Calvinist Bad Logic #17: No Choice = Moral Accountability?

Bad Logic #17:  This is from a book review I did of someone who left their church over Calvinism too.  She was talking about Calvinism with one of the dogmatic Calvinist pastors at her church, when he asked a really stupid question.  And this is what I said in my book review about the question he asked:

[As I read about her experience with Calvinism taking over her church,] I was particularly struck by the nonsensical question the pastor asked:

"I want to ask you one last question," Joshua focuses on the issue of moral responsibility. "Why do you so strongly insist that ‘one must have a free choice in order to be morally responsible’?" (pg 144)

Oh my goodness … where do I start with this one!?!  Umm … let’s see … why do we believe that in order to be justly held accountable for our decisions, we have to have the right to make decisions?  Umm … DUH! … because it makes sense!  Because it’s logical!  Because it’s the only way it can be if God is a truly just God!

If we had no choice about sinning, if God caused us to make the choices we do but then held us accountable for them, punishing us for the things He caused … it would make God an unjust, irrational tyrant.  Not the loving, righteous, holy, just God of the Bible.

But Calvinism would rather have us accept the nonsense that we have no freedom to make choices, that God causes us to sin and to be unbelievers, but that it’s perfectly fine and just for Him to punish us for it anyway.

This is the kind of nonsensical thinking and irrational reasoning that Calvinists have!

Honestly, if I was Amanda [the author of the book I reviewed] standing there talking to Joshua, and he asked me that question, I would probably stare at him in absolute disbelief that he would think that we can be held morally accountable for our choices even if we never had the right to make choices, and I would have to say, "I can't talk to you anymore.  There's no point.  Not when you're choosing to be this stupid!"  And I would turn and walk away.  

Seriously, if they will adamantly cling to such irrational, illogical, nonsensical garbage then there is no point in trying to reason with them.  Not when they insist on clinging to an unreasonable theology!


(For all the posts in this series, see the "Intro ..."  Or look for "'Calvinist Bad Logic' Series" in the labels on the side-bar.  Or find the whole series in one post, "When Calvinism's 'Bad Logic ' Traps Good Christians.")