CalvinDude.com

While I often joke and use satire as a rhetorical device against Arminians, one charge that Arminians make that I do take umbrage with is the claim that Calvinists are not interested in evangelism. This has been seen in the comments features of several blogs recently, such as Walter’s claim on Reppert’s blog that “I read somewhere that a Calvinist would rather cross the country to debate their theological system than cross the street to witness to someone” or Johnny Dialetic’s claim on Birch’s blog “We all know it [Calvinism] dampens evangelism and chills churches.”

The reason I take umbrage is because not only do I know more Calvinists than Arminians who are missionaries, but I know I evangelize to atheists far more than these “fine” Arminian representatives do.

In point of fact, my personal blog keeps statistics on the posts that I do. Since most of my main blog articles are cross posted on Triablogue as well (I only keep personal stuff on just my personal blog), a glimpse over them will show a fairly accurate representation of the spread of posts that I write and who the audience is.

Thus, I’ve written a total of 30 articles on Arminianism and 35 on Calvinism (and there are some posts that are archived under both, of course). In contrast, I’ve got 157 on Atheism, including 84 on presuppositionalism alone. There are another 144 on science, 45 on math, and 52 on evolution, but these don’t all fit as apologetics against Atheism. Still, 137 articles on Atheism is more than 5x the number of articles I’ve written about Arminians.

For someone who would rather cross the country to debate Calvinism than witness to someone across the street, I sure engage a lot of atheists.

So I could simply ask, how many atheists have our Arminian detractors engaged? How many people have they witnessed to, those who say that Calvinists are not interested in evangelism? And what are the odds that someone who’s writing a blog called “Classical Arminianism: A FORMER CALVINIST’S CENSURE AGAINST CALVINISM AND PROMOTION OF 5-POINT ARMINIANISM” is going to dedicate five times the volume of posts against Calvinists to posts against atheism? Or even Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, or New Agers?

Inasmuch as it has become apparent that style trumps substance in the eyes of the world Arminians who hate us with such passion, I offer evidence that the cold-blooded Triabloggers could, if need be, surrender substance for the sake of style. Thus I extend my hand toward all who were ever offended by anything I ever said by showing you this picture again:

Yes, you evil, hypocritical pseudo-Christian scum bags who have nothing better to do than denigrate Triabloggers—I love you. How much do I love you? Imagine someone who loves you as much as I do. I love you more than that, you spiteful rash-prone troglodytes.

True, it is mainly because I am such a better Christian than you that I can love someone as lowly as you are and keep this discussion so irenic; surely, all must be impressed with my awesome display of Christ’s infinite love. For, as a Calvinist, I would not be above burning you at the stake for the simple reason that you are a heretic causing harm to God’s people, but instead I find myself full of warm fuzzy feelings and cannot but admit that I love obnoxious fools who kick against the goads. Almost against my will do I love thee.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that not every single Arminian is a backstabbing strumpet posing her wares on the side of the road like the wild donkeys of old; some are high class debutants fully capable of earning a livable wage plying their trade. But they are admittedly few and far between—a natural psychological response to those who would succumb to the doctrines of Arminius is a lack of temperance in such urges.

Despite all that, nary a day goes by when I do not wake and thank God He has enabled me to love such as these. For truly, I do not think I would know how to act in public were it not for their constant barrage of meaningless ad hominem disguised as a concern that others not be offended. It is astonishing how far out of the way people will travel in order to ensure they’ve been slighted by the most trivial comment. Indeed, it is obvious they have no need for a savior; their indignation at perceived slight is so righteous it merits salvation for them!

However, none of them has ever posted an I-love-you bear like I have. My love is manifestly evident to all whereas all they can do is claim to love others. This is the most loving post they’ve ever read, and a real Christian would hang his head in shame that he didn’t think of it first.

P.S. I love you, Arminians.

I got 2000 yards today, and then a nasty surprise when I jumped out of the pool. My right calf went into a mega Charlie horse. I was stuck sitting on the side of the pool—couldn’t even stand—and had to wait for over five minutes before it finally let go. The good news is that while it was certainly the longest Charlie horse I’ve ever had, it was nowhere near the most painful.

Anyway, after my swim I went down to 7-11 and bought a pickle bag. Yes, I said “bag.” Because they don’t have them in jars there, just single serving plastic bags. I drank the pickle juice because for some reason that helps my family when we get leg cramps and such. And yes, that pickle juice never tasted so fine as it did tonight!

Unfortunately, it also shot right through me, which made the trek home from the bus stop interesting. I was hoping along on a bum right leg (I’ll probably still be gimpy in the morning) and trying to make it to the can in time. Lotsa fun, but I won’t go into further details.

All that plus I worked an hour of overtime today. Which is probably why I got the leg cramp in the first place. See, I got to the Y rather late and was trying to finish my swim in an hour and a half max so I could catch the earlier bus home. And I made it too, but my leg cramp sidelined me for that five minutes which meant by the time I got out of the Y, I knew I couldn’t make it to the bus stop in time (especially since I was gimpy then too). So, in a way, I think you could blame Bush for this.

Anyway, my total is now 30,200 yards swam leaving 1,729,800 yards to go.

I’m going to go over something Victor Reppert recently said to Steve. However, before I get into the minutia, it is important to read the entire paragraph in its context:

Pro-abortion? Come on. I think there is a reasonable doubt with respect to the claim that fetuses before a certain stage have the same right to life that infants have. However, I do think human life has great value at any stage, and once a brain develops there is no morally relevant difference between the life of the fetus and the life on an infant. Given our state of reasonable doubt, I think that we should do all we can to discourage abortions, (24-hour waiting periods are parental notification are just fine with me), but a wholesale legal ban is probably not going to do what we want it to do. (I’m not sure such a law would even be obeyed at this point). Except for late-term abortions. Those should be illegal, unless the life of the mother is endangered. That won’t satisfy movement pro-lifers, but I would consider eugenics and infanticide to be morally wrong. If we got the law the way I wanted it, the law would be far more conservative with respect to abortion than it currently is. I don’t think this issue has pride of place amongst all issues, but then I asked you about that and you agreed that it doesn’t occupy that position.

Now I realize that Reppert is responding to Steve here and wasn’t intending to offer a full-level defense of his views on abortion. However, his summary is still quite damaging to his position, and ultimately exposes many of the weak foundations of the pro-choice movement. In other words, even though this is a shortened “summary” position, the conclusions are no different then what any pro-choice advocate could expand on.

Reppert begins by saying: “I think there is a reasonable doubt with respect to the claim that fetuses before a certain stage have the same right to life that infants have.” As a philosopher, Reppert surely must be aware of the ad hoc nature of this statement. At what time, or what level of development, is that “certain stage” where human fetuses “have the same right to life that infants have” such that before that stage there remains “reasonable doubt” as to the fetus’s rights? If that stage cannot be defined, then the distinction is arbitrary and worthless.

Reppert seems to imply that the stage occurs when the brain develops, for he says, “once a brain develops there is no morally relevant difference between the life of the fetus and the life on an infant.” This, however, just moves the question back one step. Why should the development of the brain make any difference? Why not the development of the kidney or the heart?

It appears that underneath the development issue, Reppert’s idea is that a fetus gains the right to life because of cognitive ability, that is to say when the fetus demonstrates some kind of intelligence (or at the very least has the organ we associate with intelligence). But if that is the case, Reppert has an untenable position regarding basic human rights, for these rights are linked to intellect. Thus, it surely must follow that the smarter the person the more right to life the person has. So in the classic Life Boat situation, the genius must be spared and the imbecile must be thrown overboard (I use “must” in the morally obligatory sense).

Reppert might wish to argue that this sliding scale is not the case; that when an intellect reaches a certain point, all have equal rights (so that the genius is not automatically spared and the imbecile is not automatically drowned). But if he does so, he is left once more with an arbitrary cut-off point to determine when someone has enough intellect. Is it an IQ of 75? 95? Ultimately, it doesn’t matter because whatever point Reppert chooses must be arbitrary. There is no force of logical consistency behind it.

This is also seen in what Reppert says of late-term abortions: “Those should be illegal, unless the life of the mother is endangered.” But what is the tipping point whereby a pregnancy evolves from being “early-term” to being “late-term”? By that I mean what consistent and non-arbitrary feature is there to the late-term pregnancy that protects the life of the fetus that is not present in early-term pregnancies? It’s hard to see how “gestating x number of days” qualifies one for human rights when “gestating x-1 number of days” does not.

This is the classic problem the pro-choice advocate runs into. In an attempt to differentiate between the born and the unborn with regards to human rights, the pro-choice position cannot help but be arbitrary. Put it this way: there is nothing in nature that indicates at what level of development a fetus begins to have human rights. There is nothing in nature that indicates what level of cognitive faculty a fetus must have to gain those rights. There is nothing in nature that indicates where a fetus should be located in order to have the right to life. Each of these “standards” that the pro-choice advocate uses is completely invented by the pro-choice advocate himself.

An additional problem that Reppert has is his continual attempt to frame abortion in a bare legal manner. Thus, he says that “a wholesale legal ban is probably not going to do what we want it to do.” But that presupposes Reppert knows “what we want it to do” in the first place. I assume he means that a legal ban will not stop all abortions. But then a legal ban on rape doesn’t stop all rapes from occurring, yet I doubt Reppert would use that to argue we shouldn’t legislate against rape. So even retreating to bare legal issues (disregarding the fact that that which is moral is not always that which is legal) doesn’t help him.

Contrast that with the consistent position of the pro-life advocate, who argues that regardless of what the law says human rights are determined by human ontology. That is, it is the fact that an object is human that determines the object has human rights. And there is one thing that cannot be denied: an unborn human fetus is still an unborn human fetus.

The pro-life position argues that a human fetus has all the same basic human rights as an infant human, an adolescent human, an adult human, or an elderly human. Indeed, framing the issue in such a manner seems to be the only way to consistently and non-arbitrarily apply ethics to humans across the broad range of various stages of development. If object x is human, then object x has all basic human rights.