How Morey Twists Things

To see how Morey is willing to bend quoted passages out of shape to make them somehow fit his Moon-god-in Islam theory, consider the following passage from p.8 of his book:

The archeological evidence demonstrates that the dominant religion of Arabia was the cult of the Moon-god. In Old Testament times, Nabonidus (555-539BC), the last King of Babylon, built Tayma, Arabia as a center of Moon-god worship. Segall stated, South Arabia's stellar religion has always been dominated by the Moon-god in various variations. (Morey, p.8).

What Morey quotes constantly belies him but he does not seem to notice, or he hopes his readers will not notice. Consider his quotation of Segall above. According to Segall in the above quote:

South Arabia's stellar religion has always been dominated by the Moon-god in various variations. (Segall, quoted Morey, p.8).

According to Morey, this agrees with his point that:

The archaeological evidence demonstrates that the dominant religion of Arabia was the cult of the Moon-god. (Morey, p.8 emphasis added).

A careful comparison of these two statements reveal, however, that they are not saying the same things. The following are the important differences:

a) Morey speaks "of" Arabia; Segall speaks "of" South Arabia.

b) Segall does not speak of all of the South Arabia's religions. He says only that of the stellar religions, religions that involved the worship of the Sun, Moon, and Venus, the most dominant was the worship of the Moon; Morey speaks of all religion. The deception here is that from Segall's words we understand only that the moon was worshipped more than the Sun, and Venus. But from Morey's words we understand that the moon was worshipped more than any other god.

My point is not that Morey and Segall should say the same thing. My point is that when we can see that they are saying two different things Morey should not insult our intelligence by implying that they are saying the same thing.


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Morey's Intended Audience

Morey obviously thinks his readers will fall for anything. So he does not bother to tidy up his deceptions. Page after page of Morey's book reveals how he manipulates the evidence he is working with. For example, on pages 5 and 7 he discusses the findings at Hazor in Palestine. On page 6 he shows four diagrams of the artifacts discovery there. After identifying the findings as having came from a major temple to the Moon-god in Palestine, Morey describe diagram 4 in the following words:

Several smaller statues were also found which were identified by their inscriptions as the "daughters" of the Moon-god (See Diagram #4); (Morey, p.7).

Notice here that according to Morey the inscriptions identify the statues as the daughters of the Moon-god. But did not he direct us to look at Diagram #4? Well, Diagram #4 reveals something interesting. Underneath Diagram #4 we find the following words:

Pieces of the idols of the daughters of the Moon-god.

The inscription identifies them as the daughters of god (Morey, p.6).

But we have already seen that according to Morey on his page 7, the inscriptions identified the statues as daughters of the Moon-god (Morey, p.7).

Which page of Morey's book are we to believe? Six or Seven? It appears that the inscriptions did not say Moon-god. But Morey is so fond of his Moon-god-in-Islam theory that he just simply inserted the word "Moon" before "god" on page 7.

We still do not know for sure what the inscription (page 6) or inscriptions (page 7) do say. But without doing any further checking we discover Morey's errors from the very pages he writes. What level of readership was he writing for?


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Fallacy of Equivocation

Why did Morey go to such great depths to invent daughters for the Moon-god? Because the pagan Arabs just before Islam believed that their gods al-Lat, Uzzah and Manat were daughters of Allâh. If Morey can convince his readers that the Moon-god had daughters he might just be able to confuse them into thinking that the pagan Arabs believed in the Moon-god and his daughters.

And this is the point he tries to drive home. Notice his following claim which we find on pages 7-8 of his book:

Thousands of inscriptions from walls and rocks in Northern Arabia have also been collected. Reliefs and votive bowls used in worship of the "daughters of Allâh" have also been discovered. The three daughters, al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat are sometimes depicted together with Allâh the Moon-god represented by a crescent moon above them. (Morey, pp.7-8).

He does not quote any authority for any of the above claims. The only thing he has in quotes is "daughters of Allâh." Well this is nothing new and I do not need to see an authority cited for it. What I want to see an authority for is Morey's allegation about Allâh the Moon-god (Morey, p.8). But these are Morey's words, and he can find no authority to connect the name Allâh with the Moon-god.

Surely Morey can do better than that. For this important claim he offers no quote of an authority, no diagram, no illustration, no map, and no specific detail. He does not say when, where or by whom the inscriptions were collected.

He does tell us in his footnotes where we can find more information about this. But after discovering Morey's misquotes one after another I lack the time and energy to check out these writings from which he did not have the time or energy to make a direct quotation.

I did notice, however, that one of the authorities mentioned has nothing to do with a discussion about Allâh being a Moon-god of any sort. It deals with the goddess Atirat and her relation to the Moon-god and the Sun-goddess. But this goddess Atriat is related not to the Moon-god Allâh, for there is no such being. From an ancient Qatabanian inscription discovered at Timna, we know that the goddess Atriat was related to the Moon-god Amm (see Pritchard, The Ancient Near East: A New Anthology of Texts and Pictures, vol.2, p.237). So I am not prepared to go on any more wildgoose chases than what Morey has already sent me on.

If there is something significant in those writings why does Morey not make a direct quotation? Then we can check again for the accuracy of his quotations.

I don't think his is an unreasonable demand. When Morey was proving less significant and what I call highly irrelevant points he was busy quoting authorities. When he told us about Moon-god worship everywhere else he furnished us with names of discovers, dates of discoveries, names of discovery cites, and lots of pictures to boot. Why is it that when it comes to Northern Arabia he offers not a shred of evidence?

Does Morey expect his readers to accept his most important point on faith alone? Usually we take at face value what a writer says, because we expect him to tell the truth. We have been seeing again and again that with Morey we cannot afford that risk.

Morey has committed here what in logic is known as the fallacy of eqivocation. He takes a term which meant one thing in a certain context and the same term which means another thing in a new context and pretends that since the term is the same the meaning is also the same. He argues that the Moon-god of the South Arabians had daughters, and the High God Allâh of the Meccan Arabs and daughters, therefore they are one and the same god having daughters.

To see how this fallacy works, consider this argument for illustration:

The Japanese believed their emperor to be the Son of God. Christians also believe in the Son of God.

That way of saying things imply that Christians believe in the Japanese emperor. That, of course is not true. Now consider Morey's argument:

The South Arabians believed that the Moon-god had daughters. The pagan Arabs of Mecca also believed that Allâh had daughters.

Morey implies that Allâh was therefore the Moon-god. But this is no more true than to say that Christians believe in the Japanese emperor.

Morey should know better than to commit such a fallacy. As a teacher of a course on logic, he should be trained in spotting such fallacies rather than committing them. But Morey's misuse of this knowledge reminds us that good knowledge can also be used for evil purposes.


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False Evidence

On page 7, Morey writes:

In the 1940s, the archeologists G.Caton Thompson and Carleton S Coon made some amazing discoveries in Arabia (Morey p.7).

On page 9 we discover he meant "southern Arabia" but we have already dealt with this discrepancy.

What is important here is that these "amazing discoveries" are revealed by G. Caton Thompson in her 1944 book The Tombs and Moon Temple of Hureidha. What did she reveal? Here is one thing, according to Mr.Morey:

An idol which may be the Moon-god himself was also discovered (see Diagram #6); (Morey, pp.9-10 emphasis added).

Here he says only that the idol "may be the Moon-god himself." But he proudly labelled Diagram #6:

An idol of the Moon-god (Morey, p.10).

Although Morey knows, according to his own words, that it is not certain that this idol was the Moon-god, yet he is prepared to label it as though it was for sure. There is no excuse for such carelessness.

But I suspect a further discrepancy. I did not have occasion to read G.Caton Thompson's 1944 book, but her companion archeologist Carleton S. Coon wrote in 1945 his treatise Southern Arabia, A Problem for the Future. Morey is aware of this writing, for he quoted from it several times.

The discrepancy is that what Morey leads us to expect in Thompson's book is denied in Coon's treatise! Morey showed us a picture of a woman-like idol and claims that this may be the Moon-god himself which was discovered by Coon and Thompson and revealed in Thompson's book.

Coon's treatise says no such thing was discovered! About the three astral deities of South Arabia, the Sun, the Moon, and the Star Venus, Coon writes:

There were no carved images of these three-the Semitic tabu against graven images, while by no means generally applicable, was in force in regard to the divinities themselves. What images we do find are of people. (Coon, p.399).

According to Coon, then, they found no graven images of gods but only of people. Then Morey shows us the graven image of a woman and tells us this may be the Moon-god himself (Morey, p.10).

So either Coon or Morey is wrong here. And I don't think it is Coon. He was there when he and Thompson made those amazing discoveries, so he ought to know what he discovered.

I do not know where this leaves Thompson because, as I have said, I did not read her book. But it is rather odd that she would write something in her book and then her partner writing a year later would contradict her like that.

Or, perhaps Morey does not mean to imply that either Coon or Thompson claimed any such thing. Perhaps it is only his words that mislead, not his intention. After saying that this idol may have been the Moon-god himself, Morey claimed:

This was later confirmed by other wellknown archaelogists (Morey, p.10).

If "confirmed" here does not mean what it says, Morey should have used some other word we can hold him to.

What is important, though, and for this I give him credit, is his reference in a footnote to three of these "well-known archaelogists." My concern for the moment is not whether or not they are "well-known" but my concern is to know what exactly they said about this idol. A direct quote please? I have developed a liking for checking such quotes.

I find it rather interesting that when Morey refers to the idol later he says:

Now we have the actual idols of the Moon-god... (Morey, p.14 emphasis added).

What may have been is now actual, and it has multipled: now "idols"! Is Morey never satisfied adding to his cup of sins?

Read Part 4