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Notes -
I'm probably going to be corrected by some theology major (I don't care) but let me give my best explanation of Calvinism:
Before you're born, it's already predetermined whether you're going to heaven or hell.
"So why, pastor, should I be good and righteous"
"My son, when you sin, it reveals that you're wicked and going to hell. Best, therefore, to abstain from sin."
As a persuasive technique, this probably works just as good as anything. It's often difficult to tease out causality in noisy data. I point this out in the context of Scott's latest post. Look at the graphs here and tell me what you notice:
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/highlights-from-the-comments-on-polyamory
I notice that choosing to be monogamous or polygamous barely matters at all across many aspects of wellbeing. But there is one key difference: fertility. Polygamous people have many fewer children.
Does polygamy cause infertility or does infertility cause polygamy? Does it matter? It's extremely dysgenic and bound to go the way of the Shakers.
Calvinist predestination (which is the only truly contentious point out of the five in Calvinism) is basically Schrödinger's cat: the only way to know where one is predestined is to die, and there is a single truth value in the future which cannot be directly known from the past.
However true it may be, though, it is also possibly the single stupidest way to approach Christianity, faith, free will, and eternity.
Jesus has guaranteed that whoever turns from wickedness and asks Him for forgiveness will have eternal life in the presence of overwhelming love; the kind of love which cares for all victims of others’ misdeeds, and seeks that none should be wicked. If you ask, then, what God finds wicked, He asks you what you find wicked when others do it and asks you to shun it from your choices, now and forever.
If you consistently do really shitty things as a devout Calvinist, can you kind of deduce you’re going to hell?
It's Bayesian evidence in that direction, but God can and does save sinners, which we all were. (See Paul!)
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No. Because you don't know what's around the corner. You might have such an experience of grace next week that you're saved on the spot. You might do something even better, you might go from Saul to Paul.
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IIRC(not a Calvinist) that the answer for a doctrinaire Calvinist is no, it is not, the reprobate have no knowledge of their fate but the elect do.
Of course there are not so many doctrinaire Calvinists these days and lots of them are in cults so you can’t ask them.
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