>Meet a middle aged to old woman while doing volunteer with with two cross necklaces>Ask her denomination>She's baptist>Ask if her church is Arminian or Calvinist>She says "We're normal"Why are normies like this? How do church goers not even know the theology and history of their sect? It's baffling to me.
>>18691734Stop spamming Calvin, faggot. How many days in a row are you doing this?
>>18691742That's a different person, I don't usw this board much anymore
>>18691734Technically I would say that Calvinist and Baptist are mutually exclusive and what you meant to ask is if she is a General or Particular Baptist
I had a similar experience. Mentioned to a elderly lady who asked me how I liked the church I was visiting at the time (which happened to be a theologically conservative one) and she said she didn't know much about that it was just the church she had been attending since she was a baby. Most people have little interest in theology. RC Sproul was told when doing his training to become a minister that for an on-average college educated congregation you should preach theology at an 8th grade level. Ironically the lady's respoonse reminds me of a verse from the Quran: >Surah Al-Baqarah (2:170)>"When it is said to them, 'Follow what Allah has revealed,' they reply, 'No! We follow what we found our forefathers practicing.' Would they still do so, even if their forefathers had absolutely no understanding or guidance?If I had simply followed my immediate forefathers blindly I would be a member of the Mormon religion still, a sect I rejected long ago. But if you go back far enough (not really that far) you'd find my ancestors in Anglican or Catholic parishes in England and Ireland. So in a way I am closer to my pre-1830 family beliefs by simply being a Nicene affirming Christian. Not saying you necessarily SHOULD NOT belong to the same religious community as your parents, just that you should discern for yourself if it is true. Inertia should not be the main factor, truth should.
>>18691734Most people just want their ticket to heaven and fit in socially.
>>18691795The typical person with enough forethought to reject defaulting to believing what people around them do will tend to reject Christianity in it's entirety.
most people are sensors and sensors are NPCs that just react to immediate stimuli around them. They dont have deep thoughts, curiosities, or interests about anything that isnt right in front of them.
>>18691890This. It takes courage to be an atheist.
>>18691937society was already secular by the 60s and the 'New Atheists' were just preaching to the boomer choir by the time they showed up, it stopped taking courage to be an atheist in the 2000s, let alone two decades later nowunless you live in an islamic country or something>>18691890rejecting milquetoast lukewarm boomer normie protestant/nu-catholic Christianity is easy with enough forethought, rejecting real traditional Christianity and Christian theology, spirituality and mysticism is not, once you find out about it or experience something of it. Christianity is like the bellcurve graph meme with normie boomer Christians being at the left end and atheists in the middle.
Gotta love watching the few intellectually minded religious people out there struggling to comprehend that the vast majority of their brethren are mouth breathing retards who couldn’t actually explain why they believe what they believe.
>>18691955>Christianity is like the bellcurve graph meme with normie boomer Christians being at the left end and atheists in the middle.Retards love to throw out the bell curve meme and the term "midwit" so they can pretend they're not just a run of the mill retard surrounded by other retards. Meta studies have found a very strong correlation between intelligence and irreligiousity. Intelligent theists are generally enormous outliers.
>>18691955Intelligence does not correlate with old church Christianity lmaoThe “intelligent” christians are more likely to be from progressive libtard denominations of Neo-Catholics who do the rituals a few times in their lives
>>18691955>let me, some terminally online faggot born after 2004, tell you what REAL Christianity isYou shouldn't slander your predecessors like that btw. They carry your entire existence in the real world and not just whatever discord servers you join full of undesirables using theology to cope their personal faults away.
>>18691965>I browse r/iamverysmart THEREFORE god don't realAre you seriously claiming atheists are enlightened by their own intelligence and not some phony god's blessing?
>>18692097Proved my point
>>18691734This should've been transparently obvious for anyone that actually goes to church on a regular basis. You really didn't actually think FOB filipino immigrants spent their evenings devouring the works of Augustine and Aquinas lol
>>18692100You are educated stupid, to borrow the parlance of the Time Cube man. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your (amoral materialist) philosophy.
>>18692121Theist "philosophy" is just post-hoc rationalizations to logically or materially reconcile the dogma you had from the start. It's nearly all trash for brown retards like (You)
>>18692137Ah yes, the enlightened atheist posting racism. That's not very progressive of you! Please donate to a pregnant man as your penance. >These men are nihilists Donny, they're cowards.
>>18692111FOB?
>>18692241https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_off_the_boat
>>18692255Ah. Anyways, I get thr average religious person isn't a philosophy enjoyer, but not even knowing your sect's theology?
>>18691769I don't know. I am from a Catholic country but we have a relatively famous Baptist Pastor who is a public intelectual (he is famous because he used to make hardcore punk music. He was protestant and devout all of his life btw). And he is a Baptist pastor and says, proudly, that he is a Calvinist. In fact, in a meeting with other Protestant Pastors, some of them made fun of him for being a Calvinist (he is a Calvinist but also says Martin Luther was a main influence, though. And Flannery O'Connor). Maybe Baptists can be Calvinists too.
>>18691769>>18692277Baptists have been both Calvinist and non-Calvinist from their origin. It's perfectly natural for Baptists to be Calvinist, it's not some aberrant mutation from the pure Arminian Baptists. That said, some of these terms can have broader or narrower definitions. "Reformed" or "Calvinist" can be denominational categories rather than soteriological positions. I would even argue that Baptists are the logical conclusion of the Reformed impulse. Beyond soteriology, Reformed/Calvinism was also about purifying church practices and worship to return to the biblical norm, as opposed to Lutheranism which was fine with keeping traditional liturgy. The movement to purify church practices naturally leads to the question of infant baptism. Purify church -> purify church membership.
>>18692277Many baptists hold predestination like beliefs but not many, in America anyways, would know or care that it comes from some queer European named Calvin.
>>18692300>>18692277Calvinism in theology means having a spiritual presents view of communion. That's what the original epithet was criticizing. Baptists by believing in believer's baptism have to deny that view of communion and even original sin; if they believe that people before the age of accountability aren't hell bound if they die. And they would even have to deny parts of covenant theology; since in the old covenant babies were part of Israel. So they have to believe in a pseudo-dispensationalist discontinuity of the old and new covenant since they believe in believer's baptism. The pop-theological use of Calvinism as meaning double predestination is a relatively modern usage and isn't used in academic theology. Also double predestination isn't a unique view of Calvinists; it was the dominant view in the high middle ages. So it would be anachronistic to call all of them Calvinists. And anyway it blurs the distinctives of Calvinism.
