The things you learn from crazy clerics…
A prominent cleric, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawy, said modern science had at last provided evidence that Mecca was the true centre of the Earth; proof, he said, of the greatness of the Muslim "qibla" - the Arabic word for the direction Muslims turn to when they pray.
Oh, well — if a prominent cleric said such a thing, who am I to argue? I'm sure there must be an utterly dazzling, deep theological argument to explain how one specific point on the surface of a spinning sphere, a point which doesn't seem to have any special relationship to the pattern of rotation, can be defined as a "center". I'm probably not smart enough to understand it, though.
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All those medieval xtians who tried to map the world with Jerusalem as the center (or did I imagine that?) will be disappointed. But I guess they're long dead and the penny would've dropped when the went to Islamic hell.
Sphere? Isn't it an oblate spheroid? I could see a case for calling something that was sitting right on the axis "the middle" (though then there'd be two) but not a single point way out on the side.
Similar, I suppose, to the Mormon claim that their temple is in the center of Salt Lake City, when it is actually near the edge.
Personally I always thought the center of the earth was, you know, the middle. The core.
Perfect example of what comes of mixing science and religion.
And a perfect example of what religion too often (almost always?) represents ... a desire that everybody else recognize and subjugate themselves to your "truth."
Damn. Thought I'd be the first one to post.
Someday. Someday.
Well, Mecca can have the true center of Earth as long as nobody challenges the fact that the true center of the universe is wherever I'm standing at any given moment.
The problem with basing anything off of magnetic north is that it has the tendency to move over time. That is why cartographers put magnetic declination on maps, and why geologists have to correct for this by slightly altering where geographic north points on their compasses.
oh and not to mention that fact that every now and again magnetic north REVERSES and jumps to the south pole. Which gives us information on paleo-latitudes and spreading rates of ridges.
Oooo, a momentary alignment with an ever-shifting magnetic north pole proves that Mecca is the center of the earth.
Does that mean that it's around 6000 degrees Celsius, as the center of our sphere is said to be?
Then again, what of all of the other spots momentarily aligned with the north magnetic pole (assuming that's even true). Won't we have to consider them all to be holy as well, at least for the moment that they are so aligned?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
Lying for Mohammad. In other news today muslim histologists discovered that pig flesh is tainted with the blood of dark Djinns(Genies)
At least this kind of religious posturing is relatively harmless (until crazy clerics start suicide bombing people who disagree with their 'scientific' findings, anyway). In 1211, Frederick II, Emperor of Germany, in an attempt to discover the natural "language of God," raised dozens of children in silence. God's preferred language never emerged; the children never spoke any language and all ultimately died in childhood. This is, to me, one of the most barbaric things ever perpetuated in the name of 'religious science.'
Escuerd @2,
It's actually shaped like a burrito.
(HT: Steve Matheson)
Sometimes I wonder why I even pretend to have any faith in humanity anymore.
Um... right.. so Mecca is actually positioned at the center of the earth ? How do all the pilgrims stand the heat and pressure ? Must be divine protection granted by the aid of their witch-doctors.
Re: my #11 --
And of course by 'perpetuated,' I actually 'perpetrated.'
I need to learn how to type...
That's Bloom County by Berkely Breathed, in case anyone is curious.
It was in the first 30 pages of my "Bloom County Babylon," so it must be one of the early ones.
If you recall, the French had to be bludgeoned into submission to allow Greewich to be zero hour in the time scheme because Paris is like, the center of civilization.
The article also mentioned this:
A clock that runs backwards. Could there be a better symbol for these buffoons?
Still, you have to admit, it's kind of fun saying "Meccacentric." It just sort of rolls of the tongue.
why?
My partner and I have a longstanding joke, the reason for it lost in the mists of our LTR, that Rudd, Iowa is the Center of teh Universe.
I suspect we have just as much scientific evidence to support our position as does the cleric in question.
"Mecca is the true centre of the Earth"
I'm thrilled by the news. Are there really battling dinosaurs and huge edible fungi, as shown in the movie with James Mason?
No wonder they forbid non-believers to enter!
Re Candy @ #21: Shoulda figured it wouldn't take long for the Neo-Ruddites to show up...
Re Candy @ #21: Shoulda figured it wouldn't take long for the Neo-Ruddites to show up...
The One True Church of Rudd is not to be mocked!
Actually, that town's so small I'm not sure they even have a church . . .
I thought Morris was the center of the earth. I guess all of us bloggers can stop praying towards PZ at Beer thirty.
Bummer I miss the carpet burn
OH, Mecca time is nothing! The same wingnuts believe that all modern science is revealed in the Koran. No need to do experiments, folks, just study the scriptures. All knowledge is there. No lie.
Did someone say that Kevin Rudd is the center of the universe? I think he'd agree. :)
Like the cross-eyed bimbo in the Enzyte commercial says, "it's REAL science!"
Dan @ #19:
... Mecca-Streisand?
No, no, PZ, it's not that you're not smart enough to understand it, it's that it's never been explained to you in layman's terms.
See (now follow me here) if you take the ratio of pi(e) divided by the number of raisins in paradise to the differential integral dsubdumb over dsubtaliban, you get a linear vector pointing to Pangea. Triangulating therefrom, if you drop a plumbbob from the first star to the right and keep on till morning,
viola!
Mecca.
Hope this clears it up for you.
From the article:
I give this story, its premise, and the scientists and the organization that generated it the exact same amount of credibility on science - and the debate over its future - that I give the agents of propaganda and disinformation at the Discovery Institute. These places are little more than junk science mills pumping out thinly-veiled garbage theories meant to try to prop up their dogmatic "truths" while science continues to - one by one - refute their ancient claims of knowledge as to the origins of our universe, our planet, and the life it contains.
Compounding the strangeness of this is the fact that Muhammad originally instructed all Muslims to pray towards Jerusalem.
Oh that wacky prophet!
Muslims will be burning you in effigy if you're not careful.
Thgis is al-Quaradawi, the despicable fascist who says that Jews are pigs and monkeys,and that homosexuals and apostates should be put to death.
Which is why he is a good friend of London's mayor, Ken Livingstone. Politicians always court the Muslim vote...
I've seen some inane youtube videos claiming the Koran predicted the speed of light down to a couple of decimals... but it all fails to impress me before the Koran actually provides a prediction which later is verified through observation. All these incredible insights from the Koran are provided after the fact... which leads me to believe, aside from all the other things, that it's all BS.
It must be based on the tardensity ratio.
Wait, wouldn't the centre be...you know...at the centre? Last I looked mecca (and the LDS temple, and the vatican, andthe wailing wall, and the daibutsu, and Tom Cruise) were all on the surface.
What an asswipe.
Next
Ok, maybe Britain did ram it down everyone's (i.e. the French, as noted) throat. But does it really matter that much? Lets deal with, I don't know, world hunger, climate change, overpopulation, me not getting a date in months, first. You know, the important things.
Fundies make my head hurt...
On the other hand, qibla makes a great Scrabble word.
(See also: 5:00 and onwards in this video)
About forty years ago, Macca was the center of the pop world. But things change.
Actually, if you consider the earth to mean just the surface of the earth, and try and figure out where the centre is with regards to equal distances from all land area, it does end up being somewhere in the middle east
which was an argument for Giza Mean Time (the other one being that a line through the Great Pyramid from pole to pole allegedly passes through more land than any other on earth)
Yay for the Atlantis Blueprint!
@41: How much land the Prime Meridian passes through isn't particularly important. What's much more important is having the International Date Line pass through as much water as possible.
Well, you see, it all depends on precisely how one defines "center," "of," and "earth."
brokenSoldier kinda beat me to it but this does sound familiar. Very similar to stuff I read earlier today at www.icr.org. Same madness, different book.
This is interesting. We know that the poles move, and from at least one source (I think it was Ibn Warriq's Why I Am Not A Muslim, but I may be mistaken) that Muslims originally prayed to Jerusalem, but in Mohammed's later career it was switched to Mecca (mainly after they took over the city).
See, science proves Mecca to be the Center!
On a serious note...What a Maroon!
Rather unfair to the Brits (granted, I am one myself...) to say there was any undue use of pressure applied in determining where reference time should be measured from.
More correctly, the determination of the zero point for systems of time was necessarily derived by the first nation to develop a clock, capable of being transported on a ship, whilst maintaining sufficient accuracy to determine a longitude difference from the starting reference...
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/server/show/conWebDoc.355
#25 Jeffery S
A magnetic compass in Duluth should point fairly close to geographic North. One in Morris would be at most a degree or two off.
http://www.jesusandmo.net/2008/04/21/salah/
Wow. And I was sure that Santa had a lock on the center.
Don't worry, PZ, there ARE also critics according to the article:
Uhm... Wait a minute, religious "troof" is reliable and empirical evidence is unreliable? I guess I should throw my university books out the door then...
@ Joshua Arnold, #5 (relating to #3)
[link="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/expelled.php"]I feel your pain[/link], dude! ;-)
-Rusty
@#49 Fedor quoted:
That's just...bizarre. Anyway, 'empirical' refers to direct observations, experience, etc...AS OPPOSED to things based solely off of conjecture/theory/hypothesis (scientific or otherwise). So no, it has nothing to do with the state of science at any given time. Empirical truth is simply observable reality. Which is more than can be said for spiritual "truth"....
The Greenwich Meridian, based at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, was established by Sir George Airy in 1851. By 1884, over two-thirds of all ships and tonnage used it as the reference meridian on their maps. In October of that year, at the behest of U.S. President Chester A. Arthur, 41 delegates from 25 nations met in Washington, D.C., USA, for the International Meridian Conference. This conference selected the Greenwich Meridian as the official Prime Meridian due to its popularity. However, France abstained from the vote and French maps continued to use the Paris Meridian for several decades.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_declination
Check out the maps. If all you want is for magnetic and true north to be the same, just pick any point.
@#46:
I was simply referring to #17 with the comment about Britain forcing Greenwich down the collective French throats. I didn't know if they were correct, and, as my post was meant to indicate, don't really give a shit. My point was about people getting passionate about such a non-issue as the reasons why the current Prime Meridian was chosen, when we have much more important issues at hand. Like whether or not a cup of Timmies (for all us Canadians) is better as a double-double or a regular.
I guess he forgot that monotheists have long called the center of Earth "Hell". Or did the devil help the Muslims create their holy city?
The blogosphere understood my apathy and did the fact digging for me while I was writing my post.
I read 53 comments and I would say that I also agree that it is obviously wrong to anyone other than those who have no other source for information. How then is that corrected? By having this site is one, but is there a real way to provide a second source of information that these people will trust, or a means to create a paradox so profound that even a cult follower would recognize it? I have at times de-programmed people that I have met just to see I could do it. I remember a time at college , and it was one of those moony's that used to inhabit the airports. If you have face to face access to someone who wants to tell you something, it is not that difficult to show them a paradox of mind, in speaking with them alone, I have not tried it as a profession, so I don't know that it is generally true. I think it may be a matter of degree of mental commitment to the delusion. I imagine that a person that blows themselves up for the delusion is fairly well committed. MHO BTW PZ rocks! Keep up the good work.
On Frederick the Great's experiment with children:
If I'm not mistaken, this is not established fact, and could merely have been a rumour started by his opponents (notably the leading Catholics of the time, including the Pope). Frederick II was no sweetheart, but he was probably the most enlightened monarch of the middle ages. He was a patron of science, spoke several languages including Arabic, and made a negotiated settlement with the "Turks" that got concessions to Christians, the likes of which decades of crusading had failed to do.
#31:
It's not great that Islamic religious authorities are meddling in science, but trying to find Koranic justifications for science is a lot better than condemning science as un-Islamic. Given how many things Islamic religious authorities condemn as un-Islamic, this may be considered (very slight) progress.
What a surprise, a religion that thinks the world revolves rotates around them.
I find myself wondering how accurate the claim is that Mecca is lined up with magnetic north. I looked it up, and Mecca is 40 East, while magnetic north is 114 West, and magnetic south is 138 East. Am I missing something?
Also, don't they know that magnetic north moves around in timescales shorter than human lifetimes? Between 2001 and 2005, it moved 3.6 degrees West.
Also, from my experience, geophysicists have enough different coordinate systems (think: earth's spin, magnetic field, day vs night, etc.) that they don't want another one unless there's a really good reason for it.
#59:
The location of isogonic lines (lines of equal declination, or difference between magnetic and true north) is actually pretty wonky. It has not just to do with the difference between the true and magnetic poles, but also local magnetic influences, etc. I don't know all the details (I'm a biology major, not an earth sciences one) but know enough to know that the lines tend to be a bit crazy. See the maps at the link below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_declination
I did a check on the magnetic declination, and it turns out that the declination is actually smaller in London.
See for yourself (London is 32,0; Mecca is 21,40)
Whoops, London is 51 N, 0 W.
Ummm, miller... Thats the geographic coordinates, not the declination.
The respective declinations are:
London = 2 degrees 32 minutes West
Mecca = 2 degrees 49 minutes East
That's using your link.
Hold on here.. A point on the surface of a sphere is its center?
I can only conclude that Islamic Geometry isn't all it was cracked up to be back in the middle ages.
-jcr
Yeah, I knew I was writing down the coordinates. That was to encourage other people to input them. Sorry I'm so unclear and error-prone.
Wow. Whenever you think that these so-called clerics cannot possibly get any more stupid, any more idiotic, one of them opens their mouth and proves you wrong. :P
RE#6 by UprightAlice:
Best. Answer. Ever.
Bravo!
But so many of you are forgetting that the idea of a round earth is a false doctrine of infidels; as an astronomer explained on Iraqi TV, true science, in accord with the Quran, tells us that the earth is clearly flat![/tongue in cheek]
Hey, this could work quite well with the Flat Earth Society. They just have to tweak their map a little bit.
Wasn't the original definition of the metre, 1/10,000th of the distance between the equator and the north pole through the Paris Meridian? Quite why the meridian makes any difference stumps me, except to glorify the Paris Meridian (ah, that'll be the reason then :0))
One day all this will be a footnote in the backpages of some forgotten book.
Wasn't the original definition of the metre, 1/10,000th of the distance between the equator and the north pole through the Paris Meridian?
No. That would make it only 10 Kilometers from the equator to the pole.
-jcr
That's because you are educated SINGULARITY STUPID by academic bastards! Greenwich 1 day time is evil. Nature's SIMULTANEOUS 4-DAY TIME CUBE clearly shows that Greenwich, Mecca, the North Pole, and Roswell, NM are all the same Cubic Antipodal Point! Or to put it more simply:
He also said that Islam "unlike other religions, never contradicted science".
O rly?
Is promoting one's own blog poor etiquette?
If not, then click here for my new and humble blog's offering.
If it is poor form, please correct me and I shan't be so rude in the future.
If you thought that was a bizarre attempt to reconcile Islamic fundamentalism with modern science, read ,a ref="http://maniacmuslim.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9907">this:
"I read once in an Islamic book that dinosaurs could have easily been a type of jinn. I know that is difficult to believe but the book said that it was what jinn probably evolved from."
Any paleontologists reading this blog, start rubbing those bones.
OK, delete that last common, I got the coding fixed.
If you thought that was a bizarre attempt to reconcile Islamic fundamentalism with modern science, read this:
I read once in an Islamic book that dinosaurs could have easily been a type of jinn. I know that is difficult to believe but the book said that it was what jinn probably evolved from.
Any paleontologists reading this blog, start rubbing those bones.
The declination is even smaller in Oslo, Norway (1°36). Now I'm all confused. Since they speak Norwegian in Hell, has modern science now proven Satanism right?
In my collection of antique maps is a world map that was part of the first atlas published in America, right after the War of Independence. Where does it show the center of the world? Philadelphia, of course! People are funny.
Kevin C. @ #68 -
One of the saddest things about that video is that the science book the physicist holds up when he's describing the evidence of the Earth's roundness is in English.
I have a Japanese calendar/map poster from 1993 that is centered on Japan. It works fairly well since it splits the globe along the Atlantic around 30° (only Greenland gets chopped up.)
Here are some details on the "science" proving Mecca's position as the center of the earth. And of course the science is being suppressed from us, because "they" don't want us to know about the truth...
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: The centrality (of Mecca) has been proven scientifically. How? When they traveled to outer space and took pictures of the earth, they saw that it is a dark, hanging sphere. The man said, "Earth is a dark hanging sphere - who hung it?"
Interviewer: Who said that?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: (Neil) Armstrong. Armstrong was basically trying to say: Allah is the one who hung it. They discovered that Earth emits radiation, and they wrote about this on the web. They left the item there for 21 days, and then they made it disappear.
Interviewer: Why did they make it disappear?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: There was intent there...
Interviewer: So it may be said that this suppression of information was significant.
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: It was very significant, since...the Ka'ba (in Mecca)... They said it emits radiation. This radiation is short-wave.
When they discovered this radiation, they started to zoom in, and they found that it emanates from Mecca - and, to be precise, from the Ka'ba.
Interviewer: My God!!
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: It was said...
Interviewer: Does this radiation have an effect?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: They found that this radiation is infinite. When they reached Mars and began to take pictures, they found that the radiation continues beyond. They said that the wavelength known to us... or rather the shortness of the wavelength known to us... This radiation had a special characteristic: It is infinite, and I believe that the reason is that this radiation connects the (earthly) Ka'ba with the celestial Ka'ba.
Imagine that you are the North Pole and I am the South Pole - in the middle there's what is called the magnetic equilibrium zone. If you place a compass there, the needle won't move.
Interviewer: You mean that the pull is equal from both sides?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: Yes, and that's why it's called zero-magnetism zone, since the magnetic force has no effect there. That's why if someone travels to Mecca or lives there, he lives longer, is healthier, and is less affected by Earth's gravity. That's why when you circle the Ka'ba, you get charged with energy.
Interviewer: Allah be praised.
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: Yes, this is a fact. This is a scientific fact...
Interviewer: Because you are distant from...
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: Earth's magnetic fields have no effect on you in this case.
There's a study that proves that the black basalt rocks in Mecca are the oldest rocks in the world. This is the truth.
Interviewer: The oldest rocks? Yes. Has this been proved scientifically?
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: It's been scientifically proven, and the study has been published.
Interviewer: They took basalt rocks from Mecca...
Dr. 'Abd Al-Baset Sayyid: ...Basalt rocks from Mecca, and investigated the places where they were formed.
In the British Museum there are three pieces of the black stone (from the Ka'ba) ...and they said that this rock didn't come from our solar system.
@24: There is at least a Wesleyan church in Rudd, for I attended it a few times in my formative years ... before I broke formation, anyway.
But the Ruddites are as wrong as those silly Meccacentrists. Scientifically speaking, the center of Earth lies near the Externsteine, where the pillar joining heaven and earth once stood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externsteine
(Of course, here I'm using "scientific" in the colloquial sense of "appealing to an unnamed authority due to the absence of any evidence whatsoever.")
Well, of course Allah hung it. Someone had to - otherwise the planets would, as Ben Stein points out, fall down. Our solar system is in reality a giant mobile made by Allah to hang over the crib of the baby Jesus.
I think i saw a star trek episode with that plotline!
Attempting to verify truth through earthly concepts as science... I'm sure thats blasphemy.
Don't you mean the ExternBenStein?
Pillar?
Pillar?
Pillar?
That's almost correct. The thing is a meteorite after all. It is Not From This World.
(Duh.)
@#3
The Mormon temple is the center of the Salt Lake street numbering grid. Mormons are (among other things) well organized.
So the Ka'aba's a black monolith, it's not from this world and it's emitting a shortwave radio signal?
Is this sounding unnervingly familiar to anyone else?
"Open the pod bay doors, ALLAH".
Or possibly, when MOTHER gets through decoding the signal, we'll find it's not a distress call; it's a warning...
Well, you see, Mecca is situated directly over the core/center of the Earth. You could draw a straight line from a point in the sky down through the Kaaba to the Earth's molten core. Really. So that ought to count for Eternal TRVTH.
Uh-oh, I'd better invoke Poe here, as well as Pythagoras or somebody like him.
Well, I suppose we should've seen all this coming. I mean, other fictional books and tv-shows have been retconned for years, it was only a matter of time before religious people jumped on the bandwagon.
Well, I suppose we should've seen all this coming. I mean, other fictional books and tv-shows have been retconned for years, it was only a matter of time before religious people jumped on the bandwagon.
It turns out that God hates globes.
What saddens me is that some idiots actually believe this drivel and the fact that they're using 'science' to somehow prove their bullshit claims.
This is just as stupid as when 'science' discovered a hole in a Siberia and dropped a microphone into it to hear the sounds of the people in hell screaming.
http://www.snopes.com/religion/wellhell.asp
Crazy Russians...
http://englishrussia.com/?p=1830
Don't know how legit this is, I found it on the net after all...
Dunkoro is the only cleric worth a damn.
Sophie Deadbones-Tri Ryche Guild!
The honorable cleric is clearly mistaken, since the centre of the world is directly beneath George W. Bush's feet. Everyone should know that by now.
Hey forget about the magnetic north pole for a moment, and think about continental drift. I mean in 5,000,000 years who knows where mecca will be, but it won't be in the same spot that is for sure. Center of the earth my ass.
Hey for you geologists out there, can you answer this question: if all the continents drifted together would that change the tilt of the earth, depending on where they end up sitting?
I missed something...when did all this 'science proves gawd' stuff become so popular? The debates I've watched on You Tube make the gawdists look like dorks.
The first time I remember hearing thunder from the pulpit about the evil science guys was when the cosmonaut Yuri ?? radioed back to Earth - hey, there's no gawd out here. (paraphrased of course)If the big guy is so almighty what the hell does he need science for?...back to pounding my head on a rock.
@ # 58:
Posted by: Vagrant | April 24, 2008 2:23 AM
I can see your general point here, but what I would offer instead is that what I see in this situation is religion trying to subjugate an aspect of science to the teachings of their faith. And in that sense of it, the exact same thing is happening here in the United States. The only thing that makes it more dangerous in a theocracy - as opposed to our country - is that the individuals who disagree with their motives do not have the same freedom of dissent that exists here, which makes it all the more easy for their government to succeed in that endeavor.
Both of the camps that you mentioned - those condemning science and those wishing to subjugate it to their own dogmatic beliefs - exist with just as much tenacity in both situations, and it does not bode well for the rest of us that the two agree in principle in what they are trying to do to the free pursuit of knowledge. What we end up with is science and reason being squeezed between two diametrically opposed sides of a dogmatic, intolerant vise bent on returning the world to pre-enlightenment standards of thought and expression.
So Mecca is surrounded on all sides by thousands of kilometers of molten rock and metal? No wonder it's so balmy there.
#78:
Of course they speak Norwegian in Hell, it is in Trøndelag after all.
#78 Anne - No kidding Trondeleg? My DNA map has a hit in that area.
Du'oh! Oh hell, I misspelled it.
That's almost correct. The thing is a meteorite after all. It is Not From This World.
Has anyone actually analyzed that rock? I don't buy all the drivel about it being holy or whatever, I just want to know why people think it's a meteorite.
And what about the rock in Jerusalem's Dome?
This is for Candy. I don't know anything about this blog but was researching a church my great grandfather helped the parishioners to start in RUDD, IOWA! Yes, Rudd, Iowa.
And yes it is a small town but they do have 2 churches there. The proof is in his obituary!!!!! Marge