The need for people to believe in this one huge laughable falsity, a falsity that coats our culture in a thick sugary HR-mandated happy-goo, is so strong that they will torture and twist their minds into impossible shifting shapes to accommodate it.
We are, at least in principle and in the ideal (although current practice seems to diverge considerably from that), equal before the law.
One thing that can be stated with certainty is that we are all of equal value to the Creator and therefore each is loved with the same divine, inexhaustible love. And that is the only sense in which our equality is absolute. All other “equality” is necessarily relative and transient and therefore illusory.
Interesting, is Judas of equal value to the Creator? Hitler?
It is a good question but one that gets colored by post enlightenment or masonic thinking in this age.
A Christian understanding would see that in terms of God's essential nature and universal salvific will, God loves all humans equally and desires their good.
However, the effects of God's love in people's lives are unequal, depending on their free response to divine grace. Those who cooperate with grace and grow in holiness experience deeper union with God.
God has a unique, predestining love for the elect, choosing them for eternal salvation in a way that transcends human understanding but accords with divine wisdom.
In this way, God's love is not equal at all. "Hail FULL of Grace" (Lk 1:28) and "As it is written: Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." (Rom 9:13)
I guess it depends on how we mean to use the word "love".
Yes, even those we despise are loved by the Creator — they are his children just as are those we love. Did Jesus not say “Love even your enemies”? If he can require that man love his enemies, how much more must the Infinite Creator and Eternal Upholder, the very source and center of divine love itself, be able to love all, irrespective of their choices?
God chooses all for eternal salvation, but such salvation is entirely optional, and some decline. Divine love requires that divine justice eventually functions, but not without first the exercise of the tender and patient mercy of His Son, for which I am personally forever grateful.
Jesus also admonished us not to sit in judgment of our brethren, for that is the prerogative of God alone.
I honestly can’t say whether this despot or that criminal eventually worked it out with the Creator. Do you really know, or do you just presume?
Is it not more comforting to believe that all who ask with a pure heart and in sincerity may receive the benefit of mercy, forgiveness and rehabilitation? I am compelled to believe that the loving Heavenly Father will balance mercy and justice such that no sinner who repents will be denied the opportunity of salvation. And God alone knows who, when they come before Him, is sincere in their repentance.
It is simply unconscionable how corrupted the Hebrew texts had become already in the first century. So much so that we have to take a Pauline epistle for their truth (which a thinking person could refuse to do).
Now anybody who can follow any little line of thought can see for himself, even in a translation, that Jakob was a thief and a liar who treated his old, blind father abominably. Esaw on the other hand bears with his just wrath over having missed the blessing so as not to grieve his dying father even more than Isac had been grieved already by his mother and younger brother. Soon afterwards he forgets about the business of Jakobs theft.
When after over twenty years Jakob returns, having kidnapped Laban's daughters and their children out of Laban's house, it turns out Esaw is peacefully waiting for him. Only too happy to have his brother back. Not a word on his part about a stolen blessing.
Jakob however tries to get rid of him as quickly as he can, for fear his past will be mentioned before his wives and children who have no idea what sort of a son and brother he has been. And so I could go on and on and on about the differences between Esaw an Jakob.
A world in the service of a god who loves Jakob and hates Esaw must love treachery and hate kindness. Reminds me of a world I know.
It all boils down on what gives Scripture authority. Christians see the Church confirming what and "what is not", our own Scripture. Anyone can find an old scroll that says something completely different. There were plenty of "gospels" and competing narratives from the earliest days. Just as in pre-Christian times, the Samaritans disputed scriptural authority vs the established Judaism of Our Lord's day.
God hated Esau not because he was a victim, but because he sold his birthright. The value of the promised blessing was perceived as less than a bowl of stew. To treat the sacred as profane is a crime worse than murder in an age before McReligion.
Jacob's perceived the value of the blessing but obtained it dishonestly. His offense was primarily to man, not God as was his brother's.
A thinking person could accept or reject Pauline teaching if they hold different starting premises. A normative Christian knows that a day will come when a great apostasy will come and likely in part via the "discovery" of new texts. We hold the Church, not a Hebrew scholar has the authority to determine both canonicity and interpretation.
A normative Christian's starting point (premise set) is what ecumenical councils define to be without error/of God. For 1,500 years (3/4ths of our history), 90%+ of Christians' believed in the same authority and that authority determined the content of Christian Scripture at Carthage in 397 AD; confirmed later formally by Ecumenical Councils (Florence, Trent).
When the NT quotes the OT, 2/3rds of the time it quotes the LXX which I suspect many outside Christianity would hold to be a corruption. Fair enough, its a different set of assumptions/foundation, just as many ancient Hebrews would likely see Talmud as a corruption.
Luciferians like to bring up Abraham and Isaac, the books of Joshua and Job as evidence that the normative Christian God is mean or "loves treachery and hates kindness." Whatever.
Christians hold that God, not man, is the source and definer of the Real, True and Good.
Postmodern McReligion "Christians" hold that "kindness and the absence of judging others" is the message of the Gospel. Kindness is noble when it is also True, it is evil (simulated good) when it is not.
A Gospel without the message of John the Baptist/First Commandment isn't the Gospel at all.
You say, "A world in the service of a god who loves jacob"? ???! I see a world in service of Lucifer, not the Christian God.
We hold two very different views. Who is right? We'll find out: Dies Irae.
The smart and Good path is to love what God loves, hate what God hates.
1st, it's not even legally true. There is a legal fiction that all adult citizens who aren't soldiers or felons are equal before the law,
. That is hardly "all of us". but even this legal fiction is disregarded by a large number of the laws on the books, and the civil rights legislation make it literally against the law to hold everyone to a single standards.
"Human beings are all equal.. in that we are equal in our dignity as persons and equal members of the same species... we are not all equal in our abilities or (watch it) in-how-we-develop-those-abilities... that is not self evident (sorry Tom) but it is evident."
That said, cultures have immense power over how we might develop our abilities.
Some cultures pursue basketball, some mathematics.
"Obviously height and an athleticism are an advantage in basketball..."
Pure genetics.
"...motivated personal development of the talent you have...."
Genetic traits brought to their highest state by culture (social structures that allow gifted basketball players to practice and develop to their utmost).
"...also friends with the same interest and an available court."
Totally useless without the genetic gifts.
A great case study in nature vs. nurture, using basketball, is the Philippines. Basketball is the Filipino national sport. They have a highly popular professional basketball league. Every village has basketball courts, even dirt courts with bike rims for hoops in alleys and empty lots. Filipinos are crazy about basketball. But they do NOT have the genetic gifts required to be competitive against those who do have the genetic gifts. How many Filipino NBA players are there? Even with all the benefits of a society, culture, value-system that has them eating, drinking, thinking, playing basketball 24/7/365, Filipinos will NEVER be at the top of the international basketball standings.
“Genius is 1/10 inspiration and 9/10s perspiration.”
I have a friend who ran a four minute mile as a freshman in high school, First time running a mile. But he did not develop his talent the way he should have. His choice.
Equality of persons is a matter of faith, a dark and infernal faith. No one can demonstrate equality and there is no table of equivalencies in which being 2 inches taller is compensated for by having 4 shades darker skin and having 9 points higher IQ is offset by running a 40 yard dash 1.3 seconds slower. This can't be demonstrated anymore than we can show that an oranges protective peel compensates for its flesh being less firm than an apple and that they are therefore equal. Because Equality can never be proven in detail it must be believed...or disbelieved.
Measuring ourselves against one another in this way is only useful to those who have believed the myth of Scarcity, that resources are limited and that anything that another gets I miss out on. In truth, our resources are only limited by what Our Father sees to be in our best interest. He will not give us more than is for our benefit nor withhold from us what is useful to us. The only cure for this of course is seeing that He did not withhold His only Son. Everything else is just the same old shit.
For me, this argument illustrates the difference between, for lack of better terms, a Conservative and a Liberal.
As a Conservative, for me the entire issue is settled in the fact that there never has been, is not now, and never will be, another individual exactly like me. I am unique in my physicality and my intellectual capacity. I am unique in my emotional makeup and in my moral and ethical framework. It is completely and utterly impossible for another person to precisely or completely comprehend what I perceive from moment to moment and what I think and/or feel about it. If this WERE possible, every person on the planet would be married to their "soul mate" and there would never be any disagreements misunderstandings (nor any need for divorce lawyers). What goes on in what is sometimes the howling wilderness that resides between my ears is mine, and mine alone.
It is because of this uniqueness found in each and every individual that we, as social animals, within our communities must have a system of rules that we can all agree to live within. It is because of this that we must have a common language, with dictionaries to provide definitions of the words of that language. As a result, within our communities (be they comprised of two people, a city, a state, a nation, or a group of nations) we have individual Rights that we can all agree on, and laws to shape the individual's behavior in those areas not encompassed within our Rights. Not having a system like this results in a descent into savagery as so well described in The Lord of the Flies. However ill stated, I am first and last, a unique individual, and as such, defy simple categorization. This is my understanding of what it means to be a Conservative.
I think that Liberals, however, do not see people as individuals. I think they see people as no more than schools of fish to be subdivided into categories based on some arbitrary, and ever-changing external criteria of their choosing, like skin color, or sexual orientation, or IQ, or whatever is handy at the moment. They do not see me as a unique and discrete individual, but as being "white" or "male" or "racist" or "privileged" or any one of a myriad of ever changing labels that absolutely have nothing to do with who "I" am.
This use of arbitrary categorizations to define me, or that my status as a person is granted only thru membership of a group of their defining, is dehumanizing. It is dismissive of me as an individual person. It reduces me to being a placeholder in a system that they can change on a whim. Ultimately, this system of arbitrary categorization of us allows them to place themselves in a position of superiority over everyone else. This provides justification for their dictating to everyone else where their place is and where they belong.
Defining people with arbitrary labels allows the Liberal to change their labels at will in order to meet their needs of the moment, which they do quite often. Their morality is fluid and exists moment to moment. This same fluidity is exhibited by abusers who attempt to maintain control over their spouses by constantly changing the rules. I suspect that they see no fixed structure within themselves and this is what drives them to try to control everyone else and that this is lack of internal structure is what allows them to practice a situational morality.
A clear example of this is the hue and cry over their "anti-bullying" campaign a few years back in comparison to the absolutely horrendous bullying they exhibit against those who disagree with the nonsense found in DIE and CRT and KGBLT on Whole Wheat and Trans Gender, etc. (I wonder if the Anti-Bullying posters are up next to the rainbow posters in classrooms) They just don't see the stark disconnect in the behavior this exhibits and if it's pointed out, they react with anger and threats. They constantly demonstrate an inability to follow the rules they keep trying to force upon everyone else.
Alright. There I was having a nice morning and then I go off on a rant.
The normative Christian understanding of "equality" differs from the post-"enlightenment" or masonic one. Pareto distributions found in nearly every measurable attribute refute the myth of "equality."
It is far better to hold the model that "we have different gifts" and that different organs in the body have a purpose.
In your appearance on the Myth of the 20th Century, one of your interlocutors bemoaned that about 100 years ago language began to noticeably decline. What happened 100 years ago? they started to jettison classical languages.
So to get to the 5% number, (facility/competence/mastery) of Calculus & at least one classical language or no diploma. Presto!
I'm starting a Go Fund Me for Lyman Stone. Given the highly advanced state of our health care system, there must be some form of effective treatment for his malady. It may well require very invasive surgery, which will be costly for sure. So donate generously!
As I am only peripherally acquainted with the work of Mr. Stone, I am somewhat hesitant to suggest the obvious remedy for his unfortunate condition. But perhaps, with appropriate medical supervision, the gentleman could be offered a brain-ectomy, a complete replacement of the current content of his cranium with an actual brain.
May I venture that the Enlightenment, by all thinking mammals thoroughly despised, was invented by the male part of the said mammals? Or do I give myself away now as belonging to the group with the greatest number of the lowest averages?
To boil brain power down to a single number is also a big mistake. For example, Bill Clinton had super human abilities to remember names and read faces, while also struggling to help his daughter with her math homework.
As for the difference between women and men geniuses, is it not more a matter of smaller sigma for the women?
We struggle with a vain thing, struggling at a gnat while swallowing a camel. We can't take the equality of souls (in God's eyes) and apply it as equality in the physical world. Each human is unique and the outcomes of the past several thousand years reveal that disparate groups of humans have progressed or stagnated according to their inherent capacities.
Intelligence as Virtue, indeed the only virtue is by virtue of Draft Exemptions to the Long Conscription of 1940-1973.
The great virtue of the Supreme Virtuous Ruling “Virtues” - let us give them a proper Title as the Puritans had Ruling “Divines” -
The Great Virtue of Our Ruling Virtues was evading Danger and Hardship for 33 Years.
A Path to Power and Privilege, the Privilege of Life.
…. As others too wished to survive and have the Easy Life College then became for all…
As this was also a Great Boon of Wealth for Education the Virtuous Experts Endorsed this Brilliant and Intelligent Scheme, which now consumes 6% of GDP, or nearly double the Military Budget.
I always understood the constitution to be referring to the soul or spirit essence if you prefer. It would have been soul back then. From that fundamental sameness of life essence conferred by God springs the fundamental rights of man. Do unto others. Because yes, society and the founding Fathers were Christians and not lukewarm ones, so they framed it this way. Also, there was an ongoing struggle between the high born aristocracy, the lower aristocracy and the non-noble but clearly stellar in intellect and accomplishment. At this time the Constitution was likely meant for land owning males and their progeny (male children). The framing would have fit with in the frame of legal succession as it was known at the time. The word progeny is literally written in there. The founding fathers never held the view that all people are created equal. Rather they were put out that all English men were not being treated specially. You can see this in the evolution of right to "happiness", what ever that means. This right was intended to be the right to property but property was too controversial at the time because of slavery. Some property were people.
Most people re-interpret everything through the bias of the modern cultural lens with out even thinking about it. Or worse, by thinking we've absolutely progressed from a more primitive thinking and must re-interpret. The so called elites remain the same entitled, life sucking, rights infringing tyrants. The constitution was intended to be a back stop against them. This back stop is still necessary. The fundamental error was straying, in our modern "omniscience" and distain for the wisdom in religion, from the equal value of the soul. (thank you Lon for stating it precicely)
I’m glad you mentioned Lewontin’s fallacy. As soon as I had any statistical knowledge (I mean in high school) and heard of it it almost struck me dumb that this argument of Lewontin’s was not only taken seriously but one of the most well-worn “anti-racist” arguments. To me it seemed obvious that the range of a distribution being larger than a difference in averages meant exactly nothing, but somehow people are taken in by it.
There is rich and essential context to the term that you are not considering - may I suggest a deeper dive into the history and thinking? Explained in some part here
We are, at least in principle and in the ideal (although current practice seems to diverge considerably from that), equal before the law.
One thing that can be stated with certainty is that we are all of equal value to the Creator and therefore each is loved with the same divine, inexhaustible love. And that is the only sense in which our equality is absolute. All other “equality” is necessarily relative and transient and therefore illusory.
Interesting, is Judas of equal value to the Creator? Hitler?
It is a good question but one that gets colored by post enlightenment or masonic thinking in this age.
A Christian understanding would see that in terms of God's essential nature and universal salvific will, God loves all humans equally and desires their good.
However, the effects of God's love in people's lives are unequal, depending on their free response to divine grace. Those who cooperate with grace and grow in holiness experience deeper union with God.
God has a unique, predestining love for the elect, choosing them for eternal salvation in a way that transcends human understanding but accords with divine wisdom.
In this way, God's love is not equal at all. "Hail FULL of Grace" (Lk 1:28) and "As it is written: Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated." (Rom 9:13)
I guess it depends on how we mean to use the word "love".
Yes, even those we despise are loved by the Creator — they are his children just as are those we love. Did Jesus not say “Love even your enemies”? If he can require that man love his enemies, how much more must the Infinite Creator and Eternal Upholder, the very source and center of divine love itself, be able to love all, irrespective of their choices?
God chooses all for eternal salvation, but such salvation is entirely optional, and some decline. Divine love requires that divine justice eventually functions, but not without first the exercise of the tender and patient mercy of His Son, for which I am personally forever grateful.
Jesus also admonished us not to sit in judgment of our brethren, for that is the prerogative of God alone.
I honestly can’t say whether this despot or that criminal eventually worked it out with the Creator. Do you really know, or do you just presume?
Is it not more comforting to believe that all who ask with a pure heart and in sincerity may receive the benefit of mercy, forgiveness and rehabilitation? I am compelled to believe that the loving Heavenly Father will balance mercy and justice such that no sinner who repents will be denied the opportunity of salvation. And God alone knows who, when they come before Him, is sincere in their repentance.
It is simply unconscionable how corrupted the Hebrew texts had become already in the first century. So much so that we have to take a Pauline epistle for their truth (which a thinking person could refuse to do).
Now anybody who can follow any little line of thought can see for himself, even in a translation, that Jakob was a thief and a liar who treated his old, blind father abominably. Esaw on the other hand bears with his just wrath over having missed the blessing so as not to grieve his dying father even more than Isac had been grieved already by his mother and younger brother. Soon afterwards he forgets about the business of Jakobs theft.
When after over twenty years Jakob returns, having kidnapped Laban's daughters and their children out of Laban's house, it turns out Esaw is peacefully waiting for him. Only too happy to have his brother back. Not a word on his part about a stolen blessing.
Jakob however tries to get rid of him as quickly as he can, for fear his past will be mentioned before his wives and children who have no idea what sort of a son and brother he has been. And so I could go on and on and on about the differences between Esaw an Jakob.
A world in the service of a god who loves Jakob and hates Esaw must love treachery and hate kindness. Reminds me of a world I know.
It all boils down on what gives Scripture authority. Christians see the Church confirming what and "what is not", our own Scripture. Anyone can find an old scroll that says something completely different. There were plenty of "gospels" and competing narratives from the earliest days. Just as in pre-Christian times, the Samaritans disputed scriptural authority vs the established Judaism of Our Lord's day.
God hated Esau not because he was a victim, but because he sold his birthright. The value of the promised blessing was perceived as less than a bowl of stew. To treat the sacred as profane is a crime worse than murder in an age before McReligion.
Jacob's perceived the value of the blessing but obtained it dishonestly. His offense was primarily to man, not God as was his brother's.
A thinking person could accept or reject Pauline teaching if they hold different starting premises. A normative Christian knows that a day will come when a great apostasy will come and likely in part via the "discovery" of new texts. We hold the Church, not a Hebrew scholar has the authority to determine both canonicity and interpretation.
A normative Christian's starting point (premise set) is what ecumenical councils define to be without error/of God. For 1,500 years (3/4ths of our history), 90%+ of Christians' believed in the same authority and that authority determined the content of Christian Scripture at Carthage in 397 AD; confirmed later formally by Ecumenical Councils (Florence, Trent).
When the NT quotes the OT, 2/3rds of the time it quotes the LXX which I suspect many outside Christianity would hold to be a corruption. Fair enough, its a different set of assumptions/foundation, just as many ancient Hebrews would likely see Talmud as a corruption.
Luciferians like to bring up Abraham and Isaac, the books of Joshua and Job as evidence that the normative Christian God is mean or "loves treachery and hates kindness." Whatever.
Christians hold that God, not man, is the source and definer of the Real, True and Good.
Postmodern McReligion "Christians" hold that "kindness and the absence of judging others" is the message of the Gospel. Kindness is noble when it is also True, it is evil (simulated good) when it is not.
A Gospel without the message of John the Baptist/First Commandment isn't the Gospel at all.
You say, "A world in the service of a god who loves jacob"? ???! I see a world in service of Lucifer, not the Christian God.
We hold two very different views. Who is right? We'll find out: Dies Irae.
The smart and Good path is to love what God loves, hate what God hates.
That's not even slightly true.
1st, it's not even legally true. There is a legal fiction that all adult citizens who aren't soldiers or felons are equal before the law,
. That is hardly "all of us". but even this legal fiction is disregarded by a large number of the laws on the books, and the civil rights legislation make it literally against the law to hold everyone to a single standards.
Paraphrasing Mortimer Alder..
"Human beings are all equal.. in that we are equal in our dignity as persons and equal members of the same species... we are not all equal in our abilities or (watch it) in-how-we-develop-those-abilities... that is not self evident (sorry Tom) but it is evident."
That said, cultures have immense power over how we might develop our abilities.
Some cultures pursue basketball, some mathematics.
"Some cultures pursue basketball, some mathematics."
Some even poetry.
"Some cultures pursue basketball, some mathematics."
There's something left unsaid--an unspoken assumption--that follows this assertion.
Is the implication: "Therefore, members of some cultures are better at basketball than members of other cultures." ?
There are a few examples in reality that contradict such a claim.
Cultural focus does not trump God-given talent/abilities/skills.
Obviously height and an athleticism are an advantage in basketball, also friends with the same interest and an available court.
Is it frozen ponds that drive Canadians to excel at hockey or is it Culture, or the effect of Culture driven by frozen ponds?
Are Floridians naturally untalented at winter sports? Or is it something else?
There’s talent, then there are drivers, and then motivated personal development of the talent you have,
"Obviously height and an athleticism are an advantage in basketball..."
Pure genetics.
"...motivated personal development of the talent you have...."
Genetic traits brought to their highest state by culture (social structures that allow gifted basketball players to practice and develop to their utmost).
"...also friends with the same interest and an available court."
Totally useless without the genetic gifts.
A great case study in nature vs. nurture, using basketball, is the Philippines. Basketball is the Filipino national sport. They have a highly popular professional basketball league. Every village has basketball courts, even dirt courts with bike rims for hoops in alleys and empty lots. Filipinos are crazy about basketball. But they do NOT have the genetic gifts required to be competitive against those who do have the genetic gifts. How many Filipino NBA players are there? Even with all the benefits of a society, culture, value-system that has them eating, drinking, thinking, playing basketball 24/7/365, Filipinos will NEVER be at the top of the international basketball standings.
Nature vs Nurture? Nature: 1, Nurture: 0.
“Genius is 1/10 inspiration and 9/10s perspiration.”
I have a friend who ran a four minute mile as a freshman in high school, First time running a mile. But he did not develop his talent the way he should have. His choice.
Equality of persons is a matter of faith, a dark and infernal faith. No one can demonstrate equality and there is no table of equivalencies in which being 2 inches taller is compensated for by having 4 shades darker skin and having 9 points higher IQ is offset by running a 40 yard dash 1.3 seconds slower. This can't be demonstrated anymore than we can show that an oranges protective peel compensates for its flesh being less firm than an apple and that they are therefore equal. Because Equality can never be proven in detail it must be believed...or disbelieved.
Measuring ourselves against one another in this way is only useful to those who have believed the myth of Scarcity, that resources are limited and that anything that another gets I miss out on. In truth, our resources are only limited by what Our Father sees to be in our best interest. He will not give us more than is for our benefit nor withhold from us what is useful to us. The only cure for this of course is seeing that He did not withhold His only Son. Everything else is just the same old shit.
https://comfortwithtruth.substack.com/p/the-narrow-gate
Arguing is hard.
Especially with retards.
For me, this argument illustrates the difference between, for lack of better terms, a Conservative and a Liberal.
As a Conservative, for me the entire issue is settled in the fact that there never has been, is not now, and never will be, another individual exactly like me. I am unique in my physicality and my intellectual capacity. I am unique in my emotional makeup and in my moral and ethical framework. It is completely and utterly impossible for another person to precisely or completely comprehend what I perceive from moment to moment and what I think and/or feel about it. If this WERE possible, every person on the planet would be married to their "soul mate" and there would never be any disagreements misunderstandings (nor any need for divorce lawyers). What goes on in what is sometimes the howling wilderness that resides between my ears is mine, and mine alone.
It is because of this uniqueness found in each and every individual that we, as social animals, within our communities must have a system of rules that we can all agree to live within. It is because of this that we must have a common language, with dictionaries to provide definitions of the words of that language. As a result, within our communities (be they comprised of two people, a city, a state, a nation, or a group of nations) we have individual Rights that we can all agree on, and laws to shape the individual's behavior in those areas not encompassed within our Rights. Not having a system like this results in a descent into savagery as so well described in The Lord of the Flies. However ill stated, I am first and last, a unique individual, and as such, defy simple categorization. This is my understanding of what it means to be a Conservative.
I think that Liberals, however, do not see people as individuals. I think they see people as no more than schools of fish to be subdivided into categories based on some arbitrary, and ever-changing external criteria of their choosing, like skin color, or sexual orientation, or IQ, or whatever is handy at the moment. They do not see me as a unique and discrete individual, but as being "white" or "male" or "racist" or "privileged" or any one of a myriad of ever changing labels that absolutely have nothing to do with who "I" am.
This use of arbitrary categorizations to define me, or that my status as a person is granted only thru membership of a group of their defining, is dehumanizing. It is dismissive of me as an individual person. It reduces me to being a placeholder in a system that they can change on a whim. Ultimately, this system of arbitrary categorization of us allows them to place themselves in a position of superiority over everyone else. This provides justification for their dictating to everyone else where their place is and where they belong.
Defining people with arbitrary labels allows the Liberal to change their labels at will in order to meet their needs of the moment, which they do quite often. Their morality is fluid and exists moment to moment. This same fluidity is exhibited by abusers who attempt to maintain control over their spouses by constantly changing the rules. I suspect that they see no fixed structure within themselves and this is what drives them to try to control everyone else and that this is lack of internal structure is what allows them to practice a situational morality.
A clear example of this is the hue and cry over their "anti-bullying" campaign a few years back in comparison to the absolutely horrendous bullying they exhibit against those who disagree with the nonsense found in DIE and CRT and KGBLT on Whole Wheat and Trans Gender, etc. (I wonder if the Anti-Bullying posters are up next to the rainbow posters in classrooms) They just don't see the stark disconnect in the behavior this exhibits and if it's pointed out, they react with anger and threats. They constantly demonstrate an inability to follow the rules they keep trying to force upon everyone else.
Alright. There I was having a nice morning and then I go off on a rant.
Apologies to all.
The normative Christian understanding of "equality" differs from the post-"enlightenment" or masonic one. Pareto distributions found in nearly every measurable attribute refute the myth of "equality."
It is far better to hold the model that "we have different gifts" and that different organs in the body have a purpose.
In your appearance on the Myth of the 20th Century, one of your interlocutors bemoaned that about 100 years ago language began to noticeably decline. What happened 100 years ago? they started to jettison classical languages.
So to get to the 5% number, (facility/competence/mastery) of Calculus & at least one classical language or no diploma. Presto!
How about one FOREIGN language.
I'm starting a Go Fund Me for Lyman Stone. Given the highly advanced state of our health care system, there must be some form of effective treatment for his malady. It may well require very invasive surgery, which will be costly for sure. So donate generously!
As I am only peripherally acquainted with the work of Mr. Stone, I am somewhat hesitant to suggest the obvious remedy for his unfortunate condition. But perhaps, with appropriate medical supervision, the gentleman could be offered a brain-ectomy, a complete replacement of the current content of his cranium with an actual brain.
Just a thought.
May I venture that the Enlightenment, by all thinking mammals thoroughly despised, was invented by the male part of the said mammals? Or do I give myself away now as belonging to the group with the greatest number of the lowest averages?
To boil brain power down to a single number is also a big mistake. For example, Bill Clinton had super human abilities to remember names and read faces, while also struggling to help his daughter with her math homework.
As for the difference between women and men geniuses, is it not more a matter of smaller sigma for the women?
We struggle with a vain thing, struggling at a gnat while swallowing a camel. We can't take the equality of souls (in God's eyes) and apply it as equality in the physical world. Each human is unique and the outcomes of the past several thousand years reveal that disparate groups of humans have progressed or stagnated according to their inherent capacities.
Your exchange with Stone (aptly named!) is just another demonstration of the fact that some people just aren't worth arguing with.
Intelligence as Virtue, indeed the only virtue is by virtue of Draft Exemptions to the Long Conscription of 1940-1973.
The great virtue of the Supreme Virtuous Ruling “Virtues” - let us give them a proper Title as the Puritans had Ruling “Divines” -
The Great Virtue of Our Ruling Virtues was evading Danger and Hardship for 33 Years.
A Path to Power and Privilege, the Privilege of Life.
…. As others too wished to survive and have the Easy Life College then became for all…
As this was also a Great Boon of Wealth for Education the Virtuous Experts Endorsed this Brilliant and Intelligent Scheme, which now consumes 6% of GDP, or nearly double the Military Budget.
Truly the gods favor Virtue.
I always understood the constitution to be referring to the soul or spirit essence if you prefer. It would have been soul back then. From that fundamental sameness of life essence conferred by God springs the fundamental rights of man. Do unto others. Because yes, society and the founding Fathers were Christians and not lukewarm ones, so they framed it this way. Also, there was an ongoing struggle between the high born aristocracy, the lower aristocracy and the non-noble but clearly stellar in intellect and accomplishment. At this time the Constitution was likely meant for land owning males and their progeny (male children). The framing would have fit with in the frame of legal succession as it was known at the time. The word progeny is literally written in there. The founding fathers never held the view that all people are created equal. Rather they were put out that all English men were not being treated specially. You can see this in the evolution of right to "happiness", what ever that means. This right was intended to be the right to property but property was too controversial at the time because of slavery. Some property were people.
Most people re-interpret everything through the bias of the modern cultural lens with out even thinking about it. Or worse, by thinking we've absolutely progressed from a more primitive thinking and must re-interpret. The so called elites remain the same entitled, life sucking, rights infringing tyrants. The constitution was intended to be a back stop against them. This back stop is still necessary. The fundamental error was straying, in our modern "omniscience" and distain for the wisdom in religion, from the equal value of the soul. (thank you Lon for stating it precicely)
The Founding Fathers were mostly deists or agnostics, not Christians.
I’m glad you mentioned Lewontin’s fallacy. As soon as I had any statistical knowledge (I mean in high school) and heard of it it almost struck me dumb that this argument of Lewontin’s was not only taken seriously but one of the most well-worn “anti-racist” arguments. To me it seemed obvious that the range of a distribution being larger than a difference in averages meant exactly nothing, but somehow people are taken in by it.
There is rich and essential context to the term that you are not considering - may I suggest a deeper dive into the history and thinking? Explained in some part here
https://fee.org/articles/what-the-american-founders-meant-by-equality/