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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.
I always thought predestination was a really bad way of dealing with theological fatalism.
The Orthodox style of biting the bullet and telling you that mystery doesn't have to logically make sense is probably the solution I respect the most, but even if you're a westerner that has to find a logical trick, there's a plethora of compatibilist arguments that are all much better.
Predestination just seems poised to generate either quasi-nihilist fatalism or a belief in universal salvation that renders Christian morality moot. At least in this world.
For what it's worth, historically Reformed theologians did resort to something more like compatibilist arguments. I know this claim sounds unlikely in a world where Calvinists proudly adhere to determinist views and claim there is no free will and so forth, so let me provide a source for it. Unfortunately, it turns out that through liberal theology on the one hand and anti-intellectual fundamentalism on the other modern Protestantism has jettisoned quite a bit of its theological tradition.
My understanding is that predestination wasn't originally interpreted by Calvinists as eliminating free will -- the argument for predestination wasn't total determinism, it was total depravity. So, the view was that people have free will (in a philosophical sense), their will is just totally entangled in sin such that it is impossible to choose the good without prevenient grace. Which, well, is essentially the Christian consensus since Augustine (at least in the West; the Orthodox are harder to pin down, though they would certainly insist that salvation is totally connected to cooperation with grace), but the unique proposition of Calvinism is that such grace is given only to the elect, and is irresistible.
This view is correct as far as I can gather from the book I linked to. Albeit with the caveat that John Calvin himself and Luther did reject the idea of free will. That being said, the book presents authors who for instance contributed to Reformed confessions and are all influential figures in the Reformed tradition, so I think it is reasonable to say that the Reformed tradition had a view similar to what you describe, even though Calvin himself did not.
I don't think there's much of a distance between the views.
It's worth noting, when you talk about people having free will, that that does not mean libertarian free will—it is fully compatible with determinism. (And yes, this fits with Augustine and others)
The Reformed theologians did affirm determinism, and had a notion of providence fully extensive over the world, such that nothing occurs without first being decreed by God. Nevertheless, @urquan is right that that is not what the word "predestination" usually referred to, it referring specifically to the choosing of people unto salvation.
To be clear, I agree that Luther and Calvin were more concerned with a moral sense of free will as you put it in another post. Actually in the conclusion of "Reformed Though on Freedom" the authors of the book touch on this topic as well:
So yeah, the view of the book which I think I agree with, isn't that Luther and Calvin were completely wrong and later generations of theologians fortunately completely rejected their view. Rather, Luther and Calvin correctly emphasized the corruption of fallen man over and against a more optimistic view of human nature that was common in the late Medieval/ early Modern period, but in doing so they made some statements that have unfortunate philosophical consequences. Later generations of theologians had more or less the same idea about the spiritual and moral consequences of sin, but were a little more careful and nuanced in working it out philosophically. While, to be clear, I don't think this should lead us to a negative view of Luther and Calvin at all, I don't think it is a completely theoretical point either. I know at least in the Netherlands, where I am from, there are some very conservative Reformed groups that fall into some sort of hyper Calvinism who would benefit greatly if they were told that contrary to popular belief, people like Gomarus and Voetius believed in free will.
Without using the words free will, what wrong beliefs do they end up having?
I guess I don't see what unfortunate philosophical consequences Luther/Calvin had.
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