Talk:The Quran and Mountains

IbnPinker (talk | contribs) asmith (talk | contribs) Exmoose (talk | contribs)

(1) There is a reference that is missing in all English articles and I wonder why it has not been added. It is about Arabs that even before Muhammad, they believed that Mountains are the pegs. We have it in our Urdu article, and it is very effective and Muslim claim (i.e. it's Quran miracle to tell that Mountains are the pegs) end with this single reference.

(2) And then there are two big scientific mistakes regarding the creation of mountains in Quran. Again I wonder why English articles don't mention them. These scientific mistakes of Quran immediately bring Muslims on the backfoot.

English article is very lengthy with long scientific discussions about Isostasy etc. (i.e. such long modern scientific discussions are neither interesting nor suitable for normal readers). But in Urdu we had a very short article regarding mountains (with absolutely no modern scientific discussions about Isostasy etc) and I noted that it was very effective despite being very short.

Thanks for your edits and on the other article. I'll let IbnPinker work out how to integrate your edits here as he recently rewrote the introduction and a few other parts. We have a format standard whereby there should be an introductory paragraph or two. Before making extensive edits I also recommend reading https://wikiislam.net/wiki/WikiIslam:Message_to_New_Users and the pages linked therein. For example, if you drill down you'll find the page which explains how to cite hadiths using the templates, use quote blocks etc. https://wikiislam.net/wiki/WikiIslam:Source_Editing#Referencing_Hadith

Regarding the added content, the History of Yaqubi point is too dubious because if you click the source and see the next few lines of the poem, it contains a prophecy about the coming of Muhammad, and therefore the poem is actually post Islamic. If that's on the Urdu page, I think it should be removed from there too.

I also think the whole day like 1000 years section should be avoided. Muslims would just point to the other verse 70:4 which says a day is like 50,000 years to show the number is not fixed/literal. It's a strong enough point just that the mountains were made during four "days", or periods of the creation process (traditionally this is understood as the first four days, but it's unclear), yet we know that mountains continue to form to this day as it is an ongoing process. Hadiths can only be supplementary but not able to prove an error in the Quran, and tafsirs are even weaker again for this purpose (though sometimes of interest to show what Muslims believed).

Regarding the bullet points, as mentioned above it's not clear from the Quran itself when the four days in which mountains were formed are supposed to occur (probably the first four but it's unclear). Also, I don't think it's accurate that Earth took billions of years to solidify. The sun formed about 5 billion years ago and the Earth solidified quite quickly after its formation 4.5 billion years ago. Life began within 500 million years of that. I think for this reason it's better to remove or revise most of those five bullet points and to not be too reliant on the hadiths for the argument (they just add extra strength but it needs to stand without them).

I think it's true though that there is a need for better structuring and making it a bit more concise. The apologetic claims with mountains in the Quran are 1) The claim that they are like pegs in structure or function, and 2) that they stabilise the earth which comes in two flavours, a) the claim that they reduce earthquakes or b) the isostasy claim. As you've mentioned, these in fact are both scientific errors when properly analysed. Then there are in addition the other errors about mountains being cast down, and it's an ongoing process etc. where you made use of the scientific errors page. I'm not sure whether that should come first or after the other stuff but it needs to be well organized.

One other missing point that could be added in terms of the function of pegs issue is that pegs fasten one thing to another. While not obvious to some people from the images, it's worth pointing out that the mountains are part of the crust (not separate material like a peg) and they just go deeper into the mantel, which is molten and not a solid mass to which the mountains are fastening anything.Lightyears (talk) 03:19, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

The idea of Mountains being Pegs had already existed among the Arabs before Muhammad

The idea of mountains being pegs even existed among the Arabs before Muhammad. For example, Ka’ab was one of the ancestor of Muhammad. This Ka’ab also declared mountains to be pegs long before Muhammad.

The critics point out that the writer of Qur'an only recorded this old concept in Quran, thus it could be in no way a miracle of Qur'an.

Scientific mistakes in Quran regarding the creation of mountains

According to the critics, the writer of Quran made two scientific mistakes regarding the creation of mountains.

First: Mountains were put "from above" on the earth

The Arabic words "من فوقها" mean "from above".

Critics point out that Mountains are formed through the movement and collision of lithospheric (tectonic) plates. The Quran, by contrast, states that the mountains on Earth's surface were put upon it from above by Allah, which is a scientific mistake of Quran.

Second: Allah had already made the mountains on the day of Sunday at time of the creation of the universe

Critics point out that according to the modern science^[1][2]:

• Mountains were not created on Sunday at the time of creation of the earth and the heavens.
• But earth initially consisted of gases only. It took billions of years to come into solid form. And even after earth came into solid state, still it took billions of years more in the formation of mountains.
• And older mountains disappear with time, and new mountains start forming.
• There existed no Mount Everest 250 million years ago. Today it is the highest mountain. It will keep on gaining even more height, but then a time will come, when it will disappear completely.

Not only Hadith, but Quran itself claims that Allah had already created the mountains during the creation of the earth and the heavens.

References

Kamranlashari (talk) 23:56, 20 June 2021 (UTC)