Indian ring-necked parrot wants to preen his friend. (30 seconds)
Getting a head scratch: (2 minutes)
More head scratching: (1 minute)
Here’s the parrot bathing: (30 seconds)
He’s spreading wings: (1 minute)
You can see he has all his flying feathers there… that little monster could totally take off and fly around.
Happy Friday!
I spent some time last night chatting with some of my readers on Facebook, and Jeffrey Simon was one. He wrote this essay on Calvinism versus Molinism which I thought was good enough to post. I am in agreement with Jeffrey on this issue, BUT I did include some debates featuring Calvinist James White at the bottom of the post. I just wanted to present an excerpt from his essay that makes a point that I thought would get lots of responses from Calvinists. Jeffrey is quite aggressive.
The essay is here, but you have to be his friend in order to see it.
Excerpt:
When harmonizing man’s perspective and God’s perspective, the Calvinist embraces what is known as theological fatalism. They redefine free will and embrace compatibilism. Essentially compatibilism says that determinism and free will are compatible, hence the name compatibilism. In the same way that the wind blowing causes the trees to move, our desires and environment produce an effect which would be our action. When we make a decision, we could not have chosen otherwise. The Calvinist likes to say that we choose according to our greatest desire. This would explain how God is in control of everything and more specifically our salvation. How does God ensure the salvation of certain individuals? He changes their desires so they will freely choose Him. This brings up an objection though. If God desires that all are saved (1 Tim 2.4) and does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked (Eze. 33.11) and God “can save all whom He chooses to save”, then why are not all saved? The Calvinist responds by making a distinction in God’s will. While it is God’s revealed will and desire [thelo] that all men are saved, it is not His decreed will [boulomai] that all will be saved. Essentially, God desires that all are saved and has a general love for the reprobate, but He has predestined them to Hell because His will [boulomai] trumps His desires [thelo]. Within Calvinism, there is a smaller section that claims regeneration logically precedes faith. Because we are “dead” in our sin, we must be made alive or regenerated before believing. How can a dead man believe and make himself alive? In the same way that Lazarus was commanded to be raised from physical death, we are commanded to be made alive (through regeneration) from our spiritual death.
In my estimation, the main problem with Calvinism is that it embraces a causally deterministic system. How can we freely make decisions yet God determined them for us? It is not a mystery, but rather a contradiction. In fact, at this point Calvinists are in agreement with naturalists because nearly all naturalists embrace compatibilism or determinism due to the fact that naturalism implies physicalism or materialism. Now, imagine reading through the Bible with the idea that free will does not exist. It is rather dizzying to imagine such a thing! Dr. William Lane Craig sums it up nicely when he says,
”Universal, divine, causal determinism cannot offer a coherent interpretation of Scripture. The classical Reformed divines recognized this. They acknowledge that the reconciliation of Scriptural texts affirming human freedom and contingency with Scriptural texts affirming divine sovereignty is inscrutable. D. A. Carson identifies nine streams of texts affirming human freedom: (1) People face a multitude of divine exhortations and commands, (2) people are said to obey, believe, and choose God, (3) people sin and rebel against God, (4) people’s sins are judged by God, (5) people are tested by God, (6) people receive divine rewards, (7) the elect are responsible to respond to God’s initiative, (8) prayers are not mere showpieces scripted by God, and (9) God literally pleads with sinners to repent and be saved (Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension, pp. 18-22). These passages rule out a deterministic understanding of divine providence, which would preclude human freedom” (The Only Wise God).
If God has determined our every thought and action, yet those nine things hold true, then it turns the Bible into a charade. How can anything be expected of us if we can’t make decisions? In response to this, the Calvinist may say “so what”. It may violate our fallen sense of justice, but God can do as “He pleases and no one can hold back His hand or say to Him: ‘What have You done?’” (Dan 4.35). God can determine us to do immoral things and hold us responsible because He is God. In fact, in the Book of Acts when Peter and John are talking about Christ’s crucifixion, they say that God “anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever His hand and His purpose predestined to occur.” Even though God predestined them to crucify Christ, they were held responsible. While this is possible it surely does not seem plausible. Turning to the book of Judges, for example, we would find ourselves asking why God determined Israel’s rebellion so many times. One only has to retort, so God is the author of evil, then? If I were to pick up a stick and use it to move a rock, what moved the rock? Technically the stick moved the rock; however, no one would say that. I moved the rock by picking up the stick and using it. It is no different with God. Surely those men crucified Christ, but it was really God behind the scenes. This intrudes upon the holiness of God because He cannot stand sin (Psalm 5.4) and cannot even tempt man (Jas 1.13) yet alone causally determine evil. Continuing, let’s take this causally deterministic system and God’s will as described by Calvinists to its logical conclusion. First of all, as I just mentioned, the biggest problem is that God becomes the author of evil. Second of all, there can be no “well-meant offer” of the Gospel to all persons if God has determined their destruction in hell. In regards to God’s will, a better way, I think, to understand it would be that while God desires all men to be saved, His will is to save those who believe. This does well with texts that say that God desires that all men are saved (1 Timothy 2:4) and does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11) (and it also does not make God look hypocritical). There are numerous texts where God exhorts people to believe, yet they reject Him. For example, in Isaiah 5 God is disappointed with Israel because of their continuous sin and He asks what more could He have done for them. God had provided all the means for godly living, yet Israel rejected Him. Why would God waste His time with people whom He predestined to Hell and had no chance of salvation? Also, if it’s God’s “secret” will to save some and damn some, then how can anyone know about it?
Is there anyone on the Calvinist side reading this who can explain how people can be responsible for sinning if they have no way to avoid it? I am not sure if a person can be responsible in that case because the only way that they can not sin is if God does something, and he chooses not to do it. It’s like giving a person a final exam but locking them out of the classroom all semester long.
Actually, I can see how that might actually be offensive to atheists, as in this debate between William Lane Craig and Edwin Curley of U of Michigan Ann Arbor.
Probably the best way to settle this is with debates. But I think that the only Calvinist who has debated on this issue is James White. So I put his debates below. I don’t think that famous Calvinists like Mark Dricoll and even Wayne Grudem defend Calvinism in formal public debates. Can anyone point out any debates that I may have missed? I want formal debates with good scholars on either side so I can make sure that my mind was made up based on evidence.
Related posts
Take a look at what a new study shows about UK’s National Health Service. (H/T ECM)
Excerpt:
Financial pressures may mean junior doctors are not given training posts within the NHS and the overall number of places at medical school could drop, a report has said.
This is despite extra burdens on the health service, including European rules limiting doctors’ hours, more hospital admissions and people living longer than ever before, according to the study from the UK Royal Colleges of Physicians (RCP).
Those specialties dedicated to looking after very ill people are facing particular strain, it said.
Dr Andrew Goddard, RCP director of medical workforce, said the combination of factors was ‘adding further stress to a system which may reach breaking point within the next few years’.
In 2009, the number of consultant posts created across the UK increased by 10.2 per cent.
However, financial pressures on the NHS mean that rise may not continue and there are ‘growing fears’ of a lack of training posts for young doctors.
Dr Goddard said: “We have already seen a drop in the number of new posts being advertised in 2010, and although we have enough doctors in training to develop a consultant-delivered NHS, these doctors need to have jobs to go into if this service is to be realised.”
The latest study comes after the RCP in England warned last week of patients being left in the hands of junior doctors because of inadequate consultant cover on weekends.
And here’s how it works out in Canada, which is a pure single-payer system – the kind that Democrats want to enact here in the USA.
Excerpt:
It’s no surprise to Thelma Lee that emergency room wait times are not meeting provincial targets.
Lee said her 41-year-old daughter, Marlene Stephens, died Saturday after waiting nearly 90 minutes at the William Osler Health Centre’s Etobicoke campus emergency room with breathing problems.
Lee feels her daughter was not seen fast enough by medical staff.
“They didn’t touch her,” said the grieving Lee. “She was crying out, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’. . . Nobody attended to my daughter.”
On Monday, Auditor General Jim McCarter released his annual report which found that despite putting an extra $200 million into shortening emergency room wait times over the last two years, “significant province-wide progress has not yet been made.”
“Complaints about overcrowding and delays in hospital emergency rooms have persisted for years,” McCarter told a news conference on Monday.
Emergency room waits for people with serious conditions sometimes reached 12 hours or more, the report said. That is far greater than the province’s 8-hour wait time target, the report found.
And for emergency patients who need a hospital bed, they waited on average for about 10 hours but some waited 26 hours or more, according to the 2010 Annual Report.
“Our audit found that wait times for patients with less serious ailments have been reduced somewhat,” McCarter said. “However, there has been only minimal progress in reducing wait times for patients with more serious conditions.”
If this woman had offered to BUY her own health care in Canada, she would have been ARRESTED. That’s “equality” in a socialist system. Everyone has an equal right to scream in agony while waiting in line for a doctor. And the most productive people have the additional joy of shoveling half of their salaries into the coffers of bureaucrats to waste on expensive family vacations at taxpayer expense.
In fact, the provincial government of Ontario is very busy right now trying to push a gay rights curriculum onto grade 1 students (and up) in public and private schools – that’s what they do with the money that Canadians are forced to pay them – they BUY VOTES FROM LIBERAL SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS SO THEY CAN GET RE-ELECTED. They don’t have money for health care. They have their hands full with social engineering.
When you give the government your money, it’s theirs to spend on whatever they want – while you die on an emergency room floor. When you keep your money in your own pocket, you get to use it to buy whatever you want – including life-saving medical care.
And do you know where the Liberal Ontario bureaucrats go when they need health care? The United States of America! Dying is for the plebians – the elites go to the capitalist health care system down south. Equality for thee, not for me.
Do not vote for secular leftists – if you value your life – DO NOT DO IT.
