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Cake day: December 9th, 2024

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  • It’s not that you didn’t have a choice, it’s that you would’ve made that decision no matter what based on the laws of physics

    in your view, what is the difference between having a forced decision and not having a choice? and why exactly would this forced choice be punishable in the same way a free one would be?

    the point was that it was a test, god should already know who’s going to be selected, if there’s no free will, this is still all pointless.

    a calvinist would not agree that the point is a test. read up on the ‘doctrine of unconditional election’ if you are curious. in brief, god makes decisions about who is saved and who isn’t not based on conditions they follow in their life, but based on his own purposes and goals.

    If it’s predetermined, why did god make all these evil people that were just going to be miserable in hell anyway?

    this is the problem of evil, there are numerous responses and the literature is extensive. again, a calvinist would probably say that he created evil people for his glory and grace. notably, jesus dying on the cross for humanity’s sins as a display of god’s grace does not make sense without the existence of evil.



  • not a christian, but it is a problem for atheists depending on your framework of morality

    traditionally, determinism is not compatible with moral responsibility since all actions are predetermined and it is not obvious that one can be held morally responsible for them. you have to do some mental gymnastics with either the nature of causation (see hume), or the nature of morality (see error theory), or the nature of what exactly ‘freedom’ is (see john stewart mill) to resolve this incompatibility

    to the problem of the theist test, standard christian doctrine is that your fate in heaven is predetermined and individuals have been pre-chosen by god (theological term is ‘the elect’). in that sense, your worldly life is not a ‘test’, but the idea is that the holy spirit reveals god to those who have been selected.

    there are philosophical problems with all of these, but just wanted to make the point that both theist and atheist philosophers have been debating this for hundreds of years and it is not at all actually obvious accepting hard determinism solves everything.