# Calvinism or Arminianism **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 29, 2010, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/calvinism-or-arminianism/548401 "2010-07-29T01:31:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/calvinism-or-arminianism/548401/61 "2010-08-02T20:57:04Z")
**Polycarp** is correct that Christians who are not Calvinist rarely use “Arminian” to describe themselves. It seems to me that many of the philosophical conundrums of Christianity (like, say, the problem of evil) are only reconcilable with conventional human notions of morality if one assumes the existence of free will. E.g., a loving God lets bad things happen to us because he gave us free will and respects the choices we make with it. A deterministic view that some of us are saved and some of us are damned because That’s Just The Way It Is seems devoid of any recognizable moral content. Granted, the possibility exists that it may be true; this may indeed be how God structured the universe, and we’re stuck with whatever divine plan he has chosen. But that requires a level of faith that strikes me as really hard to sustain. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/calvinism-or-arminianism/548401/62 "2010-08-02T21:00:42Z")
> [@Tom\_Tildrum](#): > > A deterministic view that some of us are saved and some of us are damned because That’s Just The Way It Is seems devoid of any recognizable moral content. Granted, the possibility exists that it may be true; this may indeed be how God structured the universe, and we’re stuck with whatever divine plan he has chosen. But that requires a level of faith that strikes me as really hard to sustain. This presumes that _God_ had a choice in the matter - maybe he didn’t _choose_ to be a favorite-playing sadist, but was instead just drawn that way. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/calvinism-or-arminianism/548401/63 "2010-08-02T22:47:28Z")
Begbert, you’ve used the phrase libertarian free will several times. But when I read your posts it seems to be the same as regular free will. Is their some distinction I’m missing? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2010, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/calvinism-or-arminianism/548401/64 "2010-08-02T23:15:15Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Begbert, you’ve used the phrase libertarian free will several times. But when I read your posts it seems to be the same as regular free will. Is their some distinction I’m missing? I’ll just start out by saying that Mr. Internet can speak much more eloquently on this subject than I can. Libertarian free will is the term for “regular” free will, in that it’s free will that supposedly ‘just works’, while simultaneously denying that there can possibly be a _mechanism_ behind our thoughts. It posits that our brains are _not_ organic computers and that our decisions are _not_ the result of (relatively) orderly computation based on our memories, emotions, opinons, and thoughts to date. The main problem with it is that when people ask, “okay then, how does it work, abstractly speaking?”, the usual response usually has something to do with souls, and when it is pointed out that souls have to have some abstract mechanism too, things get progressively less coherent, and then the determinists fall upon it like slavering wolves and rip it to shreds. Good fun all around - but it leaves some people feeling a little cold to think that they lack free will. The answer to this is ‘compatiblist’ free will, which is the determinists’ answer to the free will issue. My understanding of it is that it basically says, “When I play chess against the computer, it is _choosing_ which pieces to move in order to thrash me soundly.” Perhaps surprisingly, this use of the term matches fairly well with the way we understand decision-making to work in normal life. There’s really only one major functional difference - people with libertarian free will are unpredictable, whereas people without it could in theory\* be totally predictable. This means that compatiblist free will doesn’t absolve God of the Problem Of Evil the way ‘libertarian’ free will does. - compatiblist free will allows for the possibility of some nondeterminism - pure randomity - being part of the decision-making process. Personally I think there is ample behavioral evidence that people are not in fact random at all, and if there is any randomity in our thought process it is basically minor noise in the system, which appears to me majorly-if-not-entirely corrected for internally. If it weren’t, people would be a lot more random in their behavior - possibly unable to walk in a straight line. So basically I assume we’re functionally deterministic. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2010, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/calvinism-or-arminianism/548401/65 "2010-08-03T05:20:12Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > > > But of course, too, if you do not have free will, then you cannot choose to believe in it. But furthermore, you also cannot choose to believe in the lack of free will. You cannot think at all, unless the random conditions which bind you also happen, by chance, to line up with the facts at they are. > > Exactly. This is the point I was making. > > If predestination is true then we don’t make choices (even if we might think we do). We’re just following our programing. If free will exists then we can make choices between different options. > > So when I said _“If you can choose to believe you have free will, doesn’t that mean you do?”_ I meant it as the equivalent of _“If you can choose what to have for breakfast, doesn’t that mean you have free will?”_ Right. But, when I say that I choose to believe that I have free will, I don’t actually mean that I am actually choosing to believe that. Deep down, in that part of my brain that I buried in my cellar, I know that it’s not ‘my’ choice to believe. But! I have gotten so good at pretending to believe that I have free will that I unconsciously use terms associated with it. And now you can see why I made that choice in the first place: because “I chose” is a lot easier to understand than “I did it because of a variety of factors leading to my circumstances and my thoughts on said circumstances which caused my brain to conclude that it was the thing that I would do” is. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/calvinism-or-arminianism/548401.md?page=3)