Brainwashing? Christianity seems to be taking weird steps, here at least.

[Rhyfelwyr]

For myself, I will not even treat with any doctrine which describes man as dispicable before God. A Father who despises his children?

No.

He doesn't despise our souls, He would love for everyone of us to come to Him. However, we are born as slaves to sin, and our actions must be pretty despicable to God.

Remember, God knows us before we ever come into this world. Those who are slaves to sin in their lifetime chose that fate. Those who are brought to salvation were elected because they would accept God. Salvation is unconditional on what happens in this lifetime, but God judges based on what He sees in our hearts before we are born. So really, all of history is simply the story of the elect being brought to salvation.

You are still limiting God though, unless you accept that God has created the majoriety of people for destruction. Follow, if God creates every man and woman we cannot be other than as God intended, because God is perfect and all-powerful. So, if we are what God intended and some of us are predetermined not to accept him then we have not been created to accept him.

So, either God has screwed up with hummanity or he has created people with the sole puropse of tempting the elect and then suffering for eternity in Hell.

My conclusion is that Calvinism either limits God's power, his justice, his mercy, or his knowledge. Therefore it is bad doctrine

God does not predestine anyone to damnation (I don't endorse double predestination, "those whom He did predestine..."). Yes, God has foreknowledge of everyone's fate, but their fates are not decided because of His foreknowledge (other than the affect His foreknowledge has on His decision not to elect them to salvation), because God's decision to leave them to their own devices is based on their choice. Of course when people are left to themselves, Satan is quick to enslave them.

Presuming we do not believe that every human will somehow get to Heaven, if you think that peoples fates beyond their lifetime on earth are based on their free-will, why would that make God anymore just than if He used them for His purpose (which is purely good in itself)? Either way, He must have known of their fate.

Unless you also believe that God cannot overrule the dimension of time that He created (to know the fate of all who He creates)? Yet time cannot have always existed, since God himself is timeless.

Never mind Calvinism, that is limiting God.

The arguments against Calvinism seem to be based on the belief that humans somehow deserve salvation. And yet we must acknowledge that without God we are slaves to sin, everything we do is evil, even if we appear to do something good it is for selfish purposes.

It is out of mercy that any are saved.

There is one good thing in existance, and it is God. The two are inseperable, God is good and any good stems from God. Everything He creates is good (in serving its function in God's triumph over evil), even if it does not always appear to us to be so. We know evil must exist. Because if it did not, then God would have to be limited as evil was overpowering Him in establishing itself. So clearly, evil must exist, even if only temporarily. Maybe if only to defeat the original sin, pride.

Which presumably arose out of a desire for free-will, to be independent of God. And still that is what theologians want when they interpret the scriptures - free-will, the root of all evil itself. They want to believe that if they come to God, it is on their terms.

Going back to the original point, God certaintly does not hate His children. He gave us the free-will we desired, and humanity on the whole reaped the consequences. However, those who God knows to have the potential to overcome pride (if we take it as the root of all sin), have with them the grace of God to ensure that they accept Him within their lifetime - that is what predestination is all about. A gift to those who would accept God. For a Christian, you can continue with the parent theme and recognise that suffering is simply God disciplining His children - and you can take confidence in the knowledge that God is guiding you towards Him.

Don't misinterpret me as suggesting that free-will does not exist - it is because of free-will that anyone ever had to endure suffering. However, that free-will exists before our lifetimes on earth - while we sit here everything we do is simply acting out the inevitable, knowing that those who accept God give Him their willing obedience.