems to say exactly this, and even parts of it that I personally interpret in the opposite sense can be twisted to endorse this view by a person who is determined to read only words and not paragraphs.

Second, I would really like to construct a theology of the SAT (in British terms, the GS-whatever thing that replaced A-levels about 20 years ago). There are some, for example, who believe that your admission to university depends on how well you do on the SAT. Those people work really hard and try to get a high score. There are others who think that the admissions committees will let you in only if you have faith and trust in them as your personal admittors. (For some reason, though, they claim you still have to take the SAT, as a formality.) Still others think that the admissions committees decided who would be admitted to university before they ever even took the SAT. Oddly enough, even these people try really hard to do well on the SAT. If you ask them why, they'll tell you that one of the ways by which you can tell whether you are going to be admitted is that the admissions committees help people to do well on the SAT after they have decided to admit them.

sharon45

Sorry, but did you mean this as your link above? http://atheism.about.com/library/glo..._calvinism.htm
The one you have posted is corrupt.

I see different examples of what I could call calvinistic belief and one of the better examples would be matthew 13:24-30, the parable of the weeds. Here we have very specific creations of those chosen to be for god and of those only to be a worthless nuisance.

sharon45

Ok, now the link is fixed since the merging of the two threads.

Lixma

Calvinism is what happens when you try to shoe-horn a moral framework into a deterministic system. The God of Calvin can often be seen throwing the DVD boxset of the Godfather into the lake of fire to punish Michael Corleone.

Wiploc

Where do you get this? I thought the elect would believe automatically, and it didn't matter what the damned did.

crc

Johnny Skeptic

I just quoted what was at the web site at http://atheism.about.com/library/glo..._calvinism.htm. I still do not understand what Calvinists claim about predestination.

EthnAlln

As nearly as I can render it into plain English (which presumes that I understand it myself—a rather weak assumption), it goes something like this.

Since the Fall of Man, all human beings are born corrupt and deserve eternal punishment in hell, just because of what they are. Therefore, God would be just and within his rights to send us all to hell without any appeal.

However, because God is merciful, he freely chose (and being omniscient, always knew he was going to choose) a certain number of people to be exceptions. Those people are going to enjoy an eternity of bliss as members of the Elect.

Just who the Elect are is known only to God, but there are certain indications whether you are or not. If you find it impossible to believe in Calvinism, for example, that's a bad symptom. God's elect find Calvinism easy to believe.

mirage