Nope.
Simple reality.
Just examine your own life and you will see this is true.
You do not make choices without an outside influence on you.
It's human nature.
It's why advertising works.
Tuor, it sounds like you believe a child growing up in the Congo has the same opportunity to make the same choices you make as you both have the same non-influences or circumstances on which to base your choices.
:rolleyes:
Seriously though, Tuor, you really don't believe that in making your decisions you are influenced by outside sources?
Do you mean that advertisements really have no effect on you?
What about Bible commentaries, sermons, hymns, etc.?
None of these have influenced your understanding of theology, none have influenced your anti-Calvinism stance?
How much of what one believes is based on one's own decision?
How much is based on enviroment?
How much of your enviroment is based on your own decisions?
It seems to me that you are asking which came first, the chicken or the egg?
I don't think I've said that outside influences have not affected me.
What I am trying to say is that outside influences have not determined what I do.
There is a difference and it is the difference between what I believe and what Calvinists believe.