The famous "great empire will fall" prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi was given to King Croesus of Lydia, who asked if he should attack the rising Persian Empire; the vague prophecy meant his own Lydian empire would be destroyed, not Persia's, serving as a classic example of the Oracle's ambiguous, self-fulfilling predictions that often led to ruin for those who misinterpreted them.
THE VOICE OF REASON Solon, (born c. 630 BCE—died c. 560 BCE), Athenian statesman, known as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece (the others were Chilon of Sparta, Thales of Miletus, Bias of Priene, Cleobulus of Lindos, Pittacus of Mytilene, and Periander of Corinth). Solon ended exclusive aristocratic control of the government, substituted a system of control by the wealthy, and introduced a new and more humane law code. He was also a noted poet.
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Thursday, 22 January 2026
Khalid Safir and I talk about Speakers Corner and Christians who pretend not to understand idolatry
Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Even if Christians started singing from the same hymn sheet, Islam would still be more believable
On the killing of Renee Good
Tuesday, 20 January 2026
What it says about you when you say "pluralism" when you really mean "uncontrolled mass immigration"
How many times has TLC circled this same question? At some point it starts to look like the endless processing is the point. The irony is that revisiting and gestating the same questions isn’t some neutral exercise. It is the mechanism of pluralism doing exactly what it is designed to do. And for that mechanism to work, no fact or truth can ever be allowed to resolve. Infinite oscillation, unsuspectingly waiting for authority to arrive. Athens did it first.The cohesion pluralism (as an ethos) produces is always thin and unstable. It can’t hold without eventually sliding into control. That’s the irony. Pluralism promises peace and safety, but by refusing judgment it guarantees that someone or something will eventually have to manage the chaos. The tyranny you, Luke, claim to be trying to prevent through pluralism is actually what invites it in. To prevent that, there needs to be an effort to channel all that exestential angst upward in faith rather than outword in group processing.Check out my longer post, I try to tease my thoughts on this some more. Leave feedback, I'd appreciate it.
First comment:
I think what you're really asking is whether pluralism and communion with God is simultaneously possible in this age. Short answer from me: no. Absolutizing pluralism, as you're arguing for, Luke, creates an authority vacuum that nullifies the New Covenant. It's less Christian and more Athenian in appraoch.
For genuinely incompatible truth claims to coexist without any resolution, one condition has to be met, and that's that no transcendent authority can arbitrate between them. Judgment has to be suspended. Once God's no longer allowed to decide, all that left is dialogue, consensus, inclusion, and relational harmony. In other words, horizontal processing. Pluralism isn’t neutral. It sneakily installs a new highest good which ends up being peace and safety over truth and obedience.
I recommend looking into ancient Athens' intellectual culture. Athens thought themselves to model humility in their openness and inclusion to all ideas but Acts 17 doesn’t paint Athens as open-minded virtue, it portrays it as spiritually/existentially exhausted. They spent their time in nothing except telling or hearing something novel. They had many altars, but no set spiritual authority, and most importantly no source of repentance. The forum became the church and conversation the liturgy. The apostle Paul’s speech is what broke the pluralism by reintroducing authority i.e., one Creator, one judge, and one resurrected man. And the moment authority re-enters the picture, pluralism fractures, but as we saw with Paul, not before the maternal immune system flares up and mocked him and later (Ephesus and Diana) pushed him out of the city. The only way pluralism can survive is if Hebraic, not Greek, repentance, resurrection, and judgment are treated abstractly or not taken seriously at all.
Even if people say convictions are possible to be preserved, pluralism still creates a slow drip decay in conviction and enthusiasm for truth. Social pressure attacks strong assertive claims that don't flatter the idol of belonging to avoid offense, because belonging is totallized as the highest good. Moral sensibilities in that sense get rounded more and more to preserve relationship. In other words, truth's witness becomes private to keep the public square happy and calm. Belonging then becomes the sacred cow. At that point, the community's no longer cohered around God's revealed truth; it’s organized around cohesion to community itself.
So is pluralism actually possible? Yes, but its only ever temporary and shallow and there are always dire consequences. True pluralism requires vertical authority to be absent, leaving only horizontal processing between perspectives. Like Athens in Acts 17, this creates a gestational womb-like space that feels intimate and peaceful, but over time it infantalizes us and erodes godly conviction. Beliefs have to be held at surface level, while belonging becomes the organizing principle. Once belonging becomes sacred, no real transcendent authority can govern the space without being seen as a threat. At that point, peace replaces obedience, and pluralism quietly becomes an idol and the ensuring choas created a vaccum that eventually has to be mediated by an external authority. Rome in Greece's case but then plurality was localized. Now, the internet is globalizing it. What kind of authority is capable of governing global chaos? An Anti-Christ spirit? Mark of the Beast? Perhaps....(had to catastrophize troll. Half-joking though).
The best approach is to maintain distinct ideological camps that protect conscience and reduce confusion, while encouraging honest dialogue between them. The goal isn’t to prioritize belonging over clarity, or clarity over belonging, but to root both in God above. This requires a primary focus on repentance, direct New Covenant direct revelation, and, through that, reconciliation with true authority (John 14:26), which each person has to pursue individually. Endless horizontal processing cannot produce divine reconciliation; in fact it distracts from it. Channel all that exestential anxiety not into community but faith becasue community can't save. Belonging and clarity naturally flow from revelation grounded in faith.
Is it a problem that America is a land of cults and whether Americans are Latter Day Ninevites
The War of 1812 is considered a direct offshoot or peripheral theater of the broader Napoleonic Wars, as it stemmed from the global conflict between Britain and Napoleonic France, involving issues like British naval impressment of American sailors and trade restrictions, even though it was fought in North America with its own unique causes. Most European historians view it as a minor part of the larger struggle for dominance, while in the US, it's often seen as the "Second War of Independence".Key Connections:Shared Timeline: Both conflicts occurred simultaneously (Napoleonic Wars: 1803-1815; War of 1812: 1812-1815).British Focus: Britain was heavily engaged against Napoleon in Europe, diverting resources but also causing friction with the U.S. over maritime rights.American Neutrality & Involvement: The U.S. tried to stay neutral but was pulled in due to British actions like impressing sailors and interfering with U.S. trade, which were tactics used in the European war.North American Theater: The war became a separate conflict in North America, but its roots were firmly planted in the European power struggle, with the U.S. seeing an opportunity to expand while Britain was distracted.In essence, the War of 1812 was the North American front of the global struggle between Britain and France, even if its specific issues were localized.
26:00 Andrew Jackson, the National Bank and the Federal Reserve
27:00 Virginia and South Carolina
29:00 The female vote
30:00 Foreign policies
31:00 Treaty of London 1839
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_London_(1839)
32:00 Berlin and Baghdad Railway
33:00 An over-powerful military establishment would be threatening to republican liberty.
35:00 Plutocracy
37:00 A European war
38:00 Kayfabe/Punch and Judy Show
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_and_Judy
40:00 Intersectionality
https://freebeacon.com/culture/alan-dershowitz-derides-theory-intersectionality-columbia-lecture/
41:00 Voting blocs
43:00 Man is created equal.
44:00 Sam Tideman's Unitarianism
45:00 Socinian Controversy
The most powerful church in the world
46:00 Protestants won the Wars of the Reformation.
47:00 WASP supremacy
48:00 The Church has to submit to secular power.
Why Europe became Catholic
50:00 The Protestant Reformation
53:00 History repeating itself
54:00 Thinking inside the box and not being heretics or revolutionaries
55:00 Even atheists have sacred cows.
56:00 Is America one nation under God trusting in God?
The Abrahamic God is superior to the God of Spinoza.
59:00 What is morality, good and evil?
1:01:00 Abortion
1:02:00 Infanticide
1:03:00 Single women are the ones demanding abortion.
1:04:00 A culture of casual sex
1:05:00 Marriage license
1:07:00 The difference between skipping town as a man and a woman arriving in town heavily pregnant and husbandless
1:10:00 The female voter
1:11:00 Marriage is no longer an attractive bargain for men.
1:12:00 The matriarchy is telling us to check out.
1:13:00 The laws of a benevolent God are for our protection.
1:15:00 Repentance
1:16:00 Jonah and the Ninevites
1:17:00 Jews have the identity of idolatrous recividism and also of maintaining standards against idolatry.
1:20:00 Jonah's decision to abandon ship
1:35:00 Belief in the afterlife
1:37:00 Doing the right thing
1:39:00 Teacher and fixer
1:40:00 The Divine Spark
1:41:00 Metaphorical mountains
1:42:00 Moral imperative and the evil inclination
1:43:00 Comparative religion
1:44:00 God and war
1:45:00 WW3
1:46:00 Nineveh
1:47:00 Hedonism
1:48:00 Aztecs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire
1:51:00 Russian serfs and the French Army in War and Peace
Tolstoy mentions Russian peasants behaving in ways that suggest a willingness to accept or "welcome" the French invaders in War and Peace, though this is presented as a pragmatic reaction to the breakdown of their own social order, rather than a desire for French rule.
Key mentions include:
The Bogucharovo Peasants (Book 10, Chapter 9): When Princess Marya Bolkonskaya tries to leave her estate, her peasants refuse to help her and prevent her departure. It is mentioned that these peasants are in contact with the French, have received pamphlets from them, and believe that the French will not harm them, unlike the looting Cossacks.
Rejection of Serfdom: The peasants in this area refuse Marya's offers of grain, believing that she is trying to trick them back into serfdom and that the French represent a potential end to their bondage.
The Contrast to City Dwellers: Tolstoy contrasts this behavior with that of the people in cities like Moscow, who, unlike in other European cities, did not welcome the French with bread and salt but instead fled.
General Attitudes: Early in the war, there was widespread, albeit often unfounded, fear among the Russian aristocracy that the serfs would rise up and join the French against their masters, which is reflected in the tensions at the Bolkonsky estate.
However, this "welcoming" is not depicted as patriotic support, but as a complex, chaotic response by the peasantry to their own harsh living conditions and the upheaval of war.
1:53:00 Meritocracy > monarchy/caste system
1:54:00 King Solomon died an idolater.
1:57:00 Book of Samuel
1:58:00 English kings were better behaved towards their subjects after the regicide of Charles I.
2:00:00 Gulf Kingdoms and William Tyndale
2:02:00 Patriot Act
Half of Jewry are secular.
2:03:00 Israel is an American colony.
2:04:00 Dubai
2:06:00 Self-sacrifice and leadership
The spirit of the law
2:10:00 Charles III does not enjoy First Amendment rights.
2:12:00 Gravitation
2:15:00 Peaceful resolution
2:16:00 Afghanistan
The 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, officially titled Operation Enduring Freedom, was driven by immediate security imperatives and broader long-term geopolitical strategies.
Primary Geopolitical Reasons
Dismantling Terrorist Networks: The immediate trigger was the September 11 attacks. The U.S. sought to destroy al-Qaeda and eliminate its safe haven in Afghanistan, which was provided by the Taliban government.
Regime Change for Strategic Denial: By toppling the Taliban, the U.S. aimed to replace a hostile "pariah state" with a pro-Western democratic government that would deny future sanctuary to extremists and stabilize Central Asia.
Regional Influence and Containment: Afghanistan served as a vital strategic base to monitor and check the influence of regional rivals, including Russia, China, and Iran.
Energy Security and Transit Routes: Influence in Afghanistan was seen as instrumental for accessing energy-rich Central Asian markets. The U.S. supported projects like the TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) to transport resources to world markets while bypassing Russian and Iranian territory.
Eurasian Connectivity: Its location at the crossroads of Central, South, and West Asia provided a "vantage point" for military and commercial operations across the Eurasian landmass.
Key Strategic Objectives
Capture of Leadership: Finding and neutralizing Osama bin Laden.
State-Building: Establishing a democratic Afghan state to serve as a long-term regional ally.
Nuclear Control: Maintaining a presence in a region populated by nuclear-armed or nuclear-aspiring states (Russia, China, Pakistan, India, and Iran).
Collective Defense: Activating NATO's Article 5 for the first time, reinforcing the alliance's relevance in the post-Cold War era.
2:17:00 The Youth of Today
2:18:00 GFC - Great Financial Crisis
2:19:00 Usury
2:22:00 Money supply
https://secularkoranism.blogspot.com/2025/03/secular-koranism-pamphlet-on-banking.html
https://secularkoranism.blogspot.com/2025/03/secular-koranism-pamphlet-how-party.html
https://secularkoranism.blogspot.com/2025/03/secular-koranism-pamphlet-what-would.html
Velocity of the circulation of money
2:30:00 Austerity in Ireland
2:31:00 Essential services
2:32:00 Income inequality
Neither a borrower nor a lender be.
2:33:00 Welfare Reform
2:36:00 The evil of usury
Transaction charges
2:37:00 Simple and compound interest
2:41:00 https://corpus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=2&verse=282
2:42:00 Oliver Cromwell, Jubilee
2:44:00 Slavery
2:45:00 Indentured servitude
2:50:00 Workfare
2:51:00 Manumission
2:52:00 Slave Protection Scheme
https://secularkoranism.blogspot.com/2025/03/secular-koranism-pamphlet-on-economics.html
https://secularkoranism.blogspot.com/2025/03/secular-koranism-pamphlet-on-how.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trojan_Women
2:56:00 Master and Slave relationship
Monday, 19 January 2026
Rob Cobb launches his new YouTube channel
— Rob CÄ“mpa (@CempaBrecht) January 19, 2026
14:00 Pagans
15:00 Motherland if it is a queen, fatherland if it is a king.
34:00 CLAIRE KHAW joins.
The truth will set you free.
38:00 Vicky Pollard
41:00 We need cities to have a civilisation.
Aarvoll receiving death threats for being a heretic.
42:00 Nick Griffin said Muslims treated him better than white people.
43:00 Converting to Orthodox Christianity is like putting a "Kick me" label on yourself.
44:00 Americans would rather live under sharia than live like the Amish.
Collective Dismal
46:00 Snorkelblog
47:00 Australian Tik Tokker with Polish girlfriend in Georgia and Azerbaijian
49:00 The nature and purpose of religion
50:00 Dugin's Fourth Political Theory
52:00 EMJ conflates Jews with liberalism.
53:00 EMJ is using Jews as a stick to beat the English with.
54:00 You cannot be all four: antisemitic, Islamophobic, racist, sexist.
Pre-Christian paganism
56:00 Showtime
1066
Catholicism
57:00 White people are now afraid of the Abrahamic God and His laws having broken them for so long now.
58:00 Western imperialism is Christian imperialism.
59:00 Jews are helpless on their own and need the support of a powerful gentile empire in order to live in the Holy Land.
1:01:00 Israel is an American colony.
Sluts and bastards whose parents are sex offenders ie willing denizens of the matriarchy deserve the government they get
— Rake's Reward (@Eagle_force_555) January 14, 2026
52:00 CLAIRE KHAW joins.
53:00 SK is not recognised as Islamic by Muslims.
54:00 The advantage of having a list of rules
55:00 The operation of the law
56:00 Bastards and sluts deserve the government they get.
58:00 Sharia or intersectionality?
59:00 Marriageability of white people
1:00:00 Labour shortage
1:01:00 Welfare state
1:02:00 Birth rate
Khalid Safir and I talk about Speakers Corner and Christians who pretend not to understand idolatry
3:00 Speakers Corner 5:00 Antifeminist stall 6:00 Being unprincipled 7:00 Dawah stalls 8:00 Patter 10:00 Christians at Speakers Corner...
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Key: CK = Claire Khaw CD = Claudia Dalgleish EB = Eddy Butler MC = Mark Collet TC = Tess Culnane CD on Facebook This past month...
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Beta males will never get female attention if it is OK for women to have premarital sex. If you want beta males to have a reasonable ...
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Why do Christians not follow the morality of the Bible? Because the Church itself does not follow Biblical principles and is only interes...

