Particle physics with my best friends NIN and FLA 'till sunrise and beyond.  Because when the aliens attack our only hope for salvation will be from that which is the humblest of all God's creatures...a Great White Tyrannasaurus Shark-Rex born of the miracle of vivisection.

http://mcnaughtonart.com/artwork/view_zoom?artpiece_id=353

Earlier tonight I was shown this piece of art by ScruffyLizard, as she goes by in Xanga. This is an instance where I find myself highly respecting the artistic skills of the creator of this piece, even though I largely disagree with the messages he is communicating via such skill. In particular, one component of this painting illustrates a strong affiliation towards American conservative-brand anti-intellectualism the complete misunderstanding of how science and academia function. You may notice a window to the side of the main picture that will zoom in on a particular area and provide a detailed explanation of what the character there represents according to the artist's creation. On the middle-right side there is a person in glasses sitting on the top step holding a copy of Darwin's "The Origin of Species" denoted "The Professor." Here is the artist's intention in his own words:


There is a genuine misunderstanding among the majority of the population of how academia actually functions and as someone who lives and works in the particular part that studies physics, please let me explain it from the inside.  The purpose is very simple: to find truth of some part of nature, society, humanity, etc.  Now, the word "truth" is thrown around way too much by people who have no intention of adhering to its meaning, but would rather espouse their own unfounded ideas and label them as "truth" because it serves some agenda.  Contrarily, in academia truth itself is the agenda and the only agenda.  This, of course, leads directly to the question "How do we distinguish a truth from a falsehood?"  If our job is to determine whether or not an idea is true, then we certainly want to have some way of telling whether someone is making a valid point, if they made some mistake, or if they are proposing an idea that is simply incorrect.  I am not going to turn this into a formal philosophy (epsitemology, to be precise) class--doing so is not necessary--but the basics are that the proposer of an idea must provide positive evidence supporting the claim, the reasoning of the idea must be logically sound ("logic" here is used in the formal sense of logic being a rigorous field of study, closely related to mathematics, not your personal "common sense" or some other such vague thing), and internally consistent (does not contain self-contradictions).  Everything proposed in academia is assumed to be false by default, and only accepted after painstaking scrutiny shows the claim to have some veracity.  The work is long and difficult because we do not accept delusion, we do not accept or tolerate the prospect of labeling a falsehood as true; that would be the antithesis of our mission.  If you propose an idea and can adequately justify it, your idea will be accepted.  That is how our system works.

The problem is that this system is anethema to those who would dogmatically adhere to an unjustfied--or unjustifiable--idea and still wish their idea to be accepted as seriously as any that is fully accepted according to our norms.  In American society, more often than not the social conservatives have a very difficult time accepting the possibility that some of their long-held idea are antiquated, obsolete, or blatently false.  All of us working in academia must adhere to the framework I outlined above.  There is no bias against conserative ideas; there is a bias only against false ideas.  If, for whatever reason, you think that your idea is correct without any need for the usual justification process that we all have to go through, then you will not have credibility within academia.  This is not directed toward conservative specifically, but rather they are the portion of our culture who happen to have the most problem accepting this and instead of trying to obtain proper justification for their ideas (or abandoning ideas that cannot be justified) they tend to whine loudly over their exclusion.  I am here inform you--if you happen to be someone in this camp--that your idea was not rejected because of it's "conservative" label, it was rejected because you have not provided any convincing justification supporting it.  'More loud' does not make you any 'more right.'  Every single one of us working in academia have to encounter the circumstance of being wrong sometimes and accepting it.  In graduate school, this is often a daily occurance.


IN SHORT:
Everybody is entitled to their own opinion, and this is certainly true in academia. However, everybody having the equal right to have their opinions considered does not mean that all opinions are of equal value and there is an associated responsibility to putting forth a point of view. You must justify your assertions. Ideas are not true just because you say they are; they are not true just because you want them to be. You must show positive evidence, sound reasoning, and internal consistency. If you put forth an idea with no supporting evidence then you must expect that your idea will be rejected, especially if there exists other evidence contradicting it.  This has absolutely nothing to do with conservative vs. liberal--unjustified liberal propositions are just as quickly rejected--this is a problem of not retaining the emotional capacity and ego awareness to simply accept that a personally held idea is wrong when shown to be wrong.

If you define yourself as conservative and hold to ideas that are devoid of reality, don't be surprised if reality itself seems to take on a liberal bent by comparison, because the sole objective of academia to determine the truth of some piece of reality.

America recently suffered a tragedy with the Ft. Hoods massacre and initial reports do indicate that the motivation was partially based in religious fervor--or at least personal disgruntlement manifesting in violent religious fervor.  I agree with another xangan that we must not succumb to over-zealous political correctness to the point of ignoring the truth of what happened.  However, we would be remiss to ignore broader related truths and miss an opportunity for introspection.  I believe this is absolutely necessary to prevent the next Ft. Hood massacre.

Unfortunately, people cannot shake the tendency to over-generalize and claim guilt by association.  The fear is that if we do acknowledge a role of Islam in the shooting, then there will be counterproductive reprisals against unrelated and innocent muslims.  While the fear is certainly not unfounded given recent history, I cannot advocate such a passive reaction.  Frankly, it's cowardly; and I abhor cowardice in the face of truth.  So would like to jump from this particular tragedy and relate to another nearly a millennia old which served as a causal precursor to the problems we face today.

Last night I finished reading another book detailing the First Crusade. This was a time when Baghdad and the greater muslim world was the center and successor to the intellectualism of Antiquity, while Western Europe was an ignorant backwater full of violent religious extremism. In the Western world, we think of the Crusades as some ancient, dissociated part of remote history. However, in the contemporary muslim world they still view most current conflicts through the lens of the Crusades (remember W's mistake in using the word "crusade"?). At the end of the first Crusade, the Christians finally broke into Jerusalem and slew every last man, woman, and child. The only exception was the then-defeated ruler of Jerusalem and his immediate guard. The islamic tradition regained their militancy and have not lost it since--they learned it from us.

And to those who think Christianity does not support violence to those who would have it do so, consider the following (and feel free to check your won bibles):

The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version

Matthew 10:34-39

"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it."

If that doesn't justify violent Christian "jihad" to those who want it to say so, I don't know what does.

My only point is that Christianity and Islam are far more similar than most on either side are willing to admit or accept and their histories more intertwined and relevant to contemporary history than we tend to understand. Both can be interpreted as religions of peace and many people live out their lives as such. However, both also carry the swaggering view that they are the one true faith and everyone else is an infidel, heathen, pagan, apostate, heretic, or whatever other labels to which we attach vile connotations. In both the whole of their histories and the recent, each side views the other as violent "extreme" oppressers and both have justified such accusations more than either is willing to admit to themselves. Both use the language of religion to dehumanize the other; and both religions contain the language of the dove and the flaming sword.  For as much as the peaceful religious people wish to characterize religous-inspired violence as a lunatic fringe, such violence has been central to both relgions as long as each has existed.  The bible contains it Joshuan massacre and divine genocide (flood of Noah).  The Koran similarly (they are largely the same book, with the same creation and Abraham) preaches peace and tolerance in some places and violence in others.  Finally, while religious justifications--however misguided co-religious people find them--for violence are evident and rampant throughout history, it would certainly be disingenuous to say that such violent endeavors are purely based in religion.  Frequently, as in the case of the Crusades, Islamic terrorism, and others, there are strong political components to such conflicts that exploit the religions for their purposes.

So while I agree we should not overlook the violent religious influences of Hasan, we should also not overlook our own capacity for the same or the historical causes for such violent religious tendencies. We are horrified when our soldiers are gunned down on home soil--as we should be--but hardly bat an eye or notice (or care) when our drones blow up a house full of a dozen people just to kill the one or two of them that are suspected terrorists. We are horrified to hear of Hamas shooting rockets intentionally at the time when Israeli children are walking to or from school, but when Israeli soldiers aim intentionally for unarmed Palestinian teenagers American's are hesitant to criticize. The Western practice of dehumanizing muslims is a millennia old, constant throughout in practice, and omnipresent whether we are individually conscious of the root cause or not.