1) 20

2) Conservatism, mostly informed by Christianity. Economically Distributist - an ideology consisting of wide spread *private* ownership of the means of production free from monopoly.

3) To talk politics and discuss ideas, what else?

4) Bloke

5) Wales

6) Christian

7) N/A

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A good ruler submits himself to God and is obedient to Him, as he expects obedience from others. The ruler should always keep John 19:11 in mind also.

The others correctly point to Proverbs too, for a good example of a just and wise ruler.

The ruler should aim to be wise, just, compassionate, merciful where he *should* be and harsh where he *must* be.

He should practice good stewardship and not become prodigal or decadent, and seek the wisdom and goodness of God at all times.

That just implies God left the evil to keep being evil, not that he caused them to go degen directly Himself, does it not?

Thomas Aquinas’ *Prima Via: The Argument of the Unmoved Mover*, which is affirmed in conjunction with Isaac Newton’s later development of the first law of motion.

All hail, the passengers of flight 93

Oh fuck off will you

I would argue to the contrary however, authoritarian states are always far less stable than states with less power focused in one position. Men, in their nature will always seek to profit themselves by grabbing power if they are brave and ambitious enough to take it.

In an authoritarian regime this leads to constant coups, civil wars and power struggles - all of these filled with self serving men. The more the power is delegated, the more stable a state is.

I’ll give you an example -

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Byzantine_revolts_and_civil_wars

The Byzantine Empire was has an overwhelming amount of rebellions and internal power struggles when compared to decentralised feudal Western European states. The reason is that in Byzantium everyone in power derived that power from the emperor and his authority alone. Anyone who governed any area or held any rank did so by his consent alone and he could strip these from people and replace them as he saw fit. His position was incredibly enviable and this caused constant internal strife.

Meanwhile in feudal states there were far fewer rebellions because while the feudal lords owed their loyalty to their king, they did not owe their power to him. They inherited their position from their fathers and it was usually a bad idea for the king to strip these positions from them without proper cause.

In a modern democracy, if the people are unhappy they voice discontent with a vote instead of flipping their shit and overthrowing you in a violent revolution. Often dictators stay in power because they are popular, but as soon as that popularity wanes they are overthrown, or even if they remain popular with the common man; the power they wield breeds the envy of their professed allies and they are betrayed by their own ruling class.

Might have gone a bit overboard there aye, but I was just thinking of what I would say.

I’m a constitutional monarchist, though I’m in favour of the monarch making more use of their powers rather than relying wholly on the ‘advice’ of the PM. What forget is that the monarch in the UK actually wields a lot of power and isn’t a ‘figurehead’ or whatever else liberals refer to them as.

A figurehead monarchy is called a crowned republic, a constitutional monarchy is an enfranchised monarch with powers and a position as superior to that of parliament.

The main reason I don’t approve of a full on absolute monarchy is summed up in what I wrote above. Benevolent dictatorships are a pretty dream, but the practical doesn’t work as well as the theory.

Take the Bismarck > Wilhelm problem for example. A strong leader builds a country and does it well, then he loses his power and it turns out he built a machine that only he can drive and his successor ends up being incompetent. There’s nothing worse than an incompetent leader with a lot of power.

Actually there is something worse -

an immoral man with absolute power

Who are the electors? @Maksim

Generosity in what sense? In the monetary sense I’d personally prefer a penny pincher to be put in power than a generous man, since the former will be more careful about extravagant spending.

As for IQ, I find that IQ points tend to not be the best indicator of intelligence since it mainly measures how well you can detect patterns.

And the elective nature of the monarchy doesn’t preclude the problems with authoritarian nature of the regime, such as the power hungry sycophants, internal struggles, potential coups etc. Likewise it also invests a lot power in this court which can be used as a political weapon and might encourage partisan tensions.

@Maksim What do you think?

The HRE was elective until the monarchs started getting the electors to keep voting inside of the emperors family, so the Salian dynasty held it for an incredibly long time.

If charity becomes a requirement for the title, doesn’t it lead to the purpose of charity (helping you me fellow man) being diluted? Wouldn’t people just give so they can claim to be an altruist rather than because they actually are?

And does that matter in your opinion?

So not even the prospective kings themselves know?

Interesting workaround.

So with the IQ issue, would you prefer a pattern minded type rather than a Plato esque ‘*philosopher-king*’ ideal monarch?

I like the introspective kind of intelligence myself, it breeds wisdom I think.

That statement in of itself was philosophy @Maksim

It was still antiquity when my ancestors converted so I don’t much stock in my mud hut dwelling ancestors and their pre-Christian beliefs.

Nowhere in Europe was civilised tens of thousands of years ago

Christianity uplifted Europe, the Carolingian Renaissance was Europe’s salvation from pagan savagery back into civilisation.

Ooga booga hail odin

A lot of Christian theology and our own masterminds like Thomas Aquinas and Augustine were ‘philosophers’.

Pre-Christian Socrates famously considered himself to be unwise because he considered that ‘he knew nothing’

While criticising people who considered themselves wise for being even less wise for the crime of mistaking themselves wise.

@Eoppa Sorry I didn’t see your message properly, I’ll get to you soon then mate.

@Maksim I’m a Protestant, but I agree with Eoppa, reason in conjunction with faith is important. I also think you’re mistaken in your belief that philosophy makes people believe themselves wise, in accordance with my Socrates example.

Could you expand on your position for me?

That’s cool, take your time

I’d argue theology itself is a form of philosophy. I still deposit that the phrase “Philosophy is a load of horseshit” is in of itself a philosophical position, albeit a paradoxical one.

Get to your maths class, it’s more important than me 😂

I’ll still be about when you’re done

Addie knows that the argument I’ve made was a cosmological one, and has heard it before. I guess this means it’s auto debunked and requires no additional discussion.

I suppose this means I can shrug off the thousands of atheist talking points I’ve heard and used to make myself when I was one, because I know what they are and have heard them before.

Speaking of facts, the Big Bang theory as mentioned in the above definition was first devised by a priest.

Wasn’t speaking to you anyway Addie you self centred mofo

As a Protestant - you won’t find many as opposed to the institution of the Roman Catholic Church as myself. I do think however there are many myths and misunderstandings surrounding the issue of Galileo and it’s clear that the Catholic Church was historically pro-scientific institution. The case has since been used by people opposed to the RCC as some lazy point of argument, rather than targeting more legitimate causes for criticism (of which there are many)

Copernicus was first

Galileo was guilty of heresy

He wasn’t charged with saying the world goes around the sun

This just solidified my belief that people who use Galileo as a talking point really have no idea what happened.

Galileo was not in trouble for saying the earth goes around the sun, Copernicus did so before him and he was a personal friend of the Pope.

He was rather charged with another crime

That of directly contradicting the RCC

That’s the crime of the RCC, its rigid authoritarian nature and lack of room for dissent.

Not “much anti science”

Otherwise I’m just going to start citing Georges Lemaitre and Gregor Mendel.

@Riley Cosmological arguments exist, did you know that?

Also did you know the Big Bang theory priest man was a priest man that Big Bang theory’d

Obviously the were created by racial Jews that’s the point, all of Christianity was created by ‘racial Jews’. What nonsense thinking is that meant to be?

Oracle, you claimed yesterday that Europe was filled with advanced civilisations *tens of thousands of years ago*. What’s up with that?

I do find it ironic when hard anti-Semite types turn against Christianity for being “too Jewish” while ignoring the fact that European anti Semitism originated from Christians mistrust of Jews and the religious tensions between them.

Then agains neo-pagans are generally oblivious to history

I would make theology and philosophy part of the curriculum. If you go to an English medium school and are monolingual you must learn another language. These languages could be Welsh, Gaelic, Latin or a language of trade.

This is in the context of the UK that is

How can you have shit Bible morals when morality doesn’t exist Addie?

It’s all opinion at the end of the day

In my subjective opinion we should kill children for disobedience

This is the funniest shit I’ve seen today, I’m hoping it’s ironic 😂

He was obviously trolling, no one is that stupid

Jesus was God, simple as

No need for rudeness, guy seems pretty candid.

Christianity isn’t ‘dying’ though. Declining maybe but we’re never dying. I was an atheist zoomer, and here I am. There’s always going to be men like me.

Tell biflexual that Jesus was supposed to die, He refused to be saved by his apostles. One of which drew a sword and cut off a mans ear when they arrived to arrest Him, but Jesus rebuked Him and healed the man’s ear.

When He was crucified, His enemies the Pharisees mocked Him and said “He saved others, why can’t He save Himself?”

People these days basically repeat that line and prove that they’ve never read the crucifixion accounts but readily give their opinions on it.

Who knows, I always pictured it has the flesh growing back completely.

So maybe that guy had a spare ear from then on

😂

It’s not really that relevant as a detail

Me too, but only reasonable people listen to reason @Deleted User

Well he came right out the gate with “religious people are brainwashed”

It’s impossible to have good faith conversations with people who think you have no critical thinking

@Suit Dog Sure let me think of one

He fasted for 40 days and nights in the wilderness, while being tempted by Satan the whole time.

And conversed with him

Well a little bit of expansion on it then - Satan offered Him all the kingdoms on earth in return for worshiping him.

@Suit Dog Oh, that’s a parable, meant as a lesson for His apostles

He wiped His spit in a blind man’s eyes to heal them.

He used this method because ancient Israelites believed spit had some healing properties they’d spit (their *own* spit) into their wounds following this superstition.

I’d find it offensive for someone to spit in my eyes personally but if I was blind at I could suddenly see after it I would be buzzing

Here’s another, Jesus didn’t have a surname and neither did most Israelites. “Christ” is a title derived from a Greek phrase meaning *”the anointed One”* - equivalent to *Messiah*

Most cultures didn’t have surnames for a while, we only started adopting them en masse later on.

Exactly

That or patronymics, where they’d be distinguished by their fathers name. So “Robert John’s son”

Which became “Johnson”

In Wales we did the same, if your name was Dafydd and your father was called Gruffydd your full name would be ‘Dafydd ap Gruffydd’

I speak it, one of 500,000 that can.

Does gen Gymraeg gormod o cytseiniaid, ein llafariaid yn gwahanol i’r rhain mewn Saesneg. W yn llafariad mewn Cymraeg er enghraifft. Mae llawer o llyffrenau dwbl yn fel Ll ac Dd yn llyfrenau ei hunain, hyd yn oed. Maer gynta dim yn sŵn mewn Saesneg a mae’r ail yn D meddal.

That’s something I wrote just today discussing the language.

It means

*“Welsh doesn’t have too many consonants, our vowels are just different to that of English. ‘W’ is a vowel in Welsh for example. Many double letters like ‘Ll’ and ‘Dd’ etc are all actually one letter each. The former forms a sound that doesn’t appear in English and the latter is a soft D.”*

Beautiful spoken language, has a rhythmic flow to it

Wales has as many sheep as people, and some Welshmen would raid English border towns to steal livestock, hence the derogatory phrase “sheep shagger” which I find more amusing than offensive.

Thanks, I’m proud of my country and have spent some time studying our history, culture and legends for the sake of my heritage.

Did you know the first prose literature in all of Britain is a compilation of Welsh myths and oral tradition written in Middle Welsh? It’s called the Mabinogi.