I’ve proven Islam true, allegedly
Someone wrote to me with a link that claims my evaluation of the claim that Mecca is at the golden-ratio centre of the Earth actually proves Islam is true, rather than that the claim is bogus. They asked me to look at the two following items, were my video is mentioned:
- https://www.answering-christianity.com/middle_nation_miracle.htm
- https://www.answering-christianity.com/middle_nation_miracle.mp4
I decided to write my reply here for public viewing. Here it is:
First the page
1: “Middle way”
The words are
Ummtan = A community (accusative noun)
Wasatan = In the middle (accusative adjective)
Litakuwnuw = so that you will be (particle of purpose)
Shuhadaa = witnesses (plural accusative noun)
Firstly, it is talking about people, not a place. then it goes on to say the community are in the middle for a purpose to bear witness. The witnesses part is plural, a single place cannot be plural. It is talking about Muslims being inbetweeners between Muhammad and other nations. It goes on to say “so that you will be witnesses over mankind and Muhammad will be a witness over you”. It is 100% talking about people, not a place.
Most importantly, 1.619 (or the inverse 0.618) is *not* the middle of something, it is nearly 2 thirds of the way across – so the use of the word “middle” to describe something 61.8% of the way across something would be an error – a pretty large one.
2: “Verse 143 is exactly the middle of Chapter 2”
So what? It is also used in:
- 2.238 (81% of the way through)
- 5.89 (74% of the way through)
- 68.28 (54% of the way through)
- 100.5 (45% of the way through).
If seeing the word middle in the middle of a verse is a measurement by which to judge the divinity of the Quran, then 80% of occurrences indicate failure – and even a single failure is imperfect (which is 100% disproof of the Quran’s divinity), so people should stop making up stupid criteria.
PS: The formula for working out the middle number of X is (X+1) divided by 2. So, verse 143 would actually be the middle of a chapter with 285 verses, not 286. Can’t Allah do school-level mathematics?
Now the video
2 minutes 39 seconds
They claim that my video shows the place is “ALMOST the centre of Arabia”. That alone is enough to disprove the counter-claim. It isn’t even close enough to the centre for the video maker to pretend it is the actual centre, he has to claim “almost” the centre.
Who is this Allah, the god of “nearly just about good enough” or the god that created the universe with a precision down to the size of electrons orbiting an atom?
For an intelligent agent with that kind of power, I would expect a “sign” that claims Arabia is the middle would actually be accurate the the precision of an atom. Every time we made more and more advanced methods of measurement we’d see every time that it is exactly in the right place.
But no, even at the level of a significant time spent in a car journey we can see it’s not in the centre, nor is it at the golden-ratio.
4 minutes 5 seconds
It claims that Arabia is the centre of the world’s Muslim population. That suggests nothing more than that Islam was made up in Arabia and spread outwards.
4 minutes 12 seconds
It seems to claim that the middle of the world’s oil reserves is Arabia.
Note how here the creator actually means “the highest number” and not “the golden ratio”. They use one method for centre for the location of Arabia (61%), then “largest concentration” for another. Basically, whatever they think proves there point.
However, Venezuala has larger oil reserves than Saudi Arabia by approximately 13% more https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_proven_oil_reserves
- Venzuala = 302,809 million barrels
- Saudi Arabia = 267,026 million barrels
So, the video author seems to have decided instead to measure by how much oil is processed, rather than how much is present.
Well, humans process oil, it would have been god who put it there. All this shows is that historically the west invested most heavily in extracting oil in Arabia, and that again the author is conflating “most” with “centre” – which are not the same thing.
The final video footage
Finally, the video footage tacked on at the end. I have already disproven this claim by checking where all the other occurrences of this word appear. For it to be significant then most of them should be in the middle, for it to be perfect then ALL of them should be in the middle. You can’t dismiss 80% of the data because it doesn’t fit the conclusion you want to be true.
The bias here is embarrassing. If someone were to write this up in a scientific peer reviewed journal, it wouldn’t even make it as far as peer review. Every claim made violates some principles of objective and accurate evaluation.
Conclusion
If you are going to invent criteria by which to judge something as being divine, at least make up criteria that fits. If 80% of your book fails the criteria you invented, then you are just embarrassing yourself. Please stop it, it’s silly.
PS: Arab culture is right-to-left, so you’re going the wrong way when you move left-to-right across the longitude. I don’t think Allah would subject to western imperialism 🙂