Credo quia absurdum est has a long and shameful pedigree. See, for example, the notion of Predestination. Technically, “double predestination” is the absurd part — the idea that God must’ve decided who was going to Hell long before He even created the world. It’s all but impossible to teach this idea to students, because modern people — to their credit, and for once I’m not being sarcastic when crediting modern people with anything — realize how ball-scratchingly stupid that is. Hell, maybe it’s true, but no sane person can possibly live with it.
Modern people see that as carte blanche to do whatever we want, because hey, if we do it, God made us do it … which, if you think about it for half a second, means God Himself is responsible for “sin” (quotation marks necessary, because it can’t be evil if I have no possible choice in the matter). Calvin, Knox, et al thought of that too, of course — they were crazy, not stupid — and they even had an answer: Shut up, that’s why. Not the most theologically sophisticated reasoning, but when you’re being burned at the stake for Arminianism it’s remarkably persuasive. Meanwhile, you’d best live like the holiest Puritan that ever lived … even though it’s exquisitely pointless, because you’re almost surely damned.
Severian, “Public Piety”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-01-29.
July 7, 2022
QotD: Predestination
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