Why Cranks Are Righteously “Persecuted”.

They laughed at Galileo. They laughed at Newton. They laughed at Copernicus. They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at Sayce. They laughed at Rohl. They laughed at Andy Wakefield. They laughed at Velikovsky. They laughed at Ron Wyatt. They laughed at Morris. They laughed at Schlafly. They laughed at Fleischmann and Pons. They laughed at Mike Adams. They laughed at David J. Stewart. They laughed at the kid in Algebra 1 thinking this whole 2 + 2 = 4 stuff was “a conspiracy by Big Math and it’s insidious Big Integer agents in schools” (hat tip to Greg Fish).

And rightly so.

All revolutionary ideas should be subjected to the most rigorous critical peer review by professional scholars in the field after being introduced to the scholarly world. If this blog gains influence, it will begin to have influence on the scholarly world. My research on Cadytis, Kadesh-Barnea, Ziklag, Beersheba, and, possibly, even my speculations on the locations on Mount Sinai in AJaL, will be accepted as solid, indisputable fact, except, of course, for the speculations about Mount Sinai, which will only be treated as interesting, but not conclusive. (Edit as of 11/12/12: That was arrogant. I should have subjected my own ideas to further critical examination before making such possibly false pronouncements. Ziklag’s location is still speculative, while the rest of my research on these places of southern Palestine still looks solid.)

Scholars do not condemn a certain idea simply because they don’t like it. They condemn it because it is in disagreement with mountains of evidence piled up over the years and will make several specialties impossible to study. The Vaccine-Autism link, for instance, contradicts fourteen good studies. Velikovsky’s idea of Ramesses II and Necho II being the same person contradicts the fact Tanis, a small provincial town during the days of Ramesses II, and later a mighty Delta capital, contains a large number of Ramesside monuments from Pi-Ramesse used by numerous other kings. Ron Wyatt’s belief a land bridge exists between Nuweiba and the Saudi coast contradicts simple terrain data (go to the “View” tab on Google Earth, turn off Water Surface, and see what I mean).

Those who promote what is commonly considered pseudoscience and claim a conspiracy is conspiring against them, while ignoring all evidence contrary to their preferred pseudoscience, are not working toward a better, more balanced science. They are promoting a world where all reality is in the mind of its beholder. In the medical sphere, this leads to piles of the prematurely dead. In the historical sphere, it leads to nowhere. In the religious sphere, it leads to what we have today. In the industrial sphere, it leads to the end of all planning. In the literary sphere, it leads to the end of language. Those who promote what is commonly considered pseudoscience and claim a conspiracy is conspiring against them, while ignoring all evidence contrary to their preferred pseudoscience, are evil. (Edit as of 11/12/12: True in a limited sense; their beliefs are certainly “evil”; whether they are evil themselves is a matter of semantics.)

The “arrogant bullying” and “intellectual tyranny” of science is necessary to get closer to the truth about the world.