In 2005, it was discovered that the Flight 93 memorial pointed toward Mecca. Alex Rawls, author of Error Theory, made this claim and was dismissed by defenders of the memorial. Rawls posts his mathematical proof of the orientation towards Mecca on his site Crescent of Betrayal. His defenders said that any direction you stand is towards Mecca. No, really:
Daniel Griffith, a geospatial information sciences professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, said anything can point toward Mecca, because the earth is round.
“If you have a three-dimensional geography, you can go from one point to another point turning around in a circle.
“Essentially, what they’re claiming, they could claim no matter where the memorial was.”
Any direction you face points toward Mecca? We can dismiss the evidence Rawls has compiled now, right?
Tell the Saudis that. Via the BBC:
Some 200 mosques in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, point the wrong way for prayers, reports from Saudi Arabia say.
All mosques have a niche showing the direction of the most sacred Islamic site, the Kaaba, an ancient cube-like building in Mecca’s Grand Mosque.
But people looking down from recently built high-rises in Mecca found the niches in many older mosques were not pointing directly towards the Kaaba.
Some worshippers are said to be anxious about the validity of their prayers.
How could these mosques be off if any direction they face leads to Mecca? Or the direction of the mosque actually important to the design?
I find it very telling that Saudi Arabians are concerned about the direction of the mosques, but the designers of the memorial are not.
