• I’m not reading through this whole thread to see where this might fit in, I’mma drop it right here.

    I saw some chatter about free will being a historically religious driven ideology, essentially boiling it all down to a spirit or soul housed inside our bodies. And this invalidates it because it is not scientific or materialist.

    There’s points that I could argue about that, but that’s a different rabbit hole. The thing I want to touch on is the fact that determinism has also been historically driven by religion, and in a very official capacity. The Christian reformation had a notable figure by the name of John Calvin, who preached the doctrine of predestination. In this view, God’s elect will go to heaven and nerds go to hell. This wasn’t some deviation from a lot of traditional Catholic teachings, but he had a weird fixation on it. It’s also present in many other conservative interpretations of different faiths.

    This belief has been used as an excuse to shit on marginalized people in the same way that the meme depicts, except it’s framed in terms of ‘God made you less than, and I will treat your as such because that is your lot. Don’t you dare argue with it, it’s ordained by God!’.

    • theturtlemoves [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      John Calvin preached the doctrine of predestination. In this view, God’s elect will go to heaven and nerds go to hell. This wasn’t some deviation from a lot of traditional Catholic teachings, but he had a weird fixation on it.

      Huh? Catholic and Orthodox churches do not believe in predestination.

    • QueerCommie@lemmygrad.mlOP
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      9 months ago

      It is true opposing ideologies can make use of many of the same ideas. Also, one ideology can have supporters with diametrically opposed ideas. Dialectics, I suppose.