Democracy Nonsense - It’s not liberty.

NRO ^ | March 5, 2003 10:40 a.m. | Goldberg, Jonah

[Cicero]

I have several friends who teach at Calvin College, and they are fine people. I don't pretend to understand Calvinism myself.

Obviously Calvinism and Islam are different on most points, but Islam does share with Calvinism a conviction that the Will of God--or Allah (there is a difference)--leaves no room for free will in the ordinary sense. One of the points Calvinists argued against Arminius at the Synod of Dort is that grace is irresistible.

[qam1]

I don't know about that. If anything Christianity was a bad thing for the Roman Empire. It exsisted 1000+ relativity prosporous years before Christianity (Ok some ups & downs here and there but overall they did good) and after it converted only ~60 later it fell apart and broke in 2 and after ~170 years the barbarians were at the gates and it was finished. Though yes there was The Holy Roman empire afterwards but that was a triple misnomer (It wasn't Holy, It wasn't Roman and it sure as hell wasn't an empire).
Afterwards you had the Divine rights of kings and the feudal system and the dark ages decended upon men like an Iron curtain. Ok wrong century but the result was the same in that it deprived ordinary men of freedom. It wasn't until the renaissance and the age of exploration when people started to break away against the false teachings of the bible (i.e Earth is Flat, The Sun Goes around the earth, Pi equals 3 exactly not 3.14159...) that man started to yearn for and eventually acheive freedom again.