Bradlee Dean
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When faith displaces intellectual rigor, "the faithful" believe it their duty to champion intellectual blindness and deliberately impugn any reasonable, rational finding that contradicts their faith. When faith is considered the most important divine directive, it is not only acceptable to trash scientific findings that threaten the faith of true believers: it is necessary to trash them. (See "sola fide" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_fide) Fidelity to preconceived beliefs (regardless the measured conclusions of reason, logic and Love itself) is the summum bonum for anyone whose faith is everything. The prime directive of "true believers" is to represent fact-as-fiction while confecting de novo fictions to bolster faith. Lacking formation in intellectual integrity, "the intellectually stunted" must preserve blind faith by the deliberate degradation (and ardently desired destruction) of Truth. Alongside St. Paul, blindly faithful Christians argue that the world's wisdom is foolishness and thus exempt themselves from any rational challenge even when rationality and The Law of Love are co-terminous, even when irrationality rejects The Law of Love.
The greatest threat to the human psyche is dissolution of identity so that those who identify themselves with rigid beliefs, must - above all -- preserve those rigid beliefs so that they not shatter or crack.
In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas "threw a life-vest to humanity" when he described the proper relationship between faith and reason:
"Arguing against those who said that natural philosophy was contrary to the Christian faith, (Aquinas) writes in his treatise "Faith, Reason and Theology that "even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible." "Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through the Islamic World" by John Freely - http://www.amazon.com/Aladdins-Lamp-Science-Through-Islamic/dp/0307277836/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327882581&sr=8-1
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Except for those who cultivate high order thinking skills, humankind is experiencing a groundswell of Aggressive Ignorance based on whole-cloth falsehood.
At ground zero in America's culture war, we are living through "The Death of Epistemology"
In effect, broad swathes of humankind - often seeing themselves as ordained agents of God -are reverting to The Sea of Superstition that has been humankind's enduring milieu.
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Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer" (1951) is the best available exploration of blind faith as human debacle. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Eric_Hoffer
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Bradlee Dean: Gays Commit Half Of All Murders, Obama Is A 'Homo' And Maddow Is A 'Shim'
On this weekend’s edition of Sons of Liberty Radio, hosts Bradlee Dean and Jake McMillan claimed that gay people are responsible for half of all murders committed in large US cities, among other crimes.
After Dean said that homosexuality and abortion are the “last two stages that a country takes before God judges that country,” McMillan charged that “half of the murders in large cities were committed by homosexuals; thirty-three percent of child abuse cases were committed by homosexuals; half of the foster children molestations were done by homosexuals.”
McMillan explained, to Dean’s agreement, that gays are prone to criminality because “when a person’s mind has gone to that extent of committing an abominable act, it shows what else they are capable of.”
McMillan later recounted an interview with a gay reporter in which he charged that all people, including gays, are created equal, “but not when you make choices; if you break the law you’re no longer protected by the law.”
“God gives us strict orders to deal with people that commit such crimes in this life,” Dean said, “as a mercy to society.”
Dean wondered if gay people are “thinking to themselves, ‘These people are really falling for this.” But of course gay rights are gaining ground, Dean claimed, since “they got their homo in office,” and have “infiltrated” the White House.
The right-wing commentator also discussed his hugely unsuccessful lawsuit against Rachel Maddow for accurately quoting his claim that Muslims who want to execute gay people are “more moral” than Christians. Dean repeatedly referred to Maddow as “shim,” since he doesn’t know if the MSNBC host is a “he or she,” and said that he “started getting death threats” as a result of her program.
“Folks you need to understand what you’re dealing with, when you’re looking at the homosexual agenda, gay marriage, this administration, folks, by you tolerating their lawlessness, I want you to understand something, by you tolerating their lawlessness you are moving the seat of violence closer to your front door,” Dean stated. “Without you dealing with it, evil will prevail and rest assured evil is prevailing against you.”