{"id":46711,"date":"2022-07-07T01:00:57","date_gmt":"2022-07-07T05:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=46711"},"modified":"2022-07-06T14:49:02","modified_gmt":"2022-07-06T18:49:02","slug":"qotd-predestination","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2022\/07\/07\/qotd-predestination\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Predestination"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left; padding: 0px 15px 10px 0px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-48672\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400.png 400w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/QotD-thumbnail-400x400-50x50.png 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><em><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Credo_quia_absurdum\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Credo quia absurdum est<\/a><\/em> has a long and shameful pedigree. See, for example, the notion of Predestination. Technically, &#8220;double predestination&#8221; is the absurd part \u2014 the idea that God must&#8217;ve decided who was going to Hell long before He even created the world. It&#8217;s all but impossible to teach this idea to students, because modern people \u2014 to their credit, and for once I&#8217;m not being sarcastic when crediting modern people with anything \u2014 realize how ball-scratchingly stupid that is. Hell, maybe it&#8217;s <em>true<\/em>, but no sane person can possibly live with it.<\/p>\n<p>Modern people see that as <em>carte blanche<\/em> to do whatever we want, because hey, if we do it, God <em>made<\/em> us do it &#8230; which, if you think about it for half a second, means God Himself is responsible for &#8220;sin&#8221; (quotation marks necessary, because it can&#8217;t be evil if I have no possible choice in the matter). Calvin, Knox, <em>et al<\/em> thought of that too, of course \u2014 they were crazy, not <em>stupid<\/em> \u2014 and they even had an answer: Shut up, that&#8217;s why. Not the most theologically sophisticated reasoning, but when you&#8217;re being burned at the stake for <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Arminianism\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">Arminianism<\/a> it&#8217;s remarkably persuasive. Meanwhile, you&#8217;d best live like the holiest Puritan that ever lived &#8230; even though it&#8217;s exquisitely pointless, because you&#8217;re almost surely damned.<\/p>\n<p>Severian, <!--<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rottenchestnuts.com\/public-piety\/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\"> -->&#8220;Public Piety&#8221;, <em>Rotten Chestnuts<\/em><\/a>, 2019-01-29.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Credo quia absurdum est has a long and shameful pedigree. See, for example, the notion of Predestination. Technically, &#8220;double predestination&#8221; is the absurd part \u2014 the idea that God must&#8217;ve decided who was going to Hell long before He even created the world. It&#8217;s all but impossible to teach this idea to students, because modern [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,11],"tags":[52,360,1310,1462],"class_list":["post-46711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-absurd","tag-christianity","tag-puritanism","tag-severian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-c9p","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46711"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74847,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46711\/revisions\/74847"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}