RE: What do moderates think Jesus died for?
January 10, 2019 at 3:35 am
(This post was last modified: January 10, 2019 at 3:54 am by The Grand Nudger.)
(January 9, 2019 at 10:54 pm)tackattack Wrote:(January 9, 2019 at 9:47 pm)Jehanne Wrote: In my opinion, only atheistic materialists can presume the existence of free will; theists are trapped by fatalistic, divine foreknowledge, which led John Calvin to conclude that even some individuals who die in infancy are predestined to eternal Hell.
How am I trapped by fatalistic, divine foreknowledge?
I believe Coercion negates responsibility. I believe people sin willfully. I believe it is in their nature to sin and yet their desire can be to overcome that sinful nature. I don't see any of that as contradictory, but I'm open to refutation.
Fatalism is the notion that things are going to happen exactly according to some x. You could go left or right..but..ultimately, you'll end up where you were always going to. Fate is all.
So, people willfully sin..okay. It's their nature...okay. They can overcome their natures (dodgy, lol..but ok). So what? God knows who's going to heaven and hell before they're even born. That's your fate, and fate is all. To change your fate would be to disprove gods omniscience. We perceive more choice in this than we actually have, lol. There's no proving omni-god wrong by being on his pre-natal shitlist and then...choosing to overcome your "sinful nature", and ending up going to heaven. Omni-god either knows that this would always happen, or it doesn't (and thus..isn't, as in, isn't omni god at all). You were fated to hell(or heaven), or you weren't. There would be no better demonstration of the reality of fatalism than a being which knew everyone's fate.
Additionally...if you believe that coercion negates responsibility, then you need to have a chat with the author of this world and our "natures"....and the salvatory plan. This is why (and how) such gods trap their adherents into contradictory rounds of fatalism while shifting responsibility to the lowly human worm who most assuredly does not and cannot see the train coming, nor could he jump off the tracks even if he did....and supposing that he could and did by being shown a train hitting him...was he not coerced then, too....and was that always going to happen?
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