Jump to content
Goodbye Jesus

So I Saw The Theologian Guy


Kaiser01

Recommended Posts

so i went and saw the guy and turns out he has a masters in physics witch i thought was interesting.

 

i held my ground durring the debate i think i deliverd some good blows about creationism and such but what really blew my mind was he himself didnt belive in free will, in fact he thought free will was not biblical, he was a clavanist.

 

he also said he didnt belive god was all loving and he only chose to love people he wanted to. so i asked him "why does god make people just to burn for a eternity?" and he said that its all for gods pleasure....Wendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gif

 

ill need to get over the boundry of what is defined as moral and imoral but i think i have a good argument becuase ill be seeing him next week too.

 

give me some of your ideas agianst calvanism and what can be defined as moral and imoral for a god beyond time and space.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good to hear you came out of that unscathed! We have friends who are Calvanist, they made us crazy. We were Southern Baptists.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If it's all God's will and not yours, then you're an unbeliever because God wants you to be. You are where you are, and you do what you do, because it was decided so by God.

 

Btw, this is the theologian your parents wanted you to see, right? So bring back what he said and tell your parents. See if they agree with his belief.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Kaiser, sounds interesting... though annoying that you have to meet with this guy. I was Calvinist and eventually concluded that Calvinism was not the true form of Christianity. I became Catholic before jettisoning Christianity altogether. My Calvinist pastor taught us that "a dogmatic Christ founded a dogmatic church." His conception of that church was a group that holds something like the Westminster Confession. After I while I realized that what he taught implies that God must guide the church's decisions through some publicly recognized means, and that led me to become Catholic.

Some stuff that led me away from Calvinism:

1. it relies on the principle "sola scriptura," or "scripture alone." Calvinists hold that no doctrine can be justified if it is not taught in the Bible (or inferred from what is in the Bible-- which gets into tricky areas right there). But this principle does not satisfy its own requirements because it is not taught in the Bible. the New Testament privileges the traditions handed down by the apostles as well as their writings. The Catholic Church relies on a "rule of faith' of scripture, tradition, and the church's living and infallible teaching gift by which God makes sure it does not stray into error. Without the second and third of these, the Reformed emphasis on scripture alone can't work, because it collapses either into each believer's private judgment deciding how to interpret the Bible, or else it slips in chuch authority as binding on the individual conscience, without having a doctrine of the Church that supports giving it that much authority.

2. it cannot account for how the canon of scriptural books was arrived at. The same early church that put together the books of the Bible already believed in the "real presence" in the eucharist, baptismal regeneration, etc. etc. Was the early churchy already "catholic" and corrupt? Without an infallible church, there can be no infallible bible because there is no infallible list of which books belong to it except one decreed by the church. When the Reformers broke away, in fact, they dropped many books, such as II Maccabees, which has a strong proof text for Purgatory.

3. The Calvinists follow a form of the Lutheran doctrine that we are considered righteous by God because God legally counts Christ's righteousness as though it belongs to the believer. God does not consider anyone righteous because of any virtue or inner disposition produced inside that person by grace, not even faith. It's Christ's righteousness legally chalked up to the believer, not anything inside the believer that God looks at when He pronounces someone righteous, or justified. This is not scriptural. The NT as well as whole bible makes clear that God by grace makes the person holy inside, and it is because of inherent righteousness that God calls someone righteous. This is not righteousness by works, as the Reformers accused Catholics of believing. The Council of Trent has a long passage on justification that a friend and I realized was more scriptural than the Reformed doctrine. That's part of why we converted, along with the "rule of faith" issues.

4. Calvinism denies that miracles continued beyond the age when the Bible was being written. This doctrine too is not taught in the Bible, it's just assumed. Calvinists need this doctrine, though, to help ward off the claims of other denominations and religions that God works miracles in their groups.

There's lots more, but I won't make this too long.

 

As to reasons not to be Christian at all:

1. bible contradictions (lots of them can be found on this website and other ones). The bible can't be inerrant if it claims, for example, that the high priests and elders bought the field of Akaldama with Judas' money (Matthew) AND that Judas bought that same field himself (Acts). And on and on.

2. Your theologian is right that Calvinism teaches that the eternal torment of the wicked glorifies God. Really, why should any decent person latch onto such shit?

3. Your theologian may try to use the TAG argument, i.e. Transcendental Argument for God. Calvinists love it. The argument is basically that we can have no confidence in the laws of logic--they might deceive us--unless we presuppose that God is the author of logic. This argument assumes the thing it is trying to prove, because it uses logic to try to prove that we would not have logic without God creating it. In fact if you deny that logic is fundamental to all human reasoning you destroy all language because all statements become true without them. You might as well get up and walk away if someone is going to try to say that God is beyond logic or that we need to prove logic by appeal to God ('cause you're already relying on logic in the proof). Aristotle pointed out that you cannot use logic to prove the laws of logic. They are fundamental, and to demand that they be justified just shows one's ignorance.

For some more reasons check out Richard Carrier's website (can be reached through Google). He summarizes better than I can.

 

All the best, Kaiser!

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A Calvanist? You might look at the CARM(?) site. They use those arguments are I recall.

 

mwc

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good to hear you came out of that unscathed! We have friends who are Calvanist, they made us crazy. We were Southern Baptists.

 

That just made me laugh. I have to So Bap preachers in my family.

 

Actually, my first response to your post was "and that's saying ALOT"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Do you really need to meet further with him?

 

He admitted his god sends people to hell for his own pleasure. And the guy is okay with this? He may be a physicist or a theologian, but he has no common sense or integrity.

 

All this unsubstantiated doctrine is designed to do is control people through fear . People will work themselves to death (including giving money to the church) to prove to themselves that they are actually part of the chosen few. Many, arrogantly , will convince themselves that they are in the elect because of the "fruit" they bear. But that is pure arrogance - like they can discern the hand of god in their lives. Still others will live in an undercurrent of terror because they know you can never know if you will be tossed like trash into an inferno by a god that is "pleased" to do so - even though they lived a good , decent and loving life.

 

It's an awful, psycopathic system that has propagated only because of its ability to insideously control people.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you sure the professional theologian / physicist isn't really just a professional bullshit artist?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Are you sure the professional theologian / physicist isn't really just a professional bullshit artist?

 

Is there a difference?

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think just what he said about God himself sealed the deal for me. Why worship such a sadistic fuckwad?

If it's "because he'll burn you", well, one, that was already decided by the evil god that you would reject him, and two, personally, I'd rather burn than kiss his ass. But that's me.

Seriously, Calvinists have to supress or kill their empathy just to survive. Makes me ill.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No idea. It would be like being a professional seamstress and having a masters degree from MIT.

 

I've known legit theologians and they don't make house calls. None of them had masters in physics, though...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

;)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

A Calvanist? Now I REALLY wish you'd recorded it!

 

Don't Calvanists believe in predestination? Either way, I don't know if you asked him this or not, but if God is as sadistic and unforgiving as this guy seems to believe, what is the purpose of even worshiping Him?

 

Also, is this what your mother believes or did she not know he was a Calvanist? Their message tends to clash with other sects who believe in the "God is love" thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If, as the hard core Calvinists believe, god decided from the very beginning who was going to heaven and who was going to hell, then there was no need for Jesus to die on the cross as an atonement for sin since god had already made his decision anyway.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Valk0010

so i went and saw the guy and turns out he has a masters in physics witch i thought was interesting.

 

i held my ground durring the debate i think i deliverd some good blows about creationism and such but what really blew my mind was he himself didnt belive in free will, in fact he thought free will was not biblical, he was a clavanist.

 

he also said he didnt belive god was all loving and he only chose to love people he wanted to. so i asked him "why does god make people just to burn for a eternity?" and he said that its all for gods pleasure....Wendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gif

 

ill need to get over the boundry of what is defined as moral and imoral but i think i have a good argument becuase ill be seeing him next week too.

 

give me some of your ideas agianst calvanism and what can be defined as moral and imoral for a god beyond time and space.

A good example of a immoral human verison of his idea that just came to my mind, was the saw movie's. Its the same kind of thing, that he is saying about god, that John kramer did with his victims. Most people would consider the human verison bad, so it would be inconsistent to give god a free ride.

 

God is even more like Stalin in his example. Of course he would say, ohhh god created us though. But I guess abusing your kids and having no care for the human soul doesn't count as a immoral. He would have to say alot of human moral ideas about what is wrong are right, to consistently worship his idea of god.

 

His view is a bit like us humans owning a cat, just to hurt it for our pleasure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i held my ground durring the debate i think i deliverd some good blows about creationism and such but what really blew my mind was he himself didnt belive in free will, in fact he thought free will was not biblical, he was a clavanist.

 

If he's a Calvinist, then why is he wasting time trying to change your mind? If your destination is all part of God's divine plan, then he can't have any effect on it.

 

he also said he didnt belive god was all loving and he only chose to love people he wanted to. so i asked him "why does god make people just to burn for a eternity?" and he said that its all for gods pleasure....Wendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gif

 

In other words, God is a sadist.

Typical Calvinism.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

If, as the hard core Calvinists believe, god decided from the very beginning who was going to heaven and who was going to hell, then there was no need for Jesus to die on the cross as an atonement for sin since god had already made his decision anyway.

 

One more excellent example how so many have trouble connecting the dots. At the end of the day, people believe simply because they want to believe, not because it makes sense. Given this is the case, logic is a poor tool for upending poor beliefs.

 

I'm visiting my parents right now and my mother was upset this morning because someone emailed her that Obama killed the national day of prayer for xians yet sponsored a national day of prayer for muslims. When I showed her that the Muslim prayer day outside the capital was not sponsored by the government using an AP source and the WH website page which Obama supported the national day of prayer for xians, she told me she didn't beleive my sources because she has already "seen too much."

 

I let it go rather than make waves.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

he also said he didnt belive god was all loving and he only chose to love people he wanted to. so i asked him "why does god make people just to burn for a eternity?" and he said that its all for gods pleasure....Wendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gif

 

Wow, someone who actually believes what the bible has to say on this issue.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was reared a good Presbyterian. My mom's side were dogmatic Calvanistas with a vengence.

But after having grown up and looked at it and watched my Calvanist mum fall into decades of depression,

I find that the doctrines of John Calvin seem very much closer to the idea of utterly hopeless Nihilism.

Yes I dabled in punk rock, and studied heavily Nietzche, Sartre and the existensialists, but nobody anywhere comes closer in my mind to a true hard-core Nihilist than Calvin.

 

Predestination

Those who believe in predestination, such as Calvin, hold that God determined the fate of the universe throughout all of time and space before the creation. All of Man’s choices are entirely subject to divine causation. Whatever the individual wills or does, for good or for evil, is conceived as performing a functional part of God’s will or God’s plan.

 

With Original Sin, every person is understood to be born into a condition of helplessness under the power or the effects of sin;…a purely free choice of the good is not possible.

 

http://en.wikipedia..../Predestination

 

In this world view, the believer must deny existence of their own free will and abdicate their destiny to God’s plan. A believer conceives of events in the world unfolding in some manner completely external to their control. Everything that happens in the world, however immoral or horrifying must be understood as integral to the Divine narrative. A believer can not ultimately understand this narrative, but must respect it and stand in awe of it - no matter how horrific, insane, sadistic or tragic.

 

The concept of original sin is a particularly hopeless and damaging mental condition.

 

Humans are seen as being in a continual state of total depravity. A newborn baby who hasn’t done anything at all is damaged by original sin. John Calvin affirmed that original sin persisted even after baptism and completely destroyed freedom.

 

http://en.wikipedia....ki/Original_sin

 

I would contend that the idea of Original Sin, which is completely outside anyone’s control, induces and demands a state of Learned Helplessness in the believer and this can be devastating for mental health, well-being and individual autonomy.

 

Learned helplessness:

 

is a technical term in human psychology which means a condition of a human being or an animal in which it has learned to behave helplessly, even when the opportunity is restored for it to help itself by avoiding an unpleasant or harmful circumstance to which it has been subjected. Learned helplessness theory is the view that clinical depression and related mental illnesses result from a perceived absence of control over the outcome of a situation (Seligman, 1975).

 

Health implications:

Whatever their origins, people who suffer uncontrollable events reliably see disruption of emotions, aggressions, physiology, and problem-solving tasks (Roth, 1980; Wortman, & Brehm, 1975). These helpless experiences can associate with passivity, uncontrollability and poor cognition in people, ultimately threatening their physical and mental well-being.

http://en.wikipedia....ed_helplessness

 

The doctrine of predestination seems very close to the idea of Nihilism.

 

Nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more meaningful aspects of life. Nihilism can also take an epistemological form, meaning that knowledge is not possible. The term nihilism is sometimes used to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realizing there are no necessary norms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism

 

With predestination there is really nothing that can be done. You have no control and no choice in any matter, you can’t understand this worldly situation, so don’t even try. Just give up, give in, get over it and get on to the next life which will be so much better than this one. (A great con job line for anyone seeking temporal power in this world!)

 

In short, “Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here.” That is the inscription on the sign above the entrance to Hell in Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. But it might as well be the inscription on the sign above the entrance to this world if you fully subscribe to the ideas of predestination and original sin.

 

01-abandon-hope-all-ye-who-enter-here-e1285714292550.jpg?w=1000

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yep.

 

1. God has already made up his mind.

 

2. Why would you want to be aligned with such a cruel creature????? (I cannot call a creature like this God btw.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

he also said he didnt belive god was all loving and he only chose to love people he wanted to. so i asked him "why does god make people just to burn for a eternity?" and he said that its all for gods pleasure....Wendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gif

 

 

 

Wait, are Calvinists Christians? Cause this what he said doesn't sound Christian at all.....Isn't the message of Christianity that the God is all loving and forgiving?? WTF?? What's the point of Jesus' sacrifizing?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Valk0010

he also said he didnt belive god was all loving and he only chose to love people he wanted to. so i asked him "why does god make people just to burn for a eternity?" and he said that its all for gods pleasure....Wendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gif

 

 

 

Wait, are Calvinists Christians? Cause this what he said doesn't sound Christian at all.....Isn't the message of Christianity that the God is all loving and forgiving?? WTF?? What's the point of Jesus' sacrifizing?

Some christians, try to limit, god being loving or good to certain aspects to get around the problem of evil and things like that. Although it sort of turns god into superman, and not worth worship and quite frankly makes out god to be a alittle dumb.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

he also said he didnt belive god was all loving and he only chose to love people he wanted to. so i asked him "why does god make people just to burn for a eternity?" and he said that its all for gods pleasure....Wendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gifWendytwitch.gif

 

 

 

Wait, are Calvinists Christians? Cause this what he said doesn't sound Christian at all.....Isn't the message of Christianity that the God is all loving and forgiving?? WTF?? What's the point of Jesus' sacrifizing?

 

It depends on what verse you read. What you quoted is pretty much directly from romans chapter 9. As in the entire chapter is devoted to explaining why God predestines some for destruction, and why we should be okay with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So this guy basically believes in an evil God?

 

I definitely would not feel like serving a God who burns people for eternity for his pleasure, even if he was real.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I was a Calvinist my pastor attacked the "problem of evil" with this argument: God creates evil (proof text in Isaiah but I forget which chap. and verse) but is not evil, just as he creates matter but is not material. If you allow evil some autonomy, then there's an area of reality that God does not control. Calvinists' leading principle is the sovereignty of God, so they don't admit that there is anything that God does not control.

 

I once sat in on a class taught by Cornelius Van Til, a famous Calvinist apologist. Your theologian no doubt knows Van Til's work. Van Til attacked Augustine's explanation, which goes back to Plotinus, the neo-Platonist, that evil is a privation of good and therefore has no actual existence. It's just the lack of the good that should be there. So that's how Augustine justified combining the notion of a loving and all-powerful God with evil in the universe. The most perfect universe has "all levels of being" occupied, so some levels of being contain more good than others. The ones at the bottom are what we call evil.

 

Van Til said that this too does not work. Evil is outright rebellion against God, not just a lack of something. But he insisted that God wills it to exist - evil has no autonomy.

 

Van Til's opinion, in my view, helps show what is wrong with my pastor's argument above. The Isaiah passage seems to be talking about disasters and calamities but doesn't mention disobedience. But the Calvinist has to say that God is ultimately the cause of disobedience against himself, since the Calvinist cannot allow any exercise of will in the universe that is not controlled by God. So I do not think my pastor's analogy is successful - as arguments by analogy often are not successful. If God wills rational creatures to disobey him and then punishes them for the disobedience that he himself willed, then he indeed does get pleasure out of it.

 

We have to stand and fight this! "God" is much worse than Joseph Stalin. Fortunately "He" cannot exist (becuase "His" nature entails contradictions), but his servants on earth pull a lot of very heavy shit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Guidelines.