I grew up going to church but I’m not religious now and I never really understood this part.
Please, no answers along the lines of “aha, that’s why Christianity is a sham” or “religions aren’t logical”. I don’t want to debate whether it’s right or wrong, I just want to understand the logic and reasoning that Christians use to explain this.
I had a teacher in school who believed in predestination. Basically, whether you go to heaven or hell is pre-ordained before your even born and there’s nothing you can do to change it. I told him that sounded to me like I should be a Satanist because if I’m predestined for heaven I’ve worshipped Satan all my life for nothing and I get to chill in heaven. If I’m predestined to go to hell I’ve spent so much time worshipping Satan it probably won’t be too bad. I’m personally not really religious myself but I really was dumbfounded at the whole predestination thing.
That’s an… interesting take on predestination. The idea is that God already knows what you’re going to do, because he’s omniscient. It’s not a matter of just picking you and then whatever you do is fine. He already ‘knew’ what you were going to do. So if you’re good, he already knew and you’re in.
If you wanna get into a religious debate about predestination, though, strap in. It’s a doozy.
It sounds like you know more than this about me so correct me if I’m wrong but my understanding is there’s a difference between just plain omniscience (which sounds like what you’re describing in your comment, and is pretty widely accepted among Christian denominations) and actual predestination (which to my understanding is almost exclusively a Calvinist belief).
Biblically the teacher is right. God does know where you are going to end up when he creates you. That’s the doctorine.
that… does not sound right. humans have free will
Humans believe they have free will. If you think that you have free will, in what way does that differ meaningfully to you from actually having free will?
This gets weird, because the human brain appears to make decisions unconsciously before you consciously make that choice. It appears that our “rational” , thinking brain is making up reasons why we did a thing, rather than those reasons actually driving the choice. So did you–the consciousness that you conceptualize as being yourself–really make that choice, or is there some other ‘dark’ you that’s driving, and you only think you’re in control?
One view is that God knows how people will end up not because He is forcing them to act a certain way, but because He has a perfect knowledge of the outcomes of their actions. Kind of like how a parent knows what the outcome of a small child’s actions will be.
You’re not a parent, are you? 😁
I’m not the commenter but it seems fairly obvious what they’re saying.
The child doesn’t know that touching the hot stove will burn them, but you do because you have a lifetime of experience.
To add to this: To the child, it’s essentially magic that you know exactly where the heat starts, and how you have the ability to boil water.
If you’re saying it in a light-hearted ‘lol kids are chaos’ way then yeah.
Sounds like your teacher followed the calvinist branch of Christianity then?
Predestination (in terms of religious salvation but also in general, like in determinism) is something that I always found fascinating. Because, if you are predestined to something (either to salvation or two just wake up today), why do we even try so hard if the outcome is already preset? Why try to be a good person if you are already destined to go to heaven or hell since you’ve been born? Or why do you set the alarm to wake up early in the morning and go to work if you have no influence on what will happen? Couldn’t you just sleep the whole day and the result would be the same because it’s already preset?
I guess you wouldn’t really have that choice. If a full determinism is true, there is no room for free will and even trying to affect the result is something you are already predestined to do and any choice you think you make (or even vacillating over the choices you make) is still something you were predestined to do and only an illusion of free will.
He sure did! And yeah, that’s pretty much how I felt about his beliefs. If everything is decided already, then there’s no point in having any motivation to do anything because it won’t matter. Your destination is decided no matter what, so just do whatever you want regardless of if it’s morally just or not.