Breaking the free will of his creatures is not logically impossible — Agustino

Why not?

Why? Nothing is impossible for God - theoretically. Practically God would not break his creature's free will - but He could do it theoretically. — Agustino

Quite the voluntarist conception of God you have there. Aquinas would not approve.

I don't think God can create a square circles, perform evil, or make 2+2=5, among other impossible things. Perhaps you should tell me what work the word "theoretically" is supposed to be doing, though.

A most clever and ironic juxtaposition of the word tulip with the unsavory doctrines of Calvinism. (Y)

God could force them to believe in Him and thus be saved — Agustino

I think that would violate his nature, so I don't think he could do this.

And it's had an enormous impact on conservative Christianity — Wayfarer

An oxymoron. Calvinism is in fact a quite radical form of Christianity, for it breaks, and conserves little, from Christianity as it existed for 1500 years. It came as a form of protest, like all forms of Protestantism, of what Christianity hitherto was and meant.

There's a deep historical back-story to how it got this way. That is explained in Michael Allen Gillespie's The Theological Origins of Modernity — Wayfarer

Does he argue that Calvinism accepts nominalism?

It seems odd to claim that these atheists you refer to do not enjoy living. — jorndoe

You're moving the goalposts. I never claimed that atheists do not enjoy living. Most, if not all, will tell you that they do enjoy living. I'm saying that life itself is not worth living absent the hope and possibility of salvation. Life isn't self-justifying, or at least human life isn't, for nothing in life can serve to justify it without begging the question. And without salvation, we have nothing to compare it to and so no reason to affirm it. We also have the choice to live or die and the choice to create more life or not. To affirm life in either of these two senses requires some sort of justification. Salvation's possibility once again provides that justification, such that to reject it is simultaneously to reject any reason to live and/or procreate.

We don't live in anything like the best of all possible worlds. It appears rather as the worst of all possible worlds, for if it were any worse, it would obliterate itself as opposed to maintaining a steady equilibrium of violence and suffering. Slow torture and decay is always worse than a quick death. Life is characterized by dukkha, as the Buddhists would say, and so exists in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction and suffering. Living things perpetually desire to be sated from hunger, for example, and yet they never fully will be. To cease being hungry would be to cease being a living thing. Life is therefore a business that does not cover the costs, as Schopenhauer says. It is a problem to be solved and a predicament from which one needs extricated, the solving and extrication of which being what salvation amounts to, generally speaking. Religions simply provide more specific models of how it can be achieved.

I see. Well, Calvinism is a rather nasty form of Christianity, in my estimation, and certainly not normative.

Yes, but once you have committed a mortal sin then? — Beebert

Then you should repent, otherwise you're damned. Or at least, for all we know you will be. It's still ultimately up to God.

He has surely committed many mortal sins during a period of 10 years after he first realized the gospel was true. Is he damned? — Beebert

Dubitable. He would have to meet all three criteria, remember, which is rather difficult to do. You mentioned things like fornication and gambling. These types of sins are nigh impossible to commit with deliberate consent, given the reasons and circumstances usually involved in committing them.

Is he damned? — Beebert

If he repents, no. But he may need to spend a long time in purgatory to amend his life of debauchery. Thus, he can't escape being judged for his actions.

Not easily communicable? — Heister Eggcart

And perhaps not at all.

Who here is failing to make this communication of the truth, God? — Heister Eggcart

Let me ask you a question: do you think the truth is capable of being exhaustively expressed in language? If you answer in the affirmative, then, if I asked you to express it and you declined, you would either know the truth and are merely withholding it from us for some reason or you would be obliged to say that we haven't yet discovered it all. But then notice in the case of the latter that it takes a leap of faith to believe that the truth can be exhaustively communicated through language in the future, since it hasn't happened yet. If you answer in the negative, then you already admit the existence of mystery and of the possibility of God, if he exists, to disclose certain truths, such as those about suffering, by means that are not easily or not at all capable of being communicated.

Aye, arguments that are put forward in words that are in favor of something which words can't make intelligible. — Heister Eggcart

An odd complaint. Can words ever make anything fully intelligible? All words are generalized, mediated abstractions from perception, not to mention wherever else they may derive.

God does indeed violate a being's will, in that he denies one's will to ever be and never to not be — Heister Eggcart

But this is incoherent. There couldn't be a will to be or not to be, for that entails that an agent exist before he can decide to exist, which is impossible.

I do think that if you rule out talking about unborn children, you ought to rule out the strangeness of talking about "yourself" after you'd already be dead. — Heister Eggcart

"Unborn child" is a category that exists, provided we're talking about fetuses and embryos. But yes, I do deny that there exists anyone to consent or not consent to being born, for the same reason given above. That being said, I don't why you think this then entails my ruling out one's existence after death, unless you assume that death results in non-existence. In other words, if death results in non-existence, then positing an afterlife would amount to saying that it is possible to exist after you exist, which is just as impossible as existing before you exist. But I don't say that death necessarily results in non-existence. I haven't made up my mind, and whatever conclusion I reach, I couldn't ever know for sure until I died.

I might also mention that I'm not a Christian. I'm just taking such a position for the sake of argument.

Okay, so let us assume that this grace is once offered. Man realizes it, but for some reason rejects it. What happens to him? Say that he is young, 20 years old. And a decade later at 30 he realizes his mistake, and wants salvation and God. He begs for mercy. Will God grant it to him or ignore him? Is he damned or not? — Beebert

Grace and mercy are not offered once. They are continually offered, since God's nature doesn't change. God's nature is goodness itself, so God can only will the good, which is to say, he can only love. Salvation then consists of accepting his love. All of this is to say that, no, the person in your example is not damned. But there are two points I think need making in relation to this answer. First, we don't ultimately know who or whether anyone will be damned. That's up to God. Second, one isn't damned by rejecting God's grace after realizing it. Indeed, that is self-contradictory, for if you've realized God's grace, then you haven't rejected it. Rather, the only way to reject God is to commit mortal sin. The three criteria for what constitute a mortal sin are that the act is intrinsically evil, that it was done with full knowledge, and that it was done with deliberate consent. So it's actually rather difficult to be damned.

Because surely, the will can not just turn to God by itself. — Beebert

Not by itself, no, for that would be Pelagianism. God wills that all men are saved, which initiates our salvation. But we are then free to accept or reject this grace. God cannot force us to do one or the other. Moreover, such "acceptance" is not solely intellectual assent to a series of propositions (dogmas) but also a mode of living grounded in the sacraments.

So, an unreasoned reason? — Heister Eggcart

No, an undisclosed reason and one that is undisclosable in the sense of not being easily communicable to other people, I would say.

Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if someone found a shot in the dark to be unreasonable. — Heister Eggcart

I don't see this as a response what I said.

This life after which also is unreasonable and cannot be reasoned to be true or even potentially more true than any other future after death. — Heister Eggcart

This isn't true. In the history of philosophy, there have been many arguments given in favor of an afterlife, or put differently, the existence and immortality of the soul. You can disagree with them, but only after you've acknowledged and made a charitable attempt to understand them.

If God has the power to remedy, he must also have the power to prohibit, yes? — Heister Eggcart

No, I don't see that that follows. You'd have to be more specific. God cannot violate a being's will, for example.

The point being that people make apple pie from scratch all the time. People also demonstrate points all the time without litigating the definition of existence — Reformed Nihilist

And they're probably wrong to, as it's just lazy and welcomes misunderstandings. I'm guilty of it for sure. Regardless, I'm going to stick with what is, for me, the self-obvious point that non-existence has neither positive nor negative value.

Job is a fine story up until you realize there's no tangible justification on God's part for condemning Job in the first place. — Heister Eggcart

How do you know that? No reason is given that we know of. There is a reason, but it will not be revealed to everyone in this life, and to those for whom it is revealed, I doubt it could be put in a syllogism that everyone would find convincing. For everyone else, there is the hope that it will be revealed in the life to come. Secondly, why do you assume God condemns him? In the story, it's Satan who brings about Job's misfortunes, not God.

One has to agree on definitions before arguments can be made. If we don't agree on what words like "existence" and "non-existence" entail, then we won't get to the arguments that employ them. We can go no further. This is unfortunate perhaps, but that's how philosophy goes sometimes. It's not the worst thing in the world to have someone disagree with you on the Internet.

It doesn't really matter to me how you answer that — Reformed Nihilist

Lol, so why ask it?

but I will disagree with you that I can't choose which case is preferable to another. — Reformed Nihilist

You do that.

They are two different states. — Reformed Nihilist

No they aren't. Non-existence isn't a state anyone is in. To be in a state, one must first exist.

which is about as unsubstantial and underwhelming as you can get — Heister Eggcart

For what reason it is unsubstantial and underwhelming?

I can't, if we can't even agree that existence and non-existence aren't comparable.

I judge life to be preferable to the alternative — Reformed Nihilist

I've already replied to this statement. I can go no further in answering your original question until you address my reply.

Hence the rest of that sentence you quoted.

As far as I'm concerned, life is worth living because it is superior to the alternative. — Reformed Nihilist

Which is what? Non-existence? That has no value and you've never experienced it, so you can't compare it to existence. The only way to find out would be to commit suicide, but even then, you'd have to assume that there is no afterlife before committing the act.

Or that.

You're right, thanks. I thought about the instrument I play before I remembered the cherub's was a lute.

Mine is Musician Angel (1520) by Rosso Fiorentino. I like the melancholy expression on the cherub's face and the fact that he's playing a lute. My state of mind is often similar to that reflected by his expression, and I also play guitar in a black metal band, which is a melancholy genre of music.

What bothers me is that why do we still let those criminal elements of society to operate freely? Should we not clamp down on these elements? — Question

Probably because local governments and police forces are, in part, implicated in such dealings or blackmailed. I want to say, though, that organized crime has taken a huge hit in recent decades. The romanticized age of the Italian gangster was more or less dead and buried by the 1990s.

And for the matter, why is pornography often called by it's less pejorative name as 'adult entertainment'? Isn't that like a kick to the face to a supposedly well rounded and good 'adult' to need entertainment that is so low in regards to morality? — Question

its*

But excellent point and well said. It's quite an ironic euphemism.

I prefer apple hash.

What I am saying makes sense and is factual. We didn't consent to be born. — Andrew4Handel

....

It is irrelevant whether someone can consent to be born — Andrew4Handel

As has been said it is possible our "soul" exists before this body. — Andrew4Handel

That's what you have to argue for in order for what you say to make any sense. So get to it. What is the soul and how does it pre-exist the body?

I think it is a semantic quibble nonetheless people can't consent before they come to exist but we know they will be able to withhold consent and that we are not creating a robot. — Andrew4Handel

Except it's not. No one can exist before they exist, so you can't force the non-existent to exist. This is a logical refutation of your argument, showing that it depends on a contradiction and impossibility.

Sigh... we just had a thread on this exact topic.

The argument is bunk because there is no one to harm. QED.

So it seems to be that he considered it preferable to not have children, and yet having children was seen as blameless. — Agustino

Yes, this is basically my position now too.

Because you responded to me, silly!

Yeah, that statement is clearly false. Lots of things exist (are not nothing) that are not perceptible.

Clearly if existent means what is perceptible by the senses — Agustino

Okay, but this is clearly false.

Arguments are not instruments to prove the existence of anything. — Mariner

I don't understand this at all. How are they not?

Well yes prolonging humankind on Earth seems to be what God intended, until the end times at least. — Agustino

"But I am aware of some that murmur: What, say they, if all men should abstain from all sexual intercourse, whence will the human race exist? Would that all would do this, only in 'charity out of a pure heart, and good conscience, and faith unfeigned'; much more speedily would the City of God be filled, and the end of the world hastened." - St. Augustine

Arguments for God always beg the question. — Mariner

If by begging the question you mean the petitio principii fallacy, then I disagree. There are plenty of arguments for God that don't commit this fallacy. Even the ontological argument, if phrased in a certain way, can avoid it, despite being the classic example of an argument that allegedly commits said fallacy. If by begging the question you mean that they fail to define God, then I agree. A lot of arguments are vague on what it is they're proving.

I don't think I know enough about it to have a position on it. As a species of Platonism, I suppose I'm certainly not opposed to it.