format_quote Originally Posted by
hemoo
what are you implying to
where did the prophet (peace be upon him) said such a thing to his companions ?
You really don't know what I'm talking about? In that case, I apologise, as I seem to have misjudged what your "good surprise" might be. What is it, BTW?
What I am referring to, and where I thought you were leading was to 79:30 which says, in translation, obviously;
"And the earth, moreover, Hath He made egg shaped".
As I understand it, the arabic word - no doubt an Arabic speaker will correct me if I'm wrong - actually refers to an
ostrich egg which, never having seen one, I understand far more closely resembles an oblate spheroid than other birds' eggs. The verse is therefore interpreted as describing the shape of the earth as an oblate spheroid which is something
the people at the the time could not possibly have known. I had thought, mistakenly obviously, that you were somehow going to apply this to the Sun.
The point I was making in my previous was merely that if people in the Prophet's time believed the earth to be a
sphere (and that
had been suggested many years before Mohammed's birth, and may even have been the prevailing opinion in some places) they would also have compared it to an ostrich egg, there being nothing perfectly spherical (ball bearings, billiard balls, etc, etc) to compare it to. The verse therefore suggests that the author of the verse (which, as a non-muslim I do not believe to be God) 'merely' believed that the earth was round rather than flat, as opposed to being in possession of modern scientific knowledge. However, it's only fair to suggest that you look up the muslim interpretations of this; you are probably likely to find them far more convincing than I do!