as promised, a brief intro to the subject for scott… if i don’t stop myself at this, i’ll end up writing twenty pages on the subject…

firstly, you wanted info on calvinism, here is wikipedia’s excellent (and thorough) entry…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
it also has its own links to their stuff about arminianism…

btw, the thing i always quote goes like this…
a predestinarian sees a “freewill’er” trip and fall and mockingly says to him “what did you do that for?”…
a freewill’er sees a predestinarian trip and fall and mockingly says “i bet you’re glad that one’s over”…

another variation would be a predestinarian tripping and falling and saying to himself “i’m glad that one’s over” and, when the freewill’er trips and falls, he says to himself “now, what did i do that for?”

i don’t tell it as a funny, ha-ha, laugh-at-it joke (nor a literal allegation of either side), it is just a great illustration of how both of the extremes are ridiculous…

most people i know (who have thought it through) would typically go along with what is sometimes referred to as “class election”… that god chose the elect and we choose whether or not to be part of the elect…
i didn’t find an easy one-stop link for this yet…
but, the easiest summary is that we know what god’s elect has in store, the bible is full of promises of their destiny… we can choose to be part of that group or not… god is casting parts in a play and we can choose to play out that part or not… and we have the script, so, we know what is going to happen to the character…
of course, we don’t know our own individual destinies so specifically, but, again, the bible is replete with promises…