Refraining from a ‘detailed’ reconstruction seems quite reasonable. In history, you don’t generally have to explain how something happens to assert that it did.
Holland is indeed something of a pop author, but once you’ve translated Herodotus it’s hard to claim that you have no real expertise in history.
Um… did you read the following sentence? She didn’t abandon the idea at all. And there’s at least one major work that argues for it: ‘In the Shadow of the Sword.’
The idea as I know it comes from Patricia Crone, but it’s been picked up by other historians like Tom Holland. Basically, it claims that Muhammad came from Jordan and the idea of Islam originating in Medina was an attempt to ‘Arabize’ the new religion.
I’m not sure it counts. Muhammad certainly existed. Most of the theology wouldn’t have been made up as you describe. I’m really just talking about the origin story, since whether Islam actually came from Arabia isn’t certain.
I admit it’s possible for components of a religion to be taken from political propaganda (certain parts of the NT fit the bill), but inventing the idea as a whole… I can’t see how that would work out. Except maybe in the case of Islam, but even then it was just grabbing on to the coattails of Judaism and Christianity.
It’s a safe assumption that any religion with ancient roots was not made up by someone for political purposes.
Sure, but (without even mentioning how much it takes from mainstream Christianity) Mormonism is… 150 years old. How many Quakers do you see these days?
Would Snell’s Law possibly explain it? Someone claimed to me that it makes light refract more with decreasing altitude.
Ah, I already Googled but I got confused because the first guy who came up on the search seemed to be talking about something else.
But I used a different phrasing and got the answer. FWI, Google isn’t always reliable for refuting crackpots and Wikipedia is very unreliable. If I assumed that the latter represented the state of human knowledge I’d be forced to concede that most of what Wild Heretic says is true.
Hmm, his argument that stars can never be seen anywhere at high altitudes (excepting the ‘fraudulent’ NASA photographs) doesn’t yet have an unambiguous counterexample I could find. He doesn’t deny that the stars must be higher than the atmosphere but think they only become visible near the ground.
But the articles on the solar equinox and the solstice are probably the best on the whole site. Or they just seem that way to me, because I don’t know enough math to refute them.
The claim being made is that satellites should be exposed to temperatures nearly twice as hot as the melting point of iron.
I don’t understand why you think this is a refutation. What is giving energy to the molecules in the upper atmosphere, if not the sun? And if it is the sun, higher density matter like satellites would would experience extreme heat.
You’re not giving the full quote, and even if he had said that, it wouldn’t remotely meet any burden of proof for showing Christianity was probably created for political purposes. The behavior of the Roman authorities towards Christianity seems to offer more evidence against that, as well as the embarrassment for having their Messiah be crucified by a Roman governor.
Ugh… I’m talking about whoever created Islam or Christianity in the first place, and Lumifer’s response didn’t seem to acknowledge that. I am indeed aware that Islam predates the Ottoman dynasty.
Yes, that’s precisely my point. Religious doctrines get sorted out over centuries so that the most viable survive. People who deliberately set out to create their own cult can’t match this.
Thought it was worth posting, but even he doesn’t think it’s very convincing on its own.
Did the Ottoman Sultans invent Islam?
This is not a good response. Surely you can admit this is coherent?
At about 85km altitude temperatures start to rise until they hit the Kármán line which is 100km high. After this line, the heat abruptly increases rising rapidly to 200km whereby it starts to level off (100km is the very start of the radiation belts as well which become full strength at 200km funnily enough), although other sources say it continually rises. Temperatures can vary, depending on sun activity, but can reach as high as… wait for it…
2500°C!
I kid you not.
In case you don’t know how hot 2500°C is. Your oven in your kitchen can hit 240°C max. A ceramic laboratory oven for jewelers and dentists to melt gold can reach 1200°C. Temperatures in a blast furnace for melting iron can go as high as 2300°C.
The only elements in the periodic table that can withstand 2500°C are carbon, niobium, molybdenum, tantalum, tungsten, rhenium, and osmium. Except for carbon, these metals are very, very heavy and are of course extremely conductive to heat and most are very ductile when heat treated meaning they bend and coil. Carbon even has the highest thermal conductivities of all known materials! So, if you want to cook someone very efficiently and quickly, there is nothing better than a space capsule made out of graphite.
Now, admittedly, it is not always 2500°C. In fact the temperature range is usually between a mere 600 to 2000°C! depending on sun activity and if it is day or night, with these temperatures usually reserved for altitudes of 300km and above; the upper boundary of which is unknown.
Now guess what altitude all the NASA machines are supposed to orbit Earth?
We are told most satellites orbit the Earth at altitudes of over 500km to avoid atmospheric drag, with a few circling in Medium Earth Orbit which goes up to 35,786km!
Ah, I mean a religion that was created or originally propagated through patronization. Every religion has been patronized for political purposes at some point. Christianity is a pretty good example of a religion that was not useful to the authorities during its early years.
It does indeed. Evidence that x is true is not the same as an explanation of how x occurred. For instance, we can see that an ancient city was burned down around a certain year, but not know for what purpose or by whom.
You just complained that he wasn’t an academic.