Key word being almost for me, the word almost is what separates predestination from his vision of true freedom in my view. The fact that it is almost is why I simply can’t make the leap into predestination. This reactionary post-action view of predestination from hindsight is called rationalization in the real world and is showing more an inability to explain an event based on certain importance biases than showing any kind of actual predestination. Not to mention the real world dangers involved in legitimizing, even in small ways, the ideas of predestination. Having that legitimacy has incredibly damaging effects on the real world, despite, I think, also being untrue.

@@CriticallyAlive That's probably true to an extent, though I don't think something being predetermined and it having known causes are mutually exclusive. Take physical beauty for example, it's largely based on internalization of a societies images and social structures, you could in some sense say most people are predetermined to find people deemed beautiful by the culture to appear beautiful to them on a personal level. There is causes for this, like certain bodies always being the good characters, or just out in public being treated better. So although there is a kind of causal relation to why people find certain people and qualities attractive within a certain societies symbolic structure, that doesn't mean most people raised in that culture won't also exemplify it. And, even if you explain the causes, it won't stop the feeling of being attracted to someone from feeling spontaneous, because it's an unconscious process.

@@natewikman Couldn't agree more, and that is I think a perfect example of the difference between what Calvinism presents as predestination and what Freud presents as the Id, with maybe a bit of the ego at play in a real social setting. To the viewer, as I imagined it reading your post (viewer being the literal viewer of the societal example of beauty), no matter how much study of either Freud or Calvinism they do, it isn't going to stop that feeling when Elizabeth Olson walks passed them on the sidewalk, which can in turn be deemed as both a predestination to feel attraction on the part of the viewer and/or a predestination to BE attractive on the part of Elizabeth Olson(an example only, to each their own, though that's subversively the point). Those feelings cannot be helped to a certain degree given exactly what you described above, societal expectations, generations of those types of examples, the certain "good bodies", et cetera. But this is where predestination makes, I think, an unforgivable leap of logic. It isn't just saying that these feelings and these drives are what they are because they were always meant to be; it then says the actions that follow those feelings were therefore meant to be. The human behaviors as a result of those internalized, subconscious drives are a predestined result of the conditions that created them and are therefore, morality conveniently excluded, simply the way it was meant to be. There may be much more nuance to the theological principal as Zizek sees it, but that is certainly how it manifests in practice, and I think it is unduly oversimplifying the human experience. It is certainly robbing us of the most important evidence of our true freedom; the ability to make the wrong choice. Suddenly 'wrong' is just a facet of our subconscious drives, driven by social and environmental experience warped, in a way, by our emotional realization of a particular moment, leaving us as what when we're wrong? Advanced misbehaving dogs? Failures of a particular social morality? If it is a social morality in exclusivity, does that default its position as a GOOD morality? It is B. F. Skinner's behaviorism writ large in my view, and in practice it is the precise type of logic used to scientifically justify things like eugenics and fascism. Now, I could be way off of course, but that's how I see it.

I will add, I am a Christian as well as a follower and lover of Zizek's works so take this at its academic value, but I don't want to seem adversarial for the sake of fighting because I do really agree with you so far.

I think you'll find that "Calvinists" (the more accurate term would be Reformed Christians) have many different ways of understanding predestination. They are not one unified bloc

I believe that God has predestined the whole of everything, and that only adds value to it. Turning from evil becomes necessity in light of this, like Zizek mentioned.

If they don't understand what he is saying they were probably not one of the divine elect.

I could listen to him for hours but every now and then I wish the man would just get speech therapy.

Interesting; I always think we don't use our free will until we have to change habit.

It's really funny because Chesterton absolutely hated Calvinism.

apparently G.K. "Prince of Paradox" Chesterton really influenced Zizek, but I cant find any talks of zizek mentioning GK. also, I love zizek mentioning Kieke.

@@maxonmendel5757 he mentioned him during the Peterson debate

@@maxonmendel5757 look up any of his talks on Christian atheism and Chesterton will be in there-also if you read Zizek’s books or essays on Lacan or religion then you will likely see some Chesterton dropping.

Doros theos i

Thats not a glimpse at what theology really is Orthodox theologians can refute anything he said

thank you

Brilliant.

Could you find it ?

Early on, he refers to Pascal and Port-Royal -- an Augustinian and Calvinist-leaning movement in France ultimately condemned by Rome for its teaching on predestination -- as the closest thing in Catholicism to the Protestantism of which he speaks. He also repeatedly references predestination and even Max Weber's thesis, which specifies Calvinism's influence on capitalism. Thus, while Luther himself believed in double predestination, it's Calvinism (aka Reformed Protestantism) that held most vociferously to the ideas of predestination (aka doctrine of election) and how this glorifies God and humbles man while also elevating man.

@@rockpaperscissors82 Yes, he no doubt very strongly implies it. Both by mentioning the jansenists and talking much about predestination as you say. (did Luther not believe in double predestination early on but later skipped it in favor of election for salvation only, not liking God to elect persons for damnation? Trending in his later years towards less consistency and still more "mystery" in theology)

@@ausonius100 You might be right about Luther's development on the issue. Bondage of the Will was published in 1525, so fairly early in his career. Maybe he softened his stance in some way later. From what I understand, Melanchthon usually gets credited with Lutheranism's "single predestination," which I honestly find a "have your cake and eat it too" sort of evasion -- wanting the benefits of predestination (salvation is entirely grace, including faith itself) but without the unseemly corollary of reprobation if not all are saved.

@@rockpaperscissors82 Yes, I think that is about right. To my knowledge it is accepted that Luther in his later career began moving in the directions of otherwise Melanchtonian "Lutheranism". And so was a kind of co-father to later developments that went away from some clear points of his earlier thinking and teaching.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism and Calvinism are one and the same. They describe a "church" without the proper authority of bishops or tradition that believes that salvation comes direct from God rather than from the church, the sacraments, and the communion of saints. This is predestination in a nutshell: we are saved because of God's action and for no other reason.

link is dead

It was the decision of Geneva's governing council, and Calvin actually advocated with the council for execution by beheading instead of burning, as a more merciful form of death. The council overruled Calvin and went with burning at the stake.

@@rockpaperscissors82 Oh, so Calvin's only punishment for someone having a different opinion than his was beheading the offender. Sometimes I wish I could behead people who have a different opinion than my own, but I don't because I had better Sunday School teachers than poor old Calvin! Or is it because civil society decided to reign in those religious fanatics that murder people?

I would just call it traditional Catholicism. Roman Catholicism is heresy

@Tommy Andreas Disclaimer, I’m a Calvinist (though I prefer the phrases Biblical Christian and Doctrines of Grace so as to not give the appearance of Corinthian sectarianism) but I’m not looking to debate - KZfaq debates almost never go well. However, do you think you could explain what you mean in more detail? I find your thought interesting.

Roman Catholics are and always have been the *only* true church since Peter got the keys from Jesus. Calvinism is pure folly.