Hyndis

They are immune to evidence.

They ignore literal mountains of evidence in favor of their preferred mythology, and while the mythology they prefer often varies, the mindset is still the same.

Evidence simply isn't relevant in their worldview. Or rather, evidence that doesn't support their position isn't relevant, as they will quite happily pick up on evidence that does support their worldview, or outright manufacture evidence when their set of mythology is that far away from reality.

Igor Trip

As the early earth was continually being bombarded with meteorites it would have been one massive volcanic landscape during its entire formation.
It would never have been flat enough to be covered by an ocean.

Igor Trip

Just watched the video.

He claims magnetic north and true north are in the same direction from Mecca.
Check out this amazing animated graph which shows 0 degrees declination wondering all over the place.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magneti...Air_navigation

Magnetic north is 114 degrees west.
Mecca is 39.5 degrees east.
114 + 39.5 = 153.5 degrees not the 180 needed for Mecca to be aligned with both true north and magnetic north poles.

anthrosciguy

One thing that could/should be done if the OPer (or anyone else in a smilar situation) is going to enter into this discussion would be to ask how many incorrect "facts" are required to make him dismiss, or at least doubt, the claim. Then things like the above could be pointed out. Otherwise the central problem of pseudoscience enters in -- in virtually all of its forms a pseudoscience or fringe science (or history) claim has a large number of claims, and of course new claims can be far more quickly than they can be shown to be false, because making stuff up is easy. So if you show this is wrong and that is wrong, they just point to ten other things. You show those are wrong too and they point to some more, each time saying something like "but you haven't shown that this isn't true" (or the all purpose "I believe there are things we don't understand").

The situation is generally reversed for science, in the pseudoscience fans' eyes. To borrow a political explanation (don't want to derail this so if you don't like my politics please ignore that in favor of understanding the point) about the press and "Clinton Rules", which is "If any part of an alleged scandal turns out to be true, the media behaves as though the entire story is true." And the reverse, which was used for John McCain, is "If any part of an alleged scandal turns out to be false, the media behaves as though the entire story is false."

This is done for pseudoscience versus real science. For pseudoscience if any part of an idea -- supported by a set of claims -- is true or has merit, then the entire idea is said to be true, while for real science they feel that if any part of an idea -- supported by a set of claims -- is false or has no merit, then the entire idea is said to be disproven. For instance, this is why Piltdown is so often invoked (usually with a false history of the claim); the fact that there are any pieces of bad or false evidence is considered to disprove evolution, while for a Worlds in Collision or ancient pre-Eygyptian civilization built the pyramids type idea, if any individual bit is shown to have any degree of merit, or even possibility, then the whole idea is said to be proven or at least well-supported. You see this in many forms of pseudoscience, for instance in the way whacko health claims are held to a completely different standard than regular medicine is by those who believe in whacko health stuff.

So most of the time these are uphill battles, generally a lost cause. They can be challenged, but keep these thoughts in mind so you can be prepared for the usual reactions.

Clinical

I have never heard of such a claim. Unfortunately many "scholars" like him make a mockery out of Islam.

The Quran does not claim that Mecca is first raised land on Earth.

What I heard was a hypothesis that the Mecca-Medina longitude would be more accurate than the Greenwich Meridian.

Cycad

Why would Mecca Medina Meridian be more accurate than Greenwich, Paris, Timbouktou Meridian ?

And Eid Mubarrak to you today.

Clinical

I did not read the paper, just the title unfortunately.
Thank you. I truly appreciate it.

GilgameshEnkidu

No, let's go there.

Does he think the world is flat and has edges? If so, why does anyone take him seriously? Just another nutcase spouting nonsense.

lpetrich

I watched that YouTube video -- that guy seems like he half-understands a lot of geology.

He seems to be saying that Pangaea was the first continent, when it was only the most recent of a series of supercontinents. Continents run together, forming bigger and bigger combined continents; most of the Earth's land area can end up in some supercontinent. But that resulting supercontinent traps heat underneath, which causes diverging mantle convection that pulls it apart.

He went on to quote a certain Prof. Hussein Kamaluddin, who had determined which way to Mecca from various major cities. Prof. Kamaluddin supposedly determined that Mecca had been in the center of the Earth's original landmass, which was presumably Pangaea.

-

I checked on some reconstructions of Pangaea (Permian, 250 mya), and Mecca was not quite at the center of it. It was near Pangaea's eastern continental-shelf boundary, though fairly close to the center of that boundary. That made it close to the center of Pangaea's east coast, since Mecca was inland of the shelf boundary.

Arabia started separating from Africa in the early Cenozoic, making the Red Sea; before that, Arabia and Africa had formed one plate.

-

Mecca rests on the Arabian-Nubian Shield, which formed from island arcs and the like around 800 - 500 million years ago.

So Mecca's land is likely less than a billion years old, and Mecca is easily beaten in age by places like northern Canada, western Australia, and southern Africa.

Joe Meert

Yes, then there is the little problem of the earlier supercontinents Rodinia and Columbia.

Cheers

Joe Meert