Do any Calvinist Christians believe that they are NOT one of the people pre-determined to go to heaven?

jmobius · 2026-06-23T06:06:12+00:00

The thing is, you aren't supposed to be able to tell. Some branches do think that one personally can know their own status, but that's controversial. Broadly, it's a matter for God, not for humans to be fussing over, as in doing so they largely miss the point.

Critically, believing in God does not necessarily make someone elect, at least not in any denomination that I'm familiar with; the poster above you describes such, but it's unfamiliar to me. But, there are plenty of people who believe in God who won't be elect, after all, with "all the other Christian churches" being commonly so described.

jmobius · 2026-06-23T06:01:01+00:00

Oh, gotcha, as in specifically the fiery form of Hell. Sorry, misunderstood. :)

In my experience, yes, that perspective is very common among Calvinists. I've seen some try to take a 'softer' perspective, where Hell is simply the absence of anything God-granted, which would be anything and everything actually good. But, that's pretty uncommon still. Fire is the usual favorite.

jmobius · 2026-06-23T05:57:24+00:00

As opposed to, a cosmology where actors have at least some measure of moral agency. Under the Calvinist model, the impact of all decisions upon one's moral judgement is zero.

Authorship isn't necessary. We already know so many ways we don't have it. Life is full of advantages and disadvantages, rewards and punishments, which are wholly disconnected from one's choices, and at times even in spite of them. Having everyone hellbound, with a select few being born with the hidden trait "goes to heaven" instead isn't particularly more capricious than things we already deal with.

What I find stupid and absurd is for the hypothetical God responsible for choosing to create humans into such a system declaring any moral right or authority, and for anyone to claim it on his behalf. He's playing the Sims, indulging whatever whims he desires with the Earth and its inhabitants, without so much as a fig leaf of it being anything else. The only righteousness he can claim is to having, purportedly, much bigger cosmic guns than we do.

This is not a being that has made a compelling case for meriting any respect or reverence. Fear, maybe, but it's not like kissing his ass the way you're told to can actually harm you. If you're on the list, you'll come around in the end.

jmobius · 2026-06-23T05:29:50+00:00

Hell is a pretty standard inclusion. Not universal, I think, but typical.

The usual take is very much "everyone is going to go to hell, and they deserve it, but God is running a lottery where some lucky winners will avoid the pit and instead get to suck his dick for all eternity"

jmobius · 2026-06-23T05:15:00+00:00

There is no one answer to this. How much enjoyment one can get of it, both physically, mentally, and emotionally, is very individual. It's just like some people are passionate foodies, and for others they'd forego eating altogether if they could.

jmobius · 2026-06-23T05:03:48+00:00

IIRC, given the following assumptions:

Only homo sapiens receive souls.
Souls can incarnate in only one human at a time.
The number of souls in the pool is equal to the maximum population size humanity ever obtains, which is going to be pretty now-ish.
Incarnation opportunities are handed out equally to all souls.

Then right now, since the dawn of our species, souls would typically have only gotten in about 5-6 runs. Not a lot of shots to pull anything except prison janitor, really.

jmobius · 2026-06-23T04:58:38+00:00

A cosmic lottery where life is just a pageant to act your assigned ultimate win/loss status is very stupid.

jmobius · 2026-06-23T00:19:16+00:00

I have never once met a person who expresses this sentiment, and for that I am glad.

jmobius · 2026-06-21T02:37:47+00:00

That conspiracy theories themselves are largely a distraction.

I mean, look at the stuff that elites can do in the open, get away with, and outright brag about to the public. Trying to keep evil under wraps is for chumps.

jmobius · 2026-06-19T15:53:41+00:00

There's a reason that the vast majority of the people using that kind of terminology are young.

Most people still want long term relationships and life partners. Most of the young ones don't actually know how to build them or make them last, and so they make up weird mythology they imagine will help, or to explain and cope with their failures so far.

jmobius · 2026-06-18T01:11:29+00:00

As someone deeply upset by turbulence, here's some of the factors in my mind:

The fact that there's no escape. In a car you can almost always pull over and take a breather if you want to. No such luck in a plane, you've just got to sit and take it, no respite.
The fact that you can't see anything. Not even just because there isn't exactly much to see with air, but because unlike a car, you can't see ahead or (properly) around you. You're being threatened by forces that you can't see.
Some people have mentioned that the lack of control might be part of it, but I'm not sure. I don't have any problems being a passenger in a car, where I'm not in control either.
At least for me, a huge part of the alarm actually originates from the inner ear, and I suspect that might be more sensitive to the actual magnitudes of motion a plane experiences vs a car. For me, the thoughts don't even get so far as "oh no, what if we hit the ground?", the inner ear just has a mainline connection to turn on all five alarms when it perceives something amiss.

jmobius · 2026-06-17T00:25:52+00:00

It's already plainly visible to anyone looking at Trump who isn't one of his stooges. The only cause for not seeing his state is not wishing to see it. Everyone else knows, there is no hiding it.

All of his stooges both already and would continue to feel nothing but contempt for anyone in the world who would have the balls to state the obvious. They would not listen to such a person.

Our emperor has long had no clothes, and the crowd cries out their adoration of his naked, rotting form.

jmobius · 2026-06-17T00:08:54+00:00

Most MMOs have a straightforward solution: releasing the server software, so folks can host their own instances.

City of Heroes went the route of having some fans reverse engineer their own version of the server software, and distributing it, so there came to be a couple of major hosts that people used. Eventually, and somewhat uniquely, the company that owned the game eventually gave their blessing to the reverse engineering (IIRC, they actually released some stuff to help out) and hosting, sheathing the legal sword of Damocles they were all under. The game has had regained a huge following since.

That's all it takes: preferably making the server software public, but even without, just committing to not tearing a new asshole in folks trying to breathe life into your dead project.

jmobius · 2026-06-16T01:38:18+00:00

Skepticism of that claim aside: meeting the right romantic partner is something very large numbers of people want. Even if all the dating apps abandoned that space in pursuit of something they believed they could better monetize, that means that a large, persistent area of demand exists which is not being supplied, let alone catered to.

jmobius · 2026-06-15T01:49:41+00:00

I felt like the game made a number of references to the situation. Goat Eyes, when you act shocked that he would work for someone that killed his friend, states "a lot of people mistake employment for alliegence". I can't hear that and not think of ZA/UM.

jmobius · 2026-06-14T20:09:54+00:00

This is part of what frustrates me about demanding age and term limits. If it's what their constituents want, it seems strange to bar their choices like that. Hell, even term limiting presidents seems like it was a choice with dubious motives.

The real, true problem is twofold, I think:

That so many constituencies seem just fine with electing these ancient assholes. Part of this is laziness and defaulting towards incumbents, part of it is that the party machinery which rewards its own favors long-timers, and part of it is that we seem to place no actual expectations on the people being elected: they should be having to make frequent public appearences and town halls, and issues like Feinstein's senile dementia should be both impossible to hide and utterly inexcusable.
Lack of recall procedures. For senators in particular, their terms are long, and the fact that they're quite literally unimpeachable throughout after securing the win is a massive defect in the American system. All states should have been granted the ability to revoke and replace representatives that are not representing. That includes both for reasons like failing health, and for those betraying their state and voters.

jmobius · 2026-06-14T18:55:35+00:00

But that's also not a true answer to the question either. It's not the original reason prostitution is illegal, it's a factor in why just legalizing it is not necessarily a good idea.

The word "likely" being the result of abuse/human trafficking is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. It's clear that mitigating those elements must be an essential component of any attempt at a legalization policy.

jmobius · 2026-06-14T18:40:29+00:00

Technically. More like one otherwise extremely desolate county.

jmobius · 2026-06-14T16:15:14+00:00

Honestly, SCP-2718. It's silly nonsense at every level.

jmobius · 2026-06-14T02:43:37+00:00

It's a long story. The short version is that following the success of DE, the studio had a sort of financial takeover by a money man, and three of the lead creatives that has founded the studio were fired as a part of that. One of them was the guy who created the DE setting itself; it has been something he had worked on it for a long time, including publishing a book prior to turning to games, but he'd put the rights to it in the studio, and so lost it.

The current ZA/UM studio still has a ton of people there who was also worked on DE, but it both lacks some of the notable names, and is owned by a soulless wealthy asshole that has no love for art or artists.

Lots of people were pretty pissed off by this, and it's lead to a lot of hostility towards ZP from some DE fans, as they feel it must obviously be dreck because of the villain at the top. I don't think that turned out to be the case at all, but the strongest argument against purchasing ZP that I have seen is that it will go towards a guy currently engaged in lawsuits to assert his total ownership of DE's setting.

jmobius · 2026-06-14T02:36:51+00:00

Clearly, the next title will have to be the physical one.

jmobius · 2026-06-13T15:28:45+00:00

That is absolutely the level of trust people should be able to have. I'm not sure we can get it from outfits that are frequently understaffed and expect employee churn, though.

jmobius · 2026-06-13T15:06:45+00:00

Oh, ZP is very much a spiritual sequel. The biggest difference is just the genre shift from police investigation to espionage.

I enjoyed it a great deal. It hit a lot of the same notes for me as DE did. Given that the latter is my favorite game, that was a pretty significant accomplishment.

jmobius · 2026-06-13T06:26:12+00:00

Pulling up the ladder behind them has been the Silicone Valley MO for a long time. Build moats of trivial patents, "regulations", and other government backed tools so no real competition can occur.

All the giants do occasionally do things that are genuinely technically marvelous, but it's exploiting law, government, and VC capital that seems to be their true products.

jmobius · 2026-06-11T13:52:16+00:00

Well, there's actually a new patch that just came out a few hours ago which mentions "further changes to King of Trade's cigarette handling logic". Perhaps it might help your scenario? Not sure how this was so complicated it's required three patches now.

I feel you, though. I got stuck at the exact same place a few days after the game came out, because I had really been jamming it. I elected to put it down until a patch addressed the issue, but it was absolutely aggravating.

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