Cooper MacBride

"Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across. Then destroy the bridge and carpet bomb the island they retreated to." -- Sun Tzu, if he had to deal with communists

Speedrunning Calvinist arguments: The author of sin: “God ordained whatsoever comes to pass unchangeably from before creation.” “So why do you sin?” “Because that’s what I most wanted to do.” “Why did you want to do that?” “Because I have a sin nature.” “But why did you want to do that particular sin and not another?” “Because God ordained that I should want to.” “So God ordained that you would want to sin and do that particular sin in that particular way?” “Exactly.” “And how is it that He is not the author of sin, again?” “It’s right there in the WCF 3.1!”

@TurretinFan “Sovereignty means something wholly different when we apply it to God as opposed to kings. So you may ask why then do we use that word? So that we can accuse you of hating God’s sovereignty.”

If your idea of God’s sovereignty is that he’s like Trump, but for the whole planet, your idea of God is too small, and it is not even close. Trump’s sovereignty (and please don’t lose it, “no kings” folks) is limited. Trump doesn’t know or care about the hairs on your head, much less the sparrows.

@MattWalshBlog Yeah, you’re a buzzkill. The woke scolds were thrown out of the culture due to this exact impulse.

Call me a buzzkill but I don’t think we should allow companies to take over the entire night sky with an ad for their product

Could these women construct a moral argument against their own assassinations?

@realjenx @tedcruz Gallrein was at the Wenzel Distillery in Covington.

@tedcruz Where’s the lie?

I wish he hadn’t said this.

@iamrjknight @Chainsaw59598 “Everyone has a defective moral intuition that does not align with God’s. This is good evidence for God!” Total depravity completely undercuts Paul’s point here as well as the epistemic moral argument for God as an effective apologetic tool.

No. Romans 2:14-15 does not deny total depravity. It proves that even Gentiles have God’s law written on the conscience, so they are without excuse. Paul is not saying Gentiles naturally obey God savingly. He is saying they sometimes do outward things that agree with the law, while their conscience either accuses or defends them. That does not make them righteous before God. The same Paul says, “There is none righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10), and “There is none who seeks for God” (Romans 3:11). So Romans 2 does not teach natural goodness. It teaches moral accountability. Man knows enough to be guilty, but not enough to save himself.

Every effort to tone down total depravity only proves the very doctrine being denied. The heart of man does not want to be exposed. It wants to soften the charge, reduce the guilt, protect some imagined goodness, and leave room for boasting. Scripture gives no such room. “The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). That is not a light wound. That is a diagnosis from God Himself. Man’s problem is not merely bad habits, poor choices, or weak discipline. His problem is a corrupt heart before a holy God. This is why the Bible says, “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands, there is none who seeks for God” (Romans 3:10-11). Fallen man is not spiritually sick and waiting to be helped. He is dead in sin and in need of resurrection grace. “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). So when men try to make depravity less offensive, they are not defending human dignity. They are defending human pride. The truth is painful because it strips us bare. But only when man is shown as truly ruined does grace appear as truly glorious. Christ did not come to assist the morally wounded. He came to save the dead, cleanse the guilty, and give a new heart to those who could never change themselves. “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you” (Ezekiel 36:26).

@Mike_Tzu_ @CBHeresy @JoelWebbon If you don’t like low-IQ antisemitism, you should be opposed to Joel Webbon.

@CBHeresy @JoelWebbon I’m not for that. Most likely are not. You do realize most of these otherwise well meaning people are being bullied (unprovoked) around and slurred just like before, but by Israel activists, don’t you? Low IQ antisemitism isn’t popular

Join us.

Do Calvinists affirm the moral argument for God? If so, they have a problem. If the moral argument for God is sound, then humans must possess a sufficiently reliable moral faculty (conscience / natural knowledge of the law) capable of warranting belief in objective moral values and duties (as in Romans 2:14–15). Reformed theology entails: (a) Total depravity and the noetic effects of sin render every human moral faculty wholly corrupted, systematically distorting or suppressing moral truth. (b) God eternally decrees and ordains all human actions, rendering them inevitable (humans could not do otherwise). (c) Humans are nevertheless fully responsible and justly punishable for these divinely ordained actions. Under Reformed theology, the moral faculty (even among the regenerate) perceives central elements of this system--particularly the combination of meticulous determinism, inability, and eternal punishment--as intuitively unjust or unfair, yet the theology requires this perception to be overridden as “remaining depravity” or creaturely misjudgment. Therefore, Reformed theology renders the human moral faculty epistemically unreliable precisely in the domain required by the moral argument (knowledge of objective moral values, duties, justice, and accountability). Hence, the epistemic form of the moral argument (from moral experience/knowledge to God) is undercut or self-defeating within a consistent Reformed framework. You can no longer say, “Look at how we all sense moral responsibility! This points to God,” because the “we all sense” part has been ruled unreliable precisely where it matters most.

I think the core point here is "meaningful responsibility." Do you agree or disagree that responsibility in the creature is meaningless if the creature's will, thoughts and actions are completely out of its control? If you disagree, what grounds responsibility and makes it meaningful?

Some parts of this are distinctively Calvinistic, some parts are just the broader Western theological consensus, and some parts aren’t Calvinist at all. I cannot tell whether the author knows the difference among those things. However, this post is a great example of why I characterize this source as unreliable.

@robbysoave Bring back Aunt Jemima and make her a fat, white, lady and see how that flies.

Okay but it does seem significant that these are all real people and Helen of Troy is not.

@GiancarloSopo @IMAO_ It’s like you are completely unaware of Faust. “Surely this person who has done good in the past will be good forevermore. Never has a person repudiated good and embraced evil for worldly gain.”

A major problem plaguing the right is outsourcing cultural commentary to grifters and morons. A smart conservative movement would engage a Tory artist like Nolan, whose Dark Knight Rises was basically a sequel to Burke’s Reflections. Instead, we’re fed this low IQ slop.

@_jonbowlin Who forged their volition? Which thoughts and desires did they have that weren’t ordained by God?

In Calvinism, God makes no man sin against His will. Men by their own volition rebel against their maker.

@1984_nate For some reason, they have a very hard time thinking through determinism just one level deeper. They say “secondary causes” and just stop thinking.

The word volition literally loses all meaning if Calvinism is true. That’s why it’s best defined as “non free free will.” Don’t be deceived, Calvinism is not Biblical Christianity.

@BGYKPA @IMAO_ PG-13 is a marketing move to signal to teenagers that it's ok to see it. PG means "kids movie" now. Even Project Hail Mary was PG-13. Admittedly my youngest was pretty distressed when it looked like Rocky was gonna die but that's where Parental Guidance came in.

@IMAO_ I thought yes, but the PG-13 rating gives me pause. I can’t figure it out. I expect it’ll be clear once the reviews start rolling in.

My only question about Mandalorian and Grogu is will I enjoy watching it with my kids.

@GiancarloSopo Subverting a myth that preserves and illustrates virtues of Western civilization by turning it into one that advertises postmodern values and trends is probably the whole point of this project. “The Odyssey is ours now, you racist patriarchal misogynistic fascists!”

Cultural conservatism preserves and transmits civilizational treasures. In narrative fiction, those are the stories that orient us toward virtue and, in some cases, transcendence. The Odyssey is one of them. We celebrate a man's return to his wife, his son, and his home. That — the love of home and the particular — is conservatism. Fixating on a minor character's skin tone is low IQ reactionary tribalism. It's not conservatism. Plainly stated, it's just stupid.

@foxnewspolitics Surprising. That guy looks like a real fighter. </s> Red states need to up their primary game.

Mississippi already has 'dozens' of redrawn maps ready to eliminate Democrat Bennie Thompson's seat — and every single one gives all four congressional districts a Trump margin of 15 points or higher. But Gov. Tate Reeves just pulled the plug on a special session that would have put those maps into play before the 2026 midterms. State Auditor Shad White, the first statewide official to publicly call for drawing Thompson out, says the maps exist and the legal path cleared after the Supreme Court's Callais ruling. But Reeves is defending his decision.

@dhanabarger Briefly explain your theodicy. Perhaps I misunderstood it. Is Satan doing God’s will?

@CooperGMacBride no, just show how you don't have a better answer

Advice for my fellow Calvinists: Don't take the bait and be on the defensive. Press them to examine why their own system has worse answers to the problem of evil and determinism.

@MikedAlamo @DBJ540 You realize that just saying “Nuh uh! The WCF says so” is not a persuasive argument, right? Especially when I’m saying the WCF comes to an incoherent conclusion and never tries to defend it.

uses: make an effort to manipulate with no actual guarantee of success. or uses: applies it to what He is doing, and since He's God, it happens. Soft language doesn't help the argument. I have shown you from scripture and the confession that when you say "your concept of determinism," you are not being accurate. Since you persist, it begins to appear that you don't care. So, you have assigned us a belief that we deny. You say that our denial belies reason, and we say "nah". So, you come back to assigning the thing that you simply cannot get past.

When you work through all the arguments, the bottom-line defense of compatibilism in Reformed theology is "mystery." In essence, Reformed theology created a problem that it simply refused to solve.

@MikedAlamo @DBJ540 Uses—never ordains or decrees, “bro.” You must omit human choices from the set of events decreed for your concept of determinism to actually allow for human culpability.

@CooperGMacBride @DBJ540 Scripture makes abundantly clear that God uses our choices to fulfil His decrees ALL the time. Your issue is with scripture, NOT the reformed.