My feed brought up a link to a video where in James White (Calvinist) and Doug Wilson (Calvinist) debate each other about Child Communion (I don’t care). I was the first person in the comment’s section, and so I put on the Snark Locks Key and typed the following:

Calvinist Vs Calvinist! Each presenting the position they were determined to hold and praying that God determines the other to change his mind because we don’t have the free will to be persuaded and choose to believe!

As you can imagine, the comments under my comment have been lively. Some non-Calvinists got the gist right away. Weirdly, some Calvinists have not been as accepting of my brilliant summation.

In case you don’t get why this is funny, Calvinists teach “Divine Determinism,” which says God determines ALL THINGS, and thus we have no free will with which to make choices. It presents a world where we are actually complex robots programmed by God to want certain things, and so He uses this programming to determine everything we will think, do and believe. Calvinists will also say that it does NOT make us robots, and I suspect that the only reason they don’t like the robot analogy is because we are not run on batteries, but rather on calories, such as those contained in our daily bowl of breakfast cereal. But then they will also say that God determines even what cereal we choose each morning. I’m not even making that up.

So the Calvinists in the comments has some good things to say, and a handful of silly things to say. One simply said, “This is Arminian will worship nonsense.” And this was spot on, because of how I said in my comment that I am an Arminian who holds his free will to be the holiest thing of all (Note: sarcasm).

Another said, “You should probably make sure you know what Calvinists believe before you make silly comments like this.”

This comment was my favorite, because it made me laugh. And it made me laugh because two of the Calvinists from whom I have heard the most about divine determinism are James White and Doug Wilson. While he doesn’t know it, this Calvinist has shown up here to essentially tell me that those two men don’t understand Calvinism, because they are responsible for what I think about it. Is that irony? I think that’s irony. Someone get Alanis Morrissette on the phone…

I would like to also point out that this comment is yet another example of something that is my chief complaint about Calvinists: They argue like Atheists.

That is his ENTIRE comment up there. He didn’t tell me what I got wrong. He offers no information or correction. He merely lets me know that I don’t understand Evolution. Excuse me, I mean Calvinism. It’s the same stupid, waste of time comment I have gotten from a thousand angry atheists* about Evolution, or about the fact that Atheism has no moral foundation, and a handful of other things. They stop by to say “You’re wrong,” and then they’re gone like a fart in a hurricane.

I don’t know if these guys are in a hurry, like, they’re driving while they leave those comments and so they have to keep them short because they’re about to hit the onramp for the interstate, or maybe they’re almost out of time on their coffee break and they have to put the phone down so they can flush and wash their hands. All I know is, it seems pretty weak sauce that they can’t add another sentence so that first sentence has enough context to mean something. It’s like being handed an empty waffle cone. Why even bother?

I’m willing to learn, but if the comments section doesn’t teach me, then I guess I’ll just keep getting my information about Calvinism from people who have no idea what they’re talking about, like, oh, I don’t know… James White and Doug Wilson? Yeah. I wish I could learn the truth about Calvinism, but the comments section have left me to their devices.

I mean, I would represent Calvinism accurately if I could, but… it seems like I don’t have any choice.

*A Thousand Angry Atheists would be a terrible name for a band.