This is needlessly pedantic…
Not, when you accuse
others of lacking critical reasoning when you yourself link to an article that supports
your position and not any that go against it.
On its own, there wouldn’t have been a problem with linking to an article which supports one’s position, people do that all the time.
However, you went further; you claimed “both sides are presented”, which is untrue, as Gibson’s response to criticisms against him have been cited but not King’s counter-response. It’s like a scenario in which after my response (my previous one or this one), this topic gets closed and you are restricted from replying. After which, I start advertising on the internet that “both sides are presented” or that everyone got a chance to prove their arguments.
Additionally, only an observation was made when this was pointed out, you were not accused of lying, maliciousness, or arrogance. But instead of accepting it or even ignoring it and just moving on, you couldn’t stop yourself from snubbing it and calling the other person a pedant.
Furthermore, all of this
still could’ve been chalked up to an honest inconsequential mistake, but then you went further by accusing someone else of lacking critical intellect, and said “stop thinking, because you can't think. Lol.”
If you are overly emotional about your religion, then don't watch it.
I am not a relativist, things are either true or they are not. Muhammad was not from Mecca, because he just wasn't. Critical thinking isn't your sport... let academic historians do their stuff and then judge from there, stop sprouting misinformation. I linked Gibson's and King's clash, read that and stop thinking, because you can't think. Lol.
In light of the previous points, are you sure “critical thinking isn't
your sport.”
I am not into religious apologetics.
If I’m not mistaken, you should realise that pretty much
all the responses that have been made to your comments come under the purview of “religious apologetics”.
This is parroted everywhere. Look at the below table from Gibson's book, it largely agrees with the data of the orientations in your linked article. This basically means that after posting your topic here, you don’t really care about the replies. I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t your intention.
I apologise but I don’t understand whether this is supposed to disprove anything or not. From what I understand, pretty much the whole point, or a large part, of Gibson’s response to King’s article was to show how Gibson comes to different conclusions than King using the
same basic information. King and others argue the orientation to be inspired by equinoxes/solistices, already present architectural foundations, casual mistakes/coincidences etc. while Gibson’s claims they represent deliberate effort to direct towards Petra.
Rubbish. I will not repeat myself.
I apologise, I missed that you were looking for
specific types of evidence and not
any evidence that could be provided against the Petra claim.
This dating roughly coincides with the advent of the finalized Qiblah, reinforcing the interests of the Mecca conspirators…
First it was the Abbasids who hatched the elaborate conspiracy and now the Umayyads were in on it too? Abbasids couldn’t accept the Umayyad rule – took over the government, wiped out almost the entire ruling family, fractured the Muslim people – but changing the religion of their entire people, apparently,
this they had no issues with. If any evidence that goes against your claim is going to be disregarded and chalked up as being part of the conspiracy, there probably isn’t going to be
anything that would have the capacity to convince you.
Assumed conclusions from the hadith literature, salah does not denote a ritual prayer…
So, now I suppose the
Salat was a conspiracy too. Out of curiosity, basically what purpose do you think ablution serves which is specifically mentioned in the Qur’an?
This is not our game. I say "Abbasid" for simplicity, what I really mean are the elites in general, because we do not know their dealings fully. Who knows why the Umayyad's would absorb Abbasid reinventions?
So basically, you
don’t have any plausible explanation or motivation for the alternate history you are trying to forward. People can’t be expected to believe this alternate version of history if
even a pragmatic reason for allegedly one of the most successful and extensive history re-writing campaigns cannot be supplied.
It's like asking why would George Bush want to fly planes into buildings on American soil? No one truly knows (assuming 9/11 was an inside job).
If this is actually what happened, obvious motivations can easily be attributed to it. The Bush administration wanted to attack Iraq and they wanted a plausible reason to do so and for the American people to let it be done. From what I know, money was made due to the Iraq war by Bush administration officials. Bush’ re-election can also be attributed to the war. The American government was able to subvert civil liberties of their people, get rid of the Habeus Corpus, an enemy was needed after the Cold War to keep the funding and innovation going for military and intelligence services (as attested to by multiple US officials).
Several plausible rationalities are obvious.
I follow macro-historical data (of which are generally archaeological in nature) and not interjections based upon political micro-translations of a thousand years ago … I use the pre-Islamic macro-historical data and generally disregard the micro-historical data, especially when the micro-historical data takes on a completely different flavour than the macro.
Basically, what you are saying is that you accept
some forms of historical evidence but not others. In this particular case being, the type that allows your position to remain alive, but not the type that completely refutes it. Besides, some of the evidence that is used for the Petra claim, comes not under the purview of macro-historical data but under micro-historical form.
You are assuming that there was an iron-rule for the original Qiblah, this is demonstrably not the case when you read the beginning of 2:177 on the Quranic concept of virtue and the historical context of Muhammad's time vis-a-vis the builders of early mosques. The Quran does not favour a racially centric Qilah, details of which can be found in Gerran's translation.
I don’t think there was anything in my quoted reply that appeared to declare that I assumed “an iron-rule for the original Qiblah”. The main point of that paragraph was the question of why protection of centuries old, comparatively irrelevant, Greek texts was possible, but not of any mention of the most important Islamic site. As even without the
Hajj or the
Salat it would
still remain the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad and by extension Islam itself, that is, in addition to all the geographical and archaeological evidence provided in support of Petra being the original Makkah.
… Arguably bigger, if true.
If it were true.
Bart Ehrman, a famous Bible scholar, pointed out in one of his debates, that the only surviving manuscript of the New Testament from the first three centuries consisted of only a few verses. Additionally, we have pretty much no information about the humans from whom we get various New Testament books, we don’t even know their names. Additionally, the text went through a translation process from its original language which then became the widely available format. If similar issues persist with the Old Testament, then it would require the collusion of only a handful people at a certain point in time for such an extraordinary reinvention of history to become a reality. Additionally, the Jewish people were also not propagating their religion to others, which would’ve made an internal conspiracy more plausible. Possible or not, such a scenario
still remains unlikely. Not being a scholar on the issue, is the only reason I don’t provide more of an absolute rejection of this idea.
On the other hand, Islamic scripture, for the most part, did not have any of these problems. Islam was not limited to one particular community, its followers became the dominant force over an extensive area in a short time period, major proselytizing work was involved, hundreds, if not thousands, of people, have been recorded to be involved in the works which provide us with the traditionalist history of Islam. Their names, characters, geographic locations have been recorded and even comments about their memories have been made. No major translation efforts can be pointed out that would have afforded the opportunity for such a drastic reinvention of history. Individuals involved with collecting Islam’s history were at times severely disliked by the government, case in point would be of Imam Ahmad bin Hanbal, author of the most extensive collection of Hadiths, but also one put in jail and allegedly tortured by his Abbasid ruler. Additionally, unlike the Old Testament times, this is also the time from which numerous historical records survive and when literary activities became much more frequent, not only for Muslims but for Jews in Spain as well. In light of all these points and many more, no, I don’t believe a potential Jewish reinvention of history would be a “bigger” achievement.
