All mosques are supposed to have an indicator pointing at the Kaaba in Mecca — the devout are supposed to aim their prayers in that direction (which is silly to begin with, but never mind). With all the high rises going up in Mecca, though, people were able to look down and notice that hey, the mosques aren't aimed right, maybe all of their prayers have been missing the target!
A spokesman has said something very sensible, though, something that I think certain other religious sects might consider.
Tawfik al-Sudairy, Islamic affairs ministry deputy secretary, downplayed the problem in remarks quoted by the pan-Arab newspaper al-Hayat.
"There are no major errors but corrections have been made for some old mosques, thanks to modern techniques," he said.
"In any case, it does not affect the prayers."
This is something believers and atheists can accept. The believer, because the nit-picky details of the ritual shouldn't matter that much, if you really believe in a wise and compassionate all-powerful being. The atheist, because yeah, the prayers are ineffectual in the first place.
Now we just need to hope that certain Muslims acquire a similar attitude towards cartoons and literature. If gods are so powerful, they should be able to take a little mockery and criticism; if they're nonexistent, there is no one to file a complaint.
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There's a similar problem with Mormons' Moroni.
http://skepticblog.org/2009/04/02/which-way-does-moroni-point/
HEY, MYERS! You wouldn't be so quick to criticize Mus...
Oh, never mind.
Now we just need to hope that certain Muslims acquire a similar attitude towards cartoons and literature.
And murdering gay people.
If prayers need to point to Mecca shouldn't they point through the planet if you are on this side of the world?
Or are prayers affected by the gravitational pull of the planet and follow the curve of the surface?
Allah was waiting patiently for man to develop the modern technology that would allow prayers to be properly aimed. In the meantime, Allah had flunkies gather up the misaimed prayers and put them in storage. Now he'll get them out, sort through them, and answer them. But it's like cleaning off your desk after a month of debris has gathered -- surprisingly a lot of the "urgent" business has just faded away. Expect to see old prayers tossed into landfills.
Mormon Moroni also similarly misaimed, which accounts for the fall-off in Church membership. You don't answer my prayers? I'm outta here.
I always wondered how the taxi drivers here that pray on their mats in front of their cars figure out where Mecca is.....
They may be making light of it, but the fact of the matter is that their prayers missed their magic meteorite in Mecca and veered off into space where they will continue to travel around for all eternity or until they run into General Zod in that shiny Phantom Zone thingy. Then Zod will know the hearts and minds of all the Muslims that prayed at that mosque. A Scary thought, indeed.
Aren't some Muslims opposed to relativity and all that fancy, impious science that underlies some of those "modern techniques" (e. g. GPS satellites) that allowed the detection and correction of these orientation errors?
A better informed commenter on the site linked to @1 notes that Moroni points up Joseph Smith's ass, since that was his origin.
And if that's the case, what if they miss? Will the prayer go around the world and come to bite them in the butt?
And what's the speed of prayer, anyway?
Oh, so many profound theological questions unanswered...
If Vic @7 is correct, then it's possible that Muslim misaimed prayers headed off into space and *may* have landed on Kolob, where the Mormon God is busy begetting with his many blonde wives. Muslim prayers could be answered by the Mormon God.
I haven't heard of this. OTOH, I've seen lots of muslims use those technologies for finding the direction of prayer. In fact, a lot of (medieval) technology relating to astronomy was invented just so the direction and times of prayers could be better calculated.
Anyway, I expect that some muslims will advocate demolishing their mosques and redoing it, so they could fix the minor errors they have.
Oh, and I forgot:
Do they have to correct for the Coriolis effect?
Just to keep the amusing prayer/physics theme going:
Should the prayers be aimed at True Mecca or Magnetic Mecca?
Is "Moroni" the plural?
If they don't shoot into space then the prayer will get to Mecca eventually I think. If they keep going around the world they will have to have been everywhere after a while.
Am I right?
Anyway, I expect that some muslims will advocate demolishing their mosques and redoing it, so they could fix the minor errors they have.
The mosques don't have to point a certain direction, the people praying are supposed to face a certain direction. All that needs to change is how people place their mats on the ground.
The believer, because the nit-picky details of the ritual shouldn't matter that much, if you really believe in a wise and compassionate all-powerful being
Right. But if you believe in a god who gets his panties in a bunch because of what kind of food you eat, what kind of cloth you make your clothes out of, how many times you're supposed to wash yourself before doing much of anything, and even which hand you use to wipe your ass after using the toilet, well, you might be a bit concerned about the nit-picky details of the ritual. I can see the folks who aren't highly educated getting awfully worried that they've been doing it wrong all of their life.
No. It's the name of the Nephite angel who is alleged to have revealed the golden plates (the Plates of Moroni) to Joseph Smith, from which the Book of Mormon was transcribed.
What sort of transmission rates through solid objects do prayers have?
And why didn't god make prayers more of a broadcast thing instead of a vector type thing?
Is there an iPhone app for finding Mecca?
@16: Not if it's parallel. Does y=2 ever equal 5?
I think there recently was a thing to do with muslim astronauts abourd the Space Station. Muslim clerics had to come up with new guidelines for that, because being constantly adjusting your bodily position while in prayer wasn't very practical, nor could it be very accurate.
Not sure what these new guidelines were, though. Anyone?
*whispers to Walton... it was a joke
How about a prayer rug that auto-aligns?
@19:
Reseq would probably be a very large number.
Just curious. Why, after nominally a few thousand years (if you're a creationist) of letting people pray in every which direction, did God have a change of heart and decide that prayer-space was anisotropic?
What caused this necessity for direction anyway? Some kind of spontaneous symmetry breaking? There could be a PRB in this; enquiring minds want to know.
Regarding cartoons, I imagine the religious have a very different attitude to the importance of the details of their faith when the attack comes from someone outside the faith.
@17
"Blessed be the obsessive-compulsive, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven."
Given that it appears the prayers must follow the curvature of the Earth (RevBDC's comments @ #4) - I used the Earth Orbit Calculator here:
http://www.calctool.org/CALC/phys/astronomy/earth_orbit
To figure out the orbital speed necessary for an orbit at 277 meters above sea level (the elevation of Mecca according to Wikipedia).
It would then seem that the speed of prayer is 7.90956 m/sec with an orbital period of 1.40589 hours.
That opens up some interesting possibilities. With satellite communication - someone could contact a friend to do something nefarious, and they'd have up to 0.7 hours to get it done before your prayer can make it to Mecca to counter the effect.
No, no, no...now you're just being unreasonable.
Correction in my previous post.
The "speed of prayer" should be 7.90956 km/sec (not m/sec)
I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa (live in Ireland now). There's quite a big Muslim population there, and as a student I worked in a shop that sold, amongst other things, special compasses that were meant to point to Mecca. The store had sold these things for years, until someone pointed out that they were imported from, and presumably calibrated for, the northern hemisphere.
I always wondered how many prayers went astray because of this, but never really felt bad about it.......
This made me think of another question. If you're praying to mecca with your rear end high in the air, are you mooning mecca the long way around? What happens if you're gasy that day and you have to break wind during prayer?
I just love the idea of laser guided prayers...
Meanwhile, the Catholic Church has discovered an error in their Eucharist ceremony. Seems all this time, instead of serving the blood of Christ, they have mistakenly been serving the blood of Satan. When asked for a comment, a spokesman said:
"There are no major errors but corrections have been made for some old mosques, thanks to modern techniques.
In any case, it does not affect the service."
In answer to #33: this post on religion forum:
"When worshiping god you should present yourself in the best possible way, you should be clean mentally and physically. By not being able to control your bodily functions i.e breaking wind, this is very disrespectful and dirty, expecially when you are in a mosque or a gurdwara. Hence if done intentionally your prayer will not be accepted, if done by accident then your prayer will be accepted but you must clean yourself again."
On a completely unrelated matter: The University of Tübingen has released "Darwin Rocks!"
The game enables one to evolve a musical piece. It is the universities contribution to "Evolution heute" ("E. today"), an idea contest by the VolkswagenFoundation, which backed the project with 100,000 €.
The game: http://www.darwinrocks.de/en
The official press release (German): http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news308063
More on the thoughts @33: Yes, it is possible for a fart to counteract a prayer.
Alas, the most interesting part of the story is missing... why are they misaligned? I'm guessing there's some interesting science in there. Perhaps they didn't account for variation of the compass, or something?
#36
Gives new meaning to the phrase "on a wind and a prayer". Seriously though, considering the speed of prayer @31, how fast would a fart have to be to go around the world the other way and reach the Kaaba before the prayer does? Would such a fart be affected by local meteorological conditions? Would a fart at that velocity harm your sphincter?
I do like me some theology. That is what theology is about, right? Turning obscure rules inside out to make them fit with common sense?
With all the high rises going up in Mecca, though, people were able to look down and notice that hey, the mosques aren't aimed right...
Nobody ever flew over the city in a slow plane during the entire 20th century?
It is also forbidden to face Mecca while relieving oneself - more than one modern bathroom has had to be remodeled when a Kaaba-oriented crapper was discovered.
Middle Eastern surveying techniques have evidently declined since the good ol' days of pyramid construction.
OT, but pharyngulate is now published on Urban Dictionary!
*HOOTING with laughter @ #9*
Now my colleagues think I'm crazier than they previously thought.
As always, you make fun of the situation, but have you ever considered that Islam's second-place showing against Christianity only proves that the non-Mecca directed prayers are less effective than the ones that reach Mecca?
It's like that horse-racing game at the fair in which you have to spray the little target with a stream of water to make your horse go, but as soon as you take your eyes off the target to check your horse's progress your aim goes off and your horse falls behind. Religion is exactly like that.
For any significant distance from Mecca, even with the most accurate of pointers, the body of someone praying will never be aligned precisely enough with that pointer to hit the target. Humans just aren't that good (even without worrying about wind speed, coriolis or quantum effects).
@ Ploon #40:
NB "on a wind and a prayer" should be "on a wing and a prayer".
@36
If you can't fart, how do you counter the recoil? As per #31, those prayers have a great muzzle velocity!
All joking aside. What is the correct way to point towards Mecca when you are a considerable fraction of the way around the world? Do you align to the great circle connecting your location to Mecca? This would put you in some places facing northerly to hit Mecca to the south of you (latitude-wise).
I wonder if some of the Atheist Theologians here could answer a question? Clearly I am not interested in the one-true direction in which to point my butt while praying, but what I would like to know is which is the best direction to face while blaspheming?
Clearly I wish my anti-godly remarks to be as cutting to the deity as possible, and it stands to reason that one personal orientation must be more effective than another. What is this please?
I'm an ex-Muslim (born and bred) and always wondered how a Muslim living in orbit (say in the ISS) would manage his prayers...
It makes no sense anyway to pretend that prayers follow the curvature of the earth. None of the mosques or praying people point toward Mecca, save those within a few tens of miles of Mecca.
They should be pointing toward Mecca through the earth, unless prayers can't go through rock and metal (they can't, of course). But no one would want to pray toward "the devil's abode", so they pretend to point toward Mecca, when in fact they're pointed randomly at distant stars.
No better or worse than "aiming" toward Jerusalem or toward "the heavens," naturally.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
I love how close they had to come to actually admitting that it's all horseshit. "In any case, it does not affect the prayers." That's tantalizingly close to saying, "It makes absolutely no difference what direction you face when praying. We've just been yanking your chains."
@ 41
You know that you don't have to be facing exactly forward on the toilet, don't you. All you would need is a vertical line with the instructions "Muslims should not face this way". Then, of course, all non-Muslims would face in that direction.
And anyway, if the universe is curved back on itself, wouldn't the prayers eventually get to the Ka'aba no matter what direction? Since prayers are non-material, they wouldn't have to travel at 7 km/sec or the speed of light.
What PZ was saying about believers matches a quote I've seen attributed to Marcus Aurellius.
In other words, why follow some silly rituals as a method of worship when your actions toward other people on a daily basis should matter infinitely more to a hypothetical god anyway?
maybe with the jack sparrow's compass we can fix that...
One wonders which "directions" the prayers can go to. Do they curve around the surface of the earth, or do they go off to space along the tangent line?
IIRC, the Roman Catholic Church tried to condemn and co-opt Marcus Aurelius because of his Meditations much like they did with Plato who had a few things to say that fit in with their doctrines.
Re: The angel Moroni
The Mormon religion is hilarious, even more so than most other religions. It's utterly beyond me how someone with even a single functioning neuron could believe in it. If I need a good laugh all I have to do is read up on the origins of the Mormon faith. Never fails.
Has any Islamic country ever sent a person into space? If so, how do the people pray?
@SEF #46:
I know. It's called a pun. Not very funny, maybe, but still.
Speaking of morons, Ben Stein will give a commencement speech at a most appropriate place--Liberty University:
Ah, yes, the one film that expelled any doubts among those who can think that Ben Stein is an ignorant yutz.
Still, can't complain, that's exactly the place where Stein should be heard, where ignorance is cheerfully and forcefully proclaimed to the exclusion of truth.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592
@#16 Marc Abian
"If they don't shoot into space then the prayer will get to Mecca eventually I think. If they keep going around the world they will have to have been everywhere after a while.
Am I right?"
Assuming that they travel along the surface, and do not change direction, then they will travel along a great circle, at least according to Geodesics.
#59: Yes, they have. "Saudi Prince Sultan Salman Al-Saud orbited the Earth for a week in 1985, as a payload specialist on board the U.S. space shuttle Discovery."
For more, see here: http://www.maranao.com/index.php?Itemid=102&id=55&option=com_content&ta…
Interesting quote:
Another Islamic scholar, Abdullah Ibrahim, stressed that Islamic laws are not always rigid, saying in his seminar paper, "Islam provides for flexibility under abnormal circumstances."
Here is how Muslims pray in space:
"Muslims on Earth face Mecca, in central Saudi Arabia, when they pray. The MNSA suggests that the astronaut pray toward Mecca as much as possible, or at the Earth in general. But if it becomes necessary, the astronaut may simply face any direction.
The attitude while at prayer is also an issue. In zero gravity, the sequence of the praying postures – standing, bowing, kneeling, and prostrating oneself – is difficult at best. Malaysian Islamic authorities say the astronaut should stand, preferably. If he can't stand, he should sit. If he can't sit, he should lie down. And if he can't do any of those, he's allowed to symbolically indicate the postures 'with his eyelids' or to simply imagine them, according to the MNSA booklet."
According to:
http://www.mafhoum.com/press10/307T45.htm
It turns out that they are not so nit-picky about prayers after all.
It depends on whether they travel on the surface, or in an orbit, just above the surface.
If the former, then yes, they'll just go around in a great circle with fixed coverage.
If the latter, they will eventually cover much more land area depending on the angle at which they are inclined to the equator. In fact, if they follow an orbital sort of path, it would be best to aim the prayer due north or due south, thereby guaranteeing that it will pass direct through the building at some point in the future.
This just seems so contradictory and condescending. If it doesn't affect the prayers, why are they doing it and telling others they have to do it in the first place? Why would they make "corrections"? Because the ignorant believe it affects the prayers, so the authorities will play to that while further entrenching their role as special conduits? Is this just supposed to be kind of a mental reminder to the person praying and nothing more? If so, why would exactness be any issue at all? Don't want to admit that it's all about maintaining practices of submission and obedience?
That only applies if they are tied in somehow with the rotation of the physical surface of the Earth, rather than with the air motion or having a quasi-rest-frame of space. If they aren't affected by gravity, then they'll always miss (depending on whether or not the whole universe wraps back on itself in a convenient manner). If they are affected by gravity but not by intervening matter, then they'll take a path much like the space shuttle (or non-geo-stationary satellites), orbiting in a spatially-fixed great circle (or ellipse?) with the Earth gradually turning underneath.
Clearly not enough research has yet been put into the properties of prayers. ;-)
AnthonyK @49
I'm normally looking at my wife when I blaspheme.
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Oh god, oh god, oh god, ohhhh.
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Ahhh
Are you sure that's blasphemy? Sounds to me more like worship...;0
Moroni's direction would be more of a non-issue, if Mormons didn't have so many apocryphal and folk beliefs that tag alongside the rest of their doctrine and which are for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from (and sometimes interchangeable with) the latter.
All Mormon construction is approved by church headquarters in Salt Lake. So, if church leaders wanted existing Moroni statues to face other directions, it would be an easy change for them to make, and they would have precedence in LDS President David O. McKay's decision in the mid-1950s to change the direction of the Los Angeles Temple Moroni.
Interestingly, no one makes a big deal speculating why out of the 129 Moroni statues, only the ones on the LA, DC, Seattle, Mexico City, and Jordan River (UT) temples are depicted holding golden plates.
So did GWB. He called them GBU-12 though.
When I first heard of this, I went to Google Earth to look at Mecca. I could not locate the Meccan mosques easily last night, as the whole town is a jumble. Mosques are usually easy to spot as they are way out of alignment with buildings around them. I've done some image survey work that included mosques, but I never bothered to see how good the Mecca-orientation was.
Mosques are aligned as the entire building--I never got inside far enough to see if there was a pointer as well. The pointer business mentioned in the first paragraph definitely applies to hotel rooms and such. (I remember the first time I stayed in a room with a Qiblat pointer on the ceiling--I realized that I was in a Muslim nation, and Mecca was no longer to the east--I was far, far from home.)
There are Qiblat tools, applications and websites, if you want to know where Mecca is, from where you are now. And, no, the alignment isn't critical, it's the thought that counts, apparently.
Wikipedia on Qiblah and how it's found. No word on whether the prayers actually work, though.
I do wonder what kind of god would allow his buildings to be incorrectly aligned in the first place. Has he no influence at all?
Modern, laser guided munitions don't always hit their targets; some don't detonate. With prayers, same problems. So if one's not careful, you could accidentally step on an unexploded prayer. Would that make it both a blessing and a curse?
Walton @ 18
As if this is a piece of perceived fact. Does the tooth fairy have teeth of her own?
Yes, but if the mass of the prayer is sufficiently small, the recoil could be effectively countered by a massive fart at much lower velocity. If the two are precisely balanced and sufficiently energetic, cartoon physics dictates that the praying individual should end up like a pancake with a surface normal in the direction of prayer, edge-on to the ground, then fall to the ground rotating like a coin. Calculating the Hamiltonian of the believer is left as an exercise.
It was an article of faith among my Catholic school classmates that it was a grave error to pray with your hands in the wrong position. It was essential to have them palm-to-palm with the fingers pointing upward, because if you allowed them to sag downward, you could accidentally end up praying to the Devil!
The muslims are just as loony as the christians. Prayers are not only real but also directional and have to be prescribed in adhered manner. Would the christians and muslims be able to be heard away from a church or mosque? Would their prayers be heard if mumbled from an outhouse or behind a tree? And they think atheists are errant when they don't buy this insanity. Only religion can suspend reason to foster abject insanity.
". . . Malaysian Islamic authorities say the astronaut should stand, preferably. If he can't stand, he should sit. If he can't sit, he should lie down. And if he can't do any of those, he's allowed to symbolically indicate the postures 'with his eyelids' or to simply imagine them, according to the MNSA booklet."
I've always suspected as much though I never thought I'd hear it from such an authority.
*I hope the shade of Irwin Corey doesn't feel to put upon*
http://tinyurl.com/c8xbjv
That is entirely appropriate, and I wouldn't raise any objection at all to an anti-science goon giving a talk at an anti-science 'university'.Just to freak the Stein fans out, though, I should mention that I'll be giving the commencement speech at the Keck School of Medicine at USC this year.
Google Earth's ruler function says that the Kaabah is 7,472.35 miles away from me, at 44.30 degrees. Let's see, that's the direction of the drunken neighbor with the pitbulls . . . this is going to be awkward.
That's why cities enact "Stoop and Scoop" laws.
AnthonyK - If you blaspheme while twirling you can offend everyone's gawd equally.
Wouldn't the speed of the prayer be significant in calculating where to aim your prayer? If a prayer travels at 55mph, assuming it maintains the US speed limit, wouldn't Mecca have moved out of the way by the time the prayer got there? The only way this works is if prayers are effected by the gravitational pull of the earth AND the momentum of the person saying the prayer. But apparently prayers are not effected by physical barriers such as mountains or weather such as hurricanes. And prayers are not effected by the initial height of the prayer as it will hug the surface of the earth, apparently. So a person praying in the mountains of Colorado does not have to worry that his prayer will pass 10,000 feet over Mecca. So does the prayer race down to the altitude of Mecca and pass through the earth at that height or does it go up and down as it travels through the mountains. Do prayers get tired and become less effective after a long trip? And how much of a miss renders the prayer ineffective? Is a miss as good as a mile?
I'm reminded of Aramis' theology thesis in The Three Musketeers, about whether the priest needs to use both hands to give blessings or a single hand is enough. D'Artagnan almost falls asleep while hearing him and his advisors discuss about this.
PZ wrote:
"Now we just need to hope that certain Muslims acquire a similar attitude towards cartoons and literature. If gods are so powerful, they should be able to take a little mockery and criticism; if they're nonexistent, there is no one to file a complaint."
...not to mention if the upper management did exist, the gods may not agree with them.
Well, I personnally am in COMPLETE favor of them turning the temples around with, say, tower cranes and such.
Why? Because of my background as a carpenter: that means more job for us! And I am surely not above making a HONEST profit out of people's superstitions.
"This is something believers and atheists can accept. The believer, because the nit-picky details of the ritual shouldn't matter that much, if you really believe in a wise and compassionate all-powerful being. The atheist, because yeah, the prayers are ineffectual in the first place."
1 The Kaaba and the black stone in Mecca.
http://www.salagram.net/kaba-stone.html
It is obvious that stone is important and it is placed inside a silver frame in the shape of a ........, oh dear, what is that shape?
2 Rules are very important for proper prayer. See:
http://muttaqun.com/salah.html
Clearly, since prayers must follow the curvature of the earth, they cannot travel in excess of escape velocity. They do not, however, proceed in a straight line, or they would miss entirely because of surface rotation. So either they are semi-guided, seeking Mecca with a high margin of error, but self correcting in the terminal phase (this would explain why close-is-not-a-problem, or the ritual of praying provides 'english' to the arc of the prayer rather like a curve ball (which would explain why the prayers of the inexperienced so often fail to hit the mark.)
Either that or prayer is an area-of-effect munition.
It probably would be useful to equip prayers with inertial guidance and GPS uplink to reduce the margin of error on target. Thus a salvo of prayers could converge for an effective time-on-target to saturate the anti-prayer defenses (presumably interceptor prayers of heretics and apostates) which have proven so effective at interdicting the impact of the prayers of the faithful. Clearly, random harrassment bombardment is unable effectively suppress the will of Allah.
I would also recommend submarine-launched prayers to impact in Mecca at minimal notice.
Ahhh yes. Collateral damage. This is a prayer theory I can see bearing fruit.
I wonder if prayers are subject to the inverse-square rule (a prayer that travels twice as far has its mojo density reduced to 1/4) If prayers are 1/r^2 effects, then they have a realistic maximum distance after which they have been reduced to an insignificant level.
It could be worse, what if prayers are 1/r^7 effects like the nuclear strong and weak forces?
All this speculation I think clearly reveals a few things about "prayers".
These assumptions allow a prayer created with the proper bearing (navigation sense) to describe a grand circle directly to Mecca and the Kaaba. I these properties are also those presumed to be exhibited by the Higgs Boson. I propose that prayers are composed of low velocity Higgs bosons, and the Kaaba is a holy particle target.
Cartographers can create maps that show the correct compass direction to one point on the map. This type of projection is called a "Mecca map", which tells you what the most common use of this projection is.
As for Moroni, not only are the statutes mis-aligned, the name is always mis-spelled. It should be Moron I....
@92- The Higgs Boson has also been called the 'god particle.' If a person is able to emit god particles, then either WE are the gods or WE make up the gods- I'll buy that.
Once the famous explorer met a young muslim in Djakarta and agreed to accompany the fellow as the man went on his first Hajj. The trip was uneventful until they came within site of the holy city of Mecca where they fell in with others of the faith. It is then when the call to prayer came that while everyone faced east for their prayers, the one from Djakarta faced the other way.
The others were outraged at this action until the famous explorer pointed out, "He's from Indonesia and they tend to be occident prone."
While the Christians long ago adopted decentralization as a defense against strategic prayer bombardment, the problem still remains: Prayers of the faithful still penetrate the defenses locally, causing God's plan to be altered randomly in response to the weight and distribution of the prayer objects. This contributes to the appearance that the universe operates on principles unrelated to divine will, giving rise to the illusion of science.
Only when these prayers can be effectively intercepted before impact will the universe steady up on its course and clear up its various logical contradictions. Good things will only happen to good people and vice versa. In the current emergency, good or bad things may strike anyone, and God has had to resort to guaranteeing vengeance, justice, and mercy simultaneously by implementation of an afterlife where he is no longer required to answer prayers or be logically consistent.
The Vatican's current anti-prayer system, the Mark IV Gargoyle, has proven ineffective and is being refitted with a modern two-layer defense--the General Dynamics CIBS (Close-in-Blasphemy-System), which uses radar guidance to intercept incoming prayers in their terminal phase with extremely rapid blasphemy (6000 per second, radar-corrected trajectory) and the new Pax Mobiscum long-range interception heresy, designed to destroy prayers in their vulnerable boost phase, shortly after the word "Amen".
Mecca uses an obsolete anti-prayer-artillery system, but this has proven adequate as the Kabaa is heavily protected against near misses.
The others were outraged at this action until the famous explorer pointed out, "He's from Indonesia and they tend to be occident prone."
rimshot
Cardinal Donatelli of the Vatican Office if Religious Planning today called for believers to please stop praying.
"It's mucking up everything," he told reporters. "God is so inundated with requests to find you people a parking place and keep your wife from finding out that he can't properly aim hurricanes and tsunamis. For God's Sake, just stop bothering Him and get on with your lives!"
At this point, the assembled reporters responded "Amen."
"Aw, shit," concluded the Cardinal.
No, this is clearly the Muslims keeping better communications security. Conventional prayers are obviously a broadcast theology, whereas Muslim prayers are point-to-point "tightbeam" transmissions. That's why it's important that they are correctly aimed, otherwise they may be intercepted by hostile djinns or other dangerously nonexistent entities.
Ignore this if someone has already mentioned it, but aren't muslims (at least thos of the Yahya type) constantly harping on about how scientific and miraculously predictive and modern their tome is, allegedly telling us about genetics, plate tectonics etc.? How come that book wasn't even able to tell them the correct direction from such a short distance?
Although, they'll surely claim that it always has, if you read that passage this way... wow, miracle...
This is all very reminicent of the Skinner box variation that Richard Dawkins talked about in Unweaving the Rainbow, where the pigeons become "superstitious" when food is released at random:
I can just visualise Muslims spinning in space trying to aim their prayers in the right direction as directly equivalent to pigeons spinning in their cages in expectation of food. No difference. Except that human beings are supposed to be more intelligent than pigeons. Apparently not.
I've always wondered about the facing thing too. It really depends a whole lot on where you are, and whether you need to face the long or short path to mecca.
From my house, the short path is about 45 degrees azimuth - Northeast... although you're still technically facing mecca on 225 degrees azimuth.
If you're in Kuala Lumpur, then Mecca is decidedly northwest, about azimuth 300 or so, but again, you could face southeast 120 degrees and still be pointed there.
now, as far as I know, the short path is preferred, so that implies that Muslim prayers have a maximum range of less than 20000 km...
Which brings up the question: What does a Muslim astronaut do when he goes to the moon?
Somebody who is registered there should hop over to Dawkin's site and tell the commenters (on the same subject we're discussing here) that we have all the answers. They are asking questions but are not providing solutions!
We do seem to have a coupla devout muslims at the community college and I did at some point ponder if it would be an idea to give them a prayerroom so they could get a bit of privacy. (We don't have the space, unfortunately, but perhaps once the students' club is up and running again, they can borrow their office.)
Anyway - when I checked the qibla it turned out that it's aimed almost straight for the local brewery. I wonder if that's a sign of some sort.
For my blog post on Muslims in space, click on my name.
And yes, there is an iPhone application for determining which direction to pray.
There is no need for Muslim prayers to compete with any other prayers, as God only understands prayers in Arabic. Everyone else is SOL.
Tom 84:
This opens up whole new fields of enquiry!
Do prayers have mass, as suggested by other commenters? Are they all the same mass, or does the mass vary with the intensity of the prayer, the urgency, or simply the length? How to get the right balance between clarity of expression and speed of delivery? Whew!
If prayers are subject to the laws of gravity, would there be any point in praying if you were falling into a black hole?
And the article on praying in space opens a fresh can of worms - fasting. How long to fast in a relativistic unaiverse? Time as measured by the faster or time at the Kaaba?
Is there a danger that mis-directed prayers will cause colateral happiness?
Not if it's known that these prayers are being sent willy-nilly, no. The effect would be disastrous, at least for heart bypass surgery patients.
Pete UK #106 - "If prayers are subject to the laws of gravity, would there be any point in praying if you were falling into a black hole?"
The velocity of a prayer can be significant. The escape velocity of Jupiter is much higher than that of Earth so can prayers said by on an astronaut on Jupiter get to Earth? Of course, the gravity on Jupiter would crush an astronaut but what if we sent a Prayer Transmission Device (PTD) to Jupiter, aimed it at Mecca, and started transmitting prayers. Would prayers said by the PTD be able to get to Earth? And forget about space... suppose I built hundreds of thousands or millions of PTDs in my backyard and used them to send prayers to Mecca! Could I overwhelm all other prayers?
That brings up another question. Suppose I point away from Mecca while speaking into a phone but the person at the other end points the phone at Mecca... would my prayers be effective? With so many though provoking issues, I'm surprised that someone attending an Islamic university hasn't done their PhD dissertation on any of these issues.
Not sure, but certainly Mass has prayers.
I just used Google Earth and its Ruler tool again, to go around Aceh province in Indonesia looking at mosques and checking their alignments. Out of about 20, I only saw one that I'd call perfectly aligned, a couple that were pretty close, and all the rest amusingly off.
I could get a photogrammetry thesis out of that, couldn't I?
Great. so their imaginary muttering will miss the space rock that is somehow the focus of their imaginary friend.
Where's my pal Harvey when I need him ?