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Mountains have deep roots thus they resemble ‘pegs’

The above schematic diagram is taken from "Anatomy of the Earth", Cailleux, p. 220, and is cited by various Islamist sites.

On the ‘surface’ it would seem they have a point here. Verse 78:6-7 says, “Have We not made the earth as a wide expanse, And the mountains as pegs?”, --Turner chris1 12:10, 2 October 2011 (PDT) and that certainly looks like a peg under the Alps doesn't it?

Islamists point to the fact of isostacy where the bulk of the mountain extends into the upper mantle as proof that Muhammad couldn’t have known that mountains were ‘pegs’ staking the crust to the upper mantle unless Allah told him.

Sounds convincing? Herein lies the genius of the Qur'an – to make definitions so vague as to provide the Islamists sufficient ‘wriggle room’.

Rebuttal

--Turner chris1 12:10, 2 October 2011 (PDT) The same few diagrams are trotted out endlessly in support of this argument and at a superficial level they may appear convincing. A close examination of them and the accomplying text, (something which it is clear 99% of muslims using these diagrams have never done) tells a different story.

Taking the Cailleux diagram first. This is actually a small part of a larger diagram covering two pages, showing cross sections across several continents. Here is the full top half of these pages which shows europe, asia and North America.

Note the lack of any "peg" or root for North America. Also note the description for these diagrams which is expanded here, particularly vertical scale greatly exaggerated. (suggest para this is deleted)What these Islamists do not provide you with is the accompanying description given directly above the schematic diagram, pointing out that the vertical scale has been greatly exaggerated.

If the vertical and horizontal scales were made equal (the distance from Great Britain to Japan is thousands of miles)the idea, discussed below that the roots of the Alps, Pamirs etc., somehow "stabilise" the euro-asian continent becomes simply ludicrous.

Another endlessly used diagram comes from "Earth", Press and Siever, P413.

This is simply a schematic diagram of a hypothetical continent simply showing that continents tend to be thicker under mountains. But it is claimed that this is an example of a peg! Such is the power of faith.

The following pictures from the same Islamist sites resemble ‘very blunt’ pegs. In fact, they resemble pegs only with imagination.

The observation here is that Islamists equate ‘deep mountain roots’ with ‘pegs’. There are several difficulties with this interpretation in that not all mountains have peg-like roots. An analysis of mountain formation reveals the fact that not all mountains have peg-like roots, for example volcanoes; those formed by extension and faulting (e.g. the Nevada Basin and Range); thrust and fold belts (e.g. Appalachians, Eastern Bolivian Andes, Zagros Mountain, the Calcareous Alps). A cross-section of the collisional Himalayas reveals a broad ‘wedge’ rather than Cailleux’s schematic ‘peg’ diagram, as do the Pyrenees.

The diagram below is a true scale cross section of the Andes mountain range. The mountains and their “roots” (which do not resemble “pegs” in the slightest) are in yellow.