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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.
And my response to this is: "So what? If I'm destined for eternal hell in 80 years I want to have an absolute blast before I die and being around people just like me will help with that." Signalling that I'm the kind of person going to hell is a good way for us hellbound to recognise each other and get together so that we can turn our lives into one continual orgistic rave of pleasure that we couldn't if we were all separated from each other. It far beats living a life of austerity and then ending up in hell anyways.
Dude, TDT. If you sin, then you are the kind of person God would have condemned to hell in the first place. If you don't, you are the kind of person who would be saved.
Think of it this way. There are two instances of you; one in the real world, and another one that God is simulating to decide whether to predestine you to heaven or hell. They are both sufficiently similar that they cannot logically choose different actions. If you sin, then you live in a universe where the copy God is simulating sinned as well, and you are going to end up in hell. Conversely, if you are virtuous, you live in a universe where God's copy of you was virtuous, and you are going to heaven.
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