Said Rory Stewart, a podcaster, quoted in "JD Vance says Rory Stewart has ‘low IQ’ in Christian values clash/The US vice-president copies Trump’s playbook with response to the former minister’s claims that his rhetoric was ‘false and dangerous'" (London Times).
Vance's original statement was: "There’s this old school — and I think it’s a very Christian concept by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, you can focus and prioritise the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that."
When Stewart disagreed, Vance came at him with: "Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone? This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years. Rory Stewart thinks he has an IQ of 130 when it’s really 110.'"
It's not a question of what Rory really thinks but what Jesus really said. What IQ does Vance ascribe to Jesus?
पोस्ट्स
१३१ टिप्पण्या:
Vance spelled out a Catholic doctrine, which as we know, hasn't always had a basis in Scripture, but in this case, in common sense. Not just love, but duty, too.
Subsidiarity is an essential Catholic principle. Vance describes it well.
Stewart is a second generstion spy a runner up to prime minister who has all the wrong instincts
Vance should have said only "people like Stewart", but this could be more fun.
A remainer who cares more about immigrants than native britons
IQ level is not indicative of common sense level, and vice versa.
"a person will lay down his life for his friends." Jesus didn't say strangers, so Stewart's choice of verse doesn't advance his argument very well.
Jesus showed that principle in his own life - when he was dying he was concerned about making sure his mother was cared for.
"Love thy neighbor as thyself". Neighbor is a key word. Mrs Jellyby is not a model to emulate.
Vance is exactly right in his observation that the left has inverted the level of love/care/duty they feel for the parties he described (essentially, the closer related they are, the LESS the left cares about them). And that is precisely why they have ruined every place they control. Trump has reset that. That's why he won.
News flash to Rory: Jesus loves everyone perfectly because He is GOD. We mere humans need help in understanding how to carry that out, hence teachings.
Timothy 5:8 “And whoever does not provide for relatives, and especially for family members, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
When did Vance actually say “low IQ”?
The Times sounds upset, maybe because their confidential US intelligence sources lost their security clearances.
Ashkenazi Jews average IQ 115, so probably Jesus is up there.
Christian Pastor Mike Winger asks this very question. I’m Catholic but like Mike’s takes on things. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX7xhaceEXU&t=20s
Which of the 4 Gospels does that come from?
An IQ of 110 is not "low IQ" since that is one standard deviation from average. Now the person who doesn't know 110 is above average, they are probably below average. Is that Vance, Stewart or the author? Or me by not understanding?
A Church that has survived for two thousand years has some experience with reality.
Rory was a black watch lieutenant on probation before doing spy duties in indonesia and montenegro
God's IQ can be calculated because IQ comes from a ranking, with the rank probability translated into a normal distribution with mean 100 and standard deviation 15. At AD 1 the world population was 170 million, and presumably God would score highest, anyway let's give Him that. Best out of 170 million has probability .00000000588235294117, which corresponds to an IQ for God of 185.54652, Even God can't defeat the exponential. God would be a little smarter these days, with a larger population to give him a less probable rank.
Some genes replicate less but cause their carriers to take better care of them.
Jordan Peterson says to his psych class that if you have an IQ of 120, you're struggling with this college material. 130 is more adequate.
Would a divine being have a measurable IQ? Maybe your AI friends can help you answer that.
"Are you saying that Jesus Christ can't hit a curve ball?"
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.
Adam Smith
Rory runs the development racket where foreign aid gets recycled back into bank deposits in the uk and france but the people get little
Speaking of IQ is fraught with danger in this society of 2025. It has been equated with hate speech. Our contemporary social problems stem from this phenomenon, to a great degree.
I suspect the answer to the question in the last paragraph is both "higher than mine" and "expressed as a number, something beyond our understanding." Will future AI models be expressed in levels of numeric measure equivalent to human IQ measures?
Such interesting times to live in, eh?
There's a further complication with God's IQ, in that IQ tests are sex-normed. They add boy questions or girl questions until the sexes do equally well. God presumably does best among the guys, but not necessarily among women. Consider Moses's wife talking God out of killing Moses.
Dickens ridiculed the hyper concern for remote othere over ones own children in Bleak House. Mrs Jellyby was one of his better characters IMO unlike his boring love interests.
But I think it was For Whom the Bell Tolls when the left started going off the rails. Boomer kids were exposed to the Donne poem and decided we had to care about every other fucking place first.
Did Vance use the term "Low IQ"? I didn't see it. I think that he was calling Rory a "mid-wit."
Actual screen shots of tweets
Shorter Smith, "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic." -- Stalin
There is a reason that the millions murdered by the Communists had no impact on their moral standing in the West.
Social problems come from male and female genitals, mostly.
The difference between the 2 men could be resolved by saying that Vance referred to a "Christian concept" and Rory was talking about what Jesus said. The religions develop their concepts and have adjusted the words of Jesus to fit with and remain popular in the real world. But my problem with Vance is his taking a shot at the other person by referring to his IQ. Address the idea. What's the point of expressing an opinion about another person's intelligence? And it's especially bad to act like a person with a 110 IQ is too dumb to be taken seriously. You're disrespecting the great majority of the people. So much for populism. How can we tolerate democracy, what with all these dummies?
Vance: "I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years."
I think people are being naive. If you pretend to care about Foreingers over your own people its not because you love foreigners, its because you hate your own people.
The left is motivated by Hate, not love. They just say they love foreigners and "The other". The idea that Stewart cries at night over foreign strangers he's never met, is just silly. Stewart is anti-patriotic. He has no love of country.
I don't see any point in going over Vance's point and weighing whether its true or not. Its human nature and been followed by everyone througout history. I know 'muricans don't care about history, the world started yesterday, and everyone is their own Pope, no matter how ignorant they are.
Jews look after the interest of Jews first. So do the Japanese, the chinese, the Russians, etc. Only 'murcians think we need to love foreigners and put their interests over our own. But lets get real, 'muricans and Stewart probably think they personally are making $$$ off cheap labor and that's why they're for open borders and massive immigration.
"Dickens ridiculed the hyper concern for remote othere over ones own children in Bleak House...."
And Jesus said: "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
And then there was the time Jesus "saw two... James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets. He called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him."
Going out into the world, among strangers, was more important than family.
Talking about IQ is just calling someone stupid in fancy dress. It is best avoided unless you have Trump's talent for name calling. There are more interesting things to talk about.
BTW, what is it about the English and their constant talk of USA domestic politics. Starmer the Labour PM felt it perfectly legitimate to send Labour party workers to the USA to defeat Trump - as if he was a USA citizen. The English press if full of constant chatter about Trump and how bad he is. Or how terrible USA Congressmen/Senator X is.
If it wasn't so obnoxious, it would be funny, how they arrogantly butt into our affairs while being only half-informed. But ignorance never stopped an Englishman from lecturing others.
Right on…
The London Time tells us that Vance is accusing Stewart of having "a Low IQ" - putting the three words in quotes, when it appears that Vance didn't actually say those three words. It reads like he was saying Stewart thinks he's smarter than he really is, not assessing his IQ. That would make this Fake News, if so. Then, Vance is again labeled as making accusations and 'trolling', as if challenging an opinion is trolling. I wouldn't call it that, in this case. The one mistake that I think Vance made, was to say that "This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years..." I don't think there's anything false about Stewart's arrogance. With all the inflammatory words being used, I think that somebody is trying to elevate the importance of their podcast. It's simple click-mongering, by greedy little men that are hungry for attention.
It also gets you away from the wife. Look at all the guys hanging around any private airport.
Focus on IQ is stupid. Stick to policy…
Augustine was into thinking the best of somebody rather than the worst, as the Christian value. Anyway it's soul-saving. Public virtue, not so much.
You pluck any passage out of scripture and make it mean anything you want to mean, especially if you're good with words. Chrisitianity isn't just the bible, the Catholic Church and Christianity have been around for 2000 years. If Jesus Christ wanted us all to literally hate our families and love strangers, we wouldn't be here because no one would've had Kids. Obviously, Christians have interpeted the passage to mean something else for 2000 years.
And BTW, did Jesus hate Mother Mary - I doubt it. And Jesus said you forgive 7x7. So why are we putting people in jail or punishing murders. Lets just set them free and only worry about the 50th homicide!
Vance's comment reminds me of what my 9th grade science teacher inscribed in my junior high school yearbook:
"To 'Wince,' who is smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is."
The point there is 'go out', not 'strangers'. And doing it personally.
This is also, contra a lot of similar interpretations, the story of the Good Samaritan.
Vance said that the guy was relatively smart (above average IQ) but not as brilliant as he thinks he is. That is not the same as saying "low IQ".
You're disrespecting the great majority of the people.
Trump isn't disrespecting anybody. It's a New York argument. A retort is invited, expected and enjoyed. He's having fun with the guy.
Exactly. A problem with throwing out things like IQ is that there are (apparently) tests for it, but more importantly is a way to deflect from the real issue(s).
Most people (except the elites) don't care about IQ or whatever measurement you want to ascribe to, what's your point and what are you doing about it?
Jesus was just making it up as a parable. He wasn't actually advocating being nice to tossers like Samaritans.
Mitchell and Webb The Samaritan Parable
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die."
Augustine was into thinking the best of somebody rather than the worst, as the Christian value.
That's the old definition of "candor," from the Latin for white (candid, candidate--their togas were specially whitened) Not sure when it changed, but after Austen.
Charismatic leadership is a different phenomenon than intelligence and has more to do with group behavior than individual behavior. There are many examples throughout history, and indeed, in recent times. But it does seem that it involves transcending the personal for some bigger ideal. I won't argue religion here.
I'm certainly no expert theologian but these are event are not about going out into the world in general but specifically about following Jesus. So the order of priority should place God ahead of even family. This seems like properly elevating God not lowering the importance of family.
Jesus obviously didn’t literally mean to hate your family. After all, he said the second most important thing commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself, and family are clearly your closest neighbors. His statement wasn’t about going out into the world, it was that obeying the first commandment (loving God) should take utmost priority such that even obeying the second in relation to those closest to you would seem like hate compared to your dedication to the first.
Progressive-liberal pretend to "love thy neighbor as oneself". But that's simply expressed virtue-signal. Those same progressives staunchly oppose any policy or action or person who adversely affect them and their children. Notice absence of migrant shelters in upscale suburbs. Notice expensive residential home prices serve as restrictive gatekeeping to prohibit influx of low-income and migrant residents.
Few progressives offered to personally house recently-arriving migrant illegal aliens in their homes; many strongly opposed migrant shelter placements within their own neighborhoods. Most progressives live in neighborhoods not impacted by substantial influx of illegal alien residents, children's schools not receiving substantial population of non-English-speaking migrant children. The American progressive "bubble" environment remains largely unaffected by illegal alien socio-economic problems, largely evaded local taxpayer-costs associated with newly-arrived illegal aliens. It's easy to advocate for Open Borders policies when it has little affect upon your nice upper-middle class white-collar professional existence, and those Open Borders in theory improve the unskilled-undocumented labor pool for housekeepers, nannies, lawn guys, restaurant kitchen help, day labor construction workers.
The obvious crime-spike associated with Biden's Open Borders policy has little discernible impact to progressives. They recognize there's little statistical chance of personal jeopardy, that is until their family members get mugged, carjacked, robbed, or murdered. See what's going on in Chicago; Biden's "migrants" have become 25% of arrested violent criminals.
Likewise in prosperous southern England and London Home Counties, where Rory Stewart-types reside and work. Easy to chirp "love they neighbor as oneself" towards undocumented illegal aliens everywhere, when from a literal distance, and in Rory's instance able to further insulate oneself from the riff-raff. JD Vance is pragmatic guy, not a progressive, speaks for the American average family who don't have luxury of advocating for progressive policies in direct conflict with best interests of their family's own welfare.
@ the vault dweller. Precisely. This statement of Jesus says nothing about how to order love amongst other people. It’s about putting God first.
Jesus was addressing his disciples.
That, right there, would get a helluva lot of people in trouble these days.
On account of unusual proclivities, as Theodore Cleaver might say.
Rory's failure to grasp the difference between a "Christian concept" and a specific gospel passage (which Vance did not reference) seems to illustrate Vance's point. If you did that on the SAT you would be wrong.
And if you arrogantly assume that you know which specific passage (or any specific passage) Vance is referring to, then you probably think that you are smarter than you are.
I guarantee you that Vance knows his own IQ/SAT scores, and is daring Rory to compare. He has deduced from Rory's style of argument that Rory is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Very Trumpian.
I think it was wrong if Vance to bring IO into it, Ann. So I agree with you, it looks proud and petty to me. I do agree with his point about love. I also think it’s possible to do both. I care for my family and friends in more tangible ways because proximity allows me to do so. When I hear if a disaster further away, I usually support by sending funds. This makes sense. They aren’t exclusive.
Heh…🤛
Leftism is its own religion.
Uhh, the Bible used today was written by the Roman Catholics. Catholicism is Christianity everything else is a branch from that root.
But that doesn't matter one wit. The personal priority of responsibility that JD Vance expresses is a very humanistic view.
As per vice president Vance's observation that his opponent has relatively low IQ is a low IQ remark itself. It doesn't take a genius to know that your number one priority is your family and the people closest to you.
Vance emphatically did not call Stewart dumb or suggest that a 110 IQ is stupid - he said that Stewart is not as smart as Stewart thinks himself to be. Very different concept. I do wish he hadn't added that, however, as the argument moved to who has the highest IQ and away from who is right about caring for those closest to you first.
Another teaching of Jesus shows that caring for family is a higher priority than donating to others.
“Jesus replied, “And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, ‘Honor your father and mother’ and ‘Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.’ But you say that if anyone declares that what might have been used to help their father or mother is ‘devoted to God,’ they are not to ‘honor their father or mother’ with it. Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition. You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you: “ ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules.’ ””
Matthew 15:3-9 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/mat.15.3-9.NIV
The funny deal with leftists is they always want to criticize anyone who claims to be a Christian - as a bad Christian - simply because they are not on the left.
only leftwing Christians are smart and good. you see.
(obligatory - all while same leftists ignore the left's lies, destruction, greed etc...)
"What IQ does Vance ascribe to Jesus?" Since Jesus=Son of God and God is all-knowing, Jesus could solve any problem and would have the highest possible IQ. But since God would know all questions and answers before any human could devise a test, Jesus would be cheating if He had to take an IQ test. Since Jesus wouldn't do something so immoral, His IQ would be unmeasurable. Vance is smart enough not to ascribe any IQ to Jesus.
Stewart went from Eton to Oxford, so his IQ probably closer to 130 than 110. With many years of Latin. Vance's Wife went from Yale to Cambridge and back so she may have already explained that to him.
A number of members of the human race have had their IQs estimated at higher than 200. DaVinci and Gauss come to mind. Perhaps the population size at the times justify that. On the other hand, the standard IQ test, the Wescher, last I checked, does not measure above 140, and isn't normed for that. Scores above 140 are meaningless in that context, unless things have changed.
What IQ would it take to create our universe? Who knows maybe it's easy. I do tend to think it's running mostly on the client side, with the server not really responsible for too much.
I believe the doctrine does have a basis in the Torah and the Bible. The Ten Commandments mention God and parents, which also supports their priority over strangers. Elsewhere are instructions for child rearing and how precious children are to God the Father. The same working outward pattern is demonstrated by Jesus when He establishes His ministry and instructs the Disciples.
That was an unfortunately distracting comment in an otherwise reasonable statement.
Ah unintentional insertion of a comedic moment. But it illustrates how the Left only wants to emphasize Christ the Redeemer and feeder of the hungry by excluding uncomfortable truths even when they are literally cited in chapter and verse. Fascinating!
Jesus also called out public figures who were of high intelligence, great learning, and yet lacked wisdom. It sounds to me like that was the gist of what Vance was trying to say but it came across snarky and rude.
"What's the point of expressing an opinion about another person's intelligence?" But JDV was actually expressing an opinion about another person's high regard for himself.
"And it's especially bad to act like a person with a 110 IQ is too dumb to be taken seriously." Did he "act like" that?
"You're disrespecting the great majority of the people." You could argue the opposite: the great majority should not be patronized by their faux superiors.
How can we tolerate democracy, what with all these dummies?" Not at all what JDV said or implied, and oddly irrelevant after a candidate who loves the "poorly educated" won. But as a matter of political philosophy, voter ignorance is an issue.
JDV said: "This false arrogance drives so much elite failure" That's what I take to be his point. Not about IQ, but about false arrogance. Calling BS on the pseudo elite.
In general, I'd agree with Althouse that it is uncouth to brandish IQ as a polemical weapon. But here JDV made a more specific and pertinent point. It is also fun to see an actually smart GOPer turn the tables a bit on the supposed elite. Their outrage is a tell.
Every sect of Christianity uses the Catholic Bible. You know the one that was edited by the high priests to ensure that they could maintain control over the masses and exclude all of the gospels that didn't fit their narrative.
I think one of the main reasons why I'm not a believer in Christianity is because Jesus is such a squishy libtard.
Sebastian, ref Jesus’s IQ: If you believe he is fully god and fully man, then he mysteriously, simultaneously is the divine wisdom and has a wet monkey brain with finite capacity. The gospels themselves say he grew in wisdom. He showed a lack of full knowledge when the woman with the flow of blood touched him and he said “who touched me!?” We dont know exactly how and when bits of info, such as foreknowledge of his death, passed from his divine to human natures.
I’m thinking you were being facetious, but I couldnt pass up a chance to discuss the dual-natures doctrine.
JSM
Jesus was making the point that following Him, loyalty to God, is so important that even family who try to separate you from God should be ignored. Not shunned or disrespected but ignored in that respect. Note that Zebedee became a Believer and helped support Jesus’ ministry. Other modern translations have selected a more precise interpretation than “hate” in the passage Althouse referenced.
Yes clearly making the point that the Media deserves all the disdain and even more so.
I think Vance knows more about Catholic teaching and of St Augustine than Rory Stewart. A simple googling of Ordo Amoris yielded this:
"St Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.”
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Put another way, a virtuous Christian man can love Christ, his wife, his children, his nation, his region, his house, his dog, and his favorite coffee cup. What he cannot do (while remaining virtuous) is to get anything in this list out of place or out of order. If he loves his wife more than Christ, he cannot be Christ’s disciple (Luke 14:26,33). If he loves his coffee cup more than Christ, then his more serious problems need not detain us here.
Vance’s reference to IQ is a form of elitism and unnecessary. However, Stewart seems to share the same syndrome of those such as De Grasse Tyson (which may be why Vance slapped him down.) Being knowledgeable (or even expert) in one area doesn’t make you expert in everything. I see no evidence that Stewart knows the Bible or Christian teaching. His refutation of Vance is meaningless, because it comes from a place without depth.
Stewart speaks for Jesus. Vance speaks from God's commandments.
IQ talk has no place in the political realm.
"What IQ does Vance ascribe to Jesus?" I would take a wild guess that Jesus was maybe one in a billion (or whatever rare combination of moral and intellectual talents he possessed) which translates into a normally distributed score of 190. https://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/iqtable.aspx
When looking at this table you realize that IQ scores that most people consider to be "genius" level are actually quite common. E.g, an IQ of 145 or higher is possessed by one out of every 750 people, implying that a small town of 30,000 would have on average forty such persons. You meet them all the time.
An IQ of 160 or higher on the other hand is possessed by roughly one out of every 30,000 people. You meet them in every university town. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Ann were among them.
These percentile numbers are much more informative than raw IQ scores
What Stewart lacks is common sense. He may well lack the IQ points too but he definitely lacks the common sense. Practically no one would choose to save a stranger at the cost of their own children, extended family, friends, etc. Even Stewart wouldn't do it if pressed to make a choice.
Vance wins this debate in a rout.
What he meant by that was “your family will disown you for following me.”
In all the jokes, Heaven has a border wall with a guarded gate and they don't let just anybody in. They look you up in their records and vet you.
He still ascribed to him an IQ above average though. So it seems he was saying the guy is smart, but not as smart as he thinks he is.
Jesus's EQ was off the charts.
It's a rhetorical blunder to inject IQ into arguments that aren't explicitly about the measurement of cognitive function.
Jesus warned his disciples that they would be required to sacrifice what God promised to other men, women, and our Posterity. That said, teach a man to fish not redistributive change, a woman to care for her baby not liberal indulgence, a neighbor to be charitable not take a knee, etc.
The first thing I though of after reading this exchange was the conservative vs. liberal "heat map" of care. Illustrated here:
https://x.com/VeryInsig/status/1819122458307580392
Stewart speaks for Jesus. Vance reminds him that he is not.
Could god create a human that had an IQ higher than his? Or hers?
Perhaps the low IQ mention wasn't a top moment. But so what?
We just survived 4 years of pure bullshit.
Vance does poorly when he attempts the Trump insult route. It works for Trump because of his overall personality and it goads opponents. Vance's strength is in clear headed unrelenting logic.
The IQ thing is Vance showing that he's familiar with the "midwit" observation. A decent fraction of people in the 110-115 range--particularly those who are in journalism or management--think they are significantly smarter than they actually are. For example, Biden's whole schtick about how smart he is and how awesome he was in law school, etc.
"Midwits" think that TED talks are intellectual breakthroughs rather than self-congratulatory entertainment. They latch on to some basic idea or quote--"The World if Flat," "Technofeudalism"--and flog it to death because they lack the ability to synthesize. They screech "I need to see evidence!" as a reflex.
The guy Vance is interacting with gives every tell-tale of being a midwit, and he's playing the midwit game of cherry-picking quotes from the Bible without being able to understand the intellectual synthesis that's been developed in the Roman Catholic Church over the past 2000 years. Now if you're a Protestant, that intellectual synthesis doesn't matter: you can talk to God whenever you want and be inspired to know His will. But Roman Catholics believe in the value of the synthesis, and Vance is 100% on target in noting that within that context you are called to take care of the people for whom you are directly responsible and then the people with whom you interact with personally before you are called to take care of strangers on the other side of the globe. People like missionaries and saints are honored because they go so far BEYOND what ordinary people can do in their own Imitatio Christi.
Choosing out a few individual stories or quotations and saying "But Jesus said . . . " is both a midwit move and completely besides the point to Vance, because he's not a Protestant (or an atheist trying to score imaginary debating points) but a convert to Roman Catholicism and therefore a believer in God's will being manifested through the institution of the Church and the words of the Church Fathers and Doctors of the Faith.
**N.B.: I am not myself Roman Catholic. I just know what the Roman Catholic Church actually believes because I have taken time to learn about it--and it's not like the Catholic Church keeps this knowledge secret!
Bible quotes are contradictory. We aren't going to be able to get back to the "real" Jesus on this.
Vance, though, needs to watch himself. People will accept things from Trump that they won't accept from other politicians. Trump came from the entertainment world. Either there's a sly wink accompanying a lot of the things he says, or people think they see one. Vance talking about other people's IQ's goes over about as well as Biden's "I think I have a higher IQ than you."
By now, every Washingtonian ought to realize that intelligence is a very complicated thing with very many aspects. Pit a 130 IQ against a 110 IQ and it's by no means certain that that the person with the higher number will outsmart the other.
Poor Howie- still smarting from that 91 that he scored on the IQ test in high school.
Is there any evidence that stewart is a sunday going Christian? This sort of thing sounds like the typical leftwing Alinsky tactic of making Christians live up to Christianity. Athiests always pull this crap too.
Drout, I realize you were simplifying for brevity, but just as a reminder for the general audience, there is lots of sophisticated, scholarly Protestant theology. Luther, Knox, Zwingli, Andrewes, NT Wright, Bonhoffer, etc, etc. Of course, they all build on the 1500 years of Catholic and Orthodox theology that came before. So now I'm simplifying.
JSM
Asking what Jesus' IQ might be is a very silly question/prompt.
Agreed. I was raised Lutheran and taught that Martin Luther's work is pinnacle of all Theology, which is ironic, since Luther himself claims that everything he says comes "sola Scriptura." My oversimplification is that the Roman Catholic church explicitly and officially accepts—really, it celebrates—the authority of the massive intellectual tradition of the Church Fathers as synthesized by the Doctors of the Church, while Protestant theology sees that tradition as illuminating and helpful, since it contains much insight and wisdom, but not AUTHORITATIVE.
In my experience, very few people are as smart as they think they are. Same with sexual attractiveness.
Of course, my own self-assessment is perfect and irrefutable.
After I was confirmed as a Methodist, I began paying attention to the stated requirements for being a good Christian, and left.
Trump excels at trash talking.
"A Church that has survived for two thousand years has some experience with reality."
Or it's an authoritarian cult that has held a strong grip on their members, in many years of its history via grievous tortures and murder.
As for JC, yeah...he pretty much did say to love and welcome strangers as one does oneself and one's countrymen. There's no stated hierarchy by Jesus of "love" and "acceptance" and helping others.
"Subsidiarity is an essential Catholic principle. Vance describes it well."
But then, who says Catholicism is Christianity?
Vance is mocking by implication the many Mrs. Jellybys who infest the media and the Democratic party. In Bleak House, Mrs. Jellyby neglected her own many children and the people in her neighborhood so that she could put all her energy into trying to set up a mission in Africa to which poor English people could be sent to work on growing coffee with the natives. She is regularly communicating with a chieftain in Africa and has high hopes for her project, even after she learns that Borrioboola-Gha sold all the volunteers into slavery in order to buy rum.
Many people have noted that the Mrs. Jellybys of the world (I don't think Dickens ever gives her first name, but it would most likely be "Karen") do what they do because they can simultaneously feel self-righteous about how generous and noble they are while at the same time abusing the people closest to them.
You know, kind of like flooding the U.S. with illegal immigrants and sending billions of "foreign aid" dollars around the world while despising working- and middle-class Americans.
The heat-map that has been circulating as a meme--in which people like this care more about rocks and trees, the planet as a whole, and people they've never met on the other side of the world than they do about their own neighbors and countrymen--should be interpreted as a mental illness, because it is, at least as far as I see it, a variant of poisonous narcissism.
"'a person will lay down his life for his friends.' Jesus didn't say strangers, so Stewart's choice of verse doesn't advance his argument very well."
In Jesus' teaching, all people, including strangers, are to be treated as one's friends and fellowmen.
"'Love thy neighbor as thyself.' Neighbor is a key word. Mrs Jellyby is not a model to emulate."
In Jesus' preaching, all people are one's neighbors and equal fellows.
"In Jesus' preaching, all people are one's neighbors and equal fellows.... In Jesus' preaching, all people are one's neighbors and equal fellows."
I know. I was surprised to see people arguing otherwise.
Also, it's obnoxious to insult dimwits about their IQs (and remember, the majority of people in the world have IQs between 90 and 110), but it is almost mandatory to insult midwits about theirs because they are both obnoxious and insecure about it.
By the way, almost no successful leaders--in politics, business, or the military--have IQs over 130 (and the majority of the most successful seem to cluster around 120) because in leadership sheer intelligence is not as important as empathy, insight into people's characters, strength of will, perseverance, and charisma.
But midwits always think "I you just put the smartest people in charge" (i.e., me), everything would be fine. It's why so many midwits are communists.
My step mother specialized in dealing with high IQ kids, designing curricula, helping the parents, and such. She had one boy she tested to have an IQ of 230. She was surprised enough that she had him tested by another for verification, also 230. So such people are around.
"Trump isn't disrespecting anybody."
Trump disrepects (and insults) everyone with his childish, crude, belligerent and insulting manner of discourse, in his bragging on himself reflexively blaming others, and his compulsive lying.
"Uhh, the Bible used today was written by the Roman Catholics. Catholicism is Christianity everything else is a branch from that root."
Well, so Catholics like to believe. But...nah!
Characterizing a “concept” as Christian is not speaking “for Jesus.” Nevertheless, it isn’t necessary for Vance to come out swinging at every criticism.
“But then, who says Catholicism is Christianity?” Who says it’s not. Cook, the Godless resident expert on all things religious.
Jesus did not subscribe to the Pro-Choice religion, the wicked solution (e.g. reproductive rites), celebrate the transgender spectrum in parades, advocate for DEI, wage ethnic Springs, etc. Honor thy father and mother, be charitable to your neighbors, and be fruitful in Posterity. He offered stricter advice and requirements to his eligible disciples.
If Nigel Farage and Mick Jagger had a baby it would grow up to look like Rory Stewart.
If you had to choose between saving a loved one or a stranger from certain death, which would you choose?
Substitute 'close relative' for 'loved one' and what would you choose then?
The only answer I can give is, depends on the relative.
Howard at 9:03. I believe the saying is "Charity begins at home."
It all comes down to charity, doesn't it? "Faith, Hope and Charity, but the greatest of these is love." Charity is personal. It isn't part of a committee. It isn't something for "the group" to decide. When you give you don't say, "Look at me! Look what I've done." It is a mitzvah between the giver and God because what you give you value less than the person it is given to.
We old school Roman Catholics were taught to love God first, then ourselves, to preserve our immortal souls, then others, in altruistic Christian ways. So yeah, different strokes.
It's always amusing when an avowed atheist craps all over a thread about Christianity.
Again, Catholicism is not necessarily, uh, consistent with Jesus' teachings.
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