My confession: anti-Calvinist Youtube videos

Brother-Mike

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Okay, I've got to come clean with this, if only because I've been having increasingly hostile dreams with a spectral Calvin at the foot of my bed. The first few dreams had a single tear etching down his cheek, but then they progressed to scowls that only a Frenchman is able to achieve, and finally last night he made aggressive finger-across-the-throat motions.

This is hard to say, but as a freshly minted Calvinist (or as some would prefer "newly emerged from the slime-pits of error and fallacy") I've become enamoured with watching anti-Calvinist Youtube videos. There, I said it. I pray the hauntings now cease.

Okay, fine, I'll dial down the parody, pop on my Aviators and pivot back to Coolsville... it was fun while it lasted.

I came across this video recently:


Some thoughts:
  1. Am I the only one that's hugely entertained by videos like this? I really, seriously do my best to maintain an objective position, but it's often surprising how quickly the video creators dispense with their own objectivity and just drop down into straw-man arguments, weird voices imitating their perceptions of Calvinists, etc. A part of me wonders "why are they SO angry?" Did we do the same to them?
  2. I'd love to know the breakdown of which believers out there also watch countervailing analyses of their faith. Is it a denominational thing? Is it just maybe some percentage of ALL believers that do this? I'm not boasting any benefit by this - it would seem to me absolutely valid to believe what you believe and just never looking sideways. To me it feels that the relationship of Calvinism to the rest of Protestantism calls for an open-ear to the teeming, unwashed hordes differing opinions out there.
  3. In the video, right out of the gate the gentleman cites Fowler's "Stages of Faith", claiming that Calvinists are something like a stage-2, which puts us at pre-adult level of enlightenment. I wasn't aware of this book but a quick look-see gives me the sense that it can be used like a spiritual phrenology manual to discredit your opponents.
  4. By the eighth minute he's claimed that Calvinists have "cognitive impairment" and that our overall position is "stupid" [Groucho: "Hey, I resemble that!"]. There was a few slides here and there, mostly I think because generic logical-fallacy-type pictures are expected by all.
I'm certainly not going to stop weighing my belief and watching further videos of this nature, but it is interesting to notice some common challenges and paradoxes that are a thorn in the foot for what seems to be many non-Calvinists.

Thoughts?
 

QvQ

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In the video, right out of the gate the gentleman cites Fowler's "Stages of Faith", claiming that Calvinists are something like a stage-2, which puts us at pre-adult level of enlightenment. I wasn't aware of this book but a quick look-see gives me the sense that it can be used like a spiritual phrenology manual to discredit your opponents.
This type of spiritual phrenology was a popular parlor game among the spiritual seekers 1960's.
I wasn't aware Christians played the game.
The video is puzzling (what?)
Your commentary is amusing
 
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