As the world celebrated Easter and spring, two of the world’s major religions discovered they have been praying in the wrong directions. Some 200 mosques in Islam’s holiest city, Mecca, point in the wrong direction for prayers.All mosques have a niche pointing in the direction of the Kaaba, an ancient, sacred building in Mecca. But people looking down from recently erected buildings were astonished to find many niches do not point exactly at the Kaaba. Though this may seem like a minor issue, many Muslims were afraid their prayers would be deemed invalid because of these mistakes. People demanded the government correct the wrongly aligned mosques and possibly realign them using laser beams for accurate measurement. But the government’s cool stance on these recent detections is reassuring.”There are no major errors, but corrections have been made for some old mosques, thanks to modern techniques,” said Tawfik al-Sudairy, Islamic affairs ministry deputy secretary. He extinguished anxieties by deeming “in any case, it does not affect the prayers.” The mosques’ incorrect alignment doesn’t make a difference. People’s prayer, despite the direction, is what’s more important. As this event showed, people’s beliefs are no longer associated with facts. Similarly, as many Jews, Christians and Muslims walked the Via Dolorosa, or the Way of Suffering, to retrace the steps of Jesus Christ to the place of his crucifixion on Good Friday, an Israeli archaeologist Shimon Gibson theorized they were following the wrong route, CNN reported April 10. Gibson argued he has found the true place of Christ’s trial and the real route to his crucifixion.The Gospel of John describes Jesus’ trial taking place at Lithostratus, Greek for pavement and Gabata, a word for ancient hillock. Gibson followed these observations and noted the trial actually took place in an area outside the current Western Wall of Jerusalem.If the trial is in a different area than the accepted area, then the traditional Via Dolorosa is wrong as well, Gibson argued. The correct route starts in a parking lot in the Armenian Quarter and heads toward the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus was crucified. Christians may worry these findings dispute Biblical statements, but in actuality, they only change the accepted geography of critical chapters in the New Testament.  Regardless of these new findings, Christians, Jews and Muslims walked the traditional Via Dolorosa and celebrated Good Friday. One Evangelical Lutheran Minister claimed proudly, “For me, the Via Dolorosa is this one.” Both discoveries show tradition binds faith with people. Neither the discovery of wrong alignment nor archaeological excavations were able to dispute faith because most people have learned to dissociate faith from fact in the 21st century.Facts are indisputable, historically or scientifically proved or theorized statements, whereas faith is based on the blind seduction of love and hope. Whether a person chooses to allow facts to effect faith or vice versa is a personal choice. Most doctors are religious but still believe in scientific theories such as Charles Darwin’s evolutionism, whereas pious religious authorities reject the same scientific theories.People have discovered facts and faith can coexist symbiotically. Dini Parayitam is an 18-year-old biochemistry freshman from Lake Charles. —-Contact Travis Andrews at [email protected]