In article <4gt857$n6t@shellx.best.com>, falcon@torfree.net (Nabil M. El-Khodari) writes:

The Holy Qur'an tells us that God had created the earth ovoid in shape (which is the nearest description according to recent scientific evidence, and not like a ball). This is one of the great takes of those attacking religion in general and Christianity in particular.

Well, if you take a perfect ball and your normal egg, then the earth is much nearer in shape to the perfect ball than to the egg. Yes, the actual shape of the earth is a little flattened at the poles, but this flattening is very very minor. I don't know the actual percentage it is deviating from the perfect ball, maybe a geologist / cartography specialist can help us, but it is nearly negligable.

I am not sure what sort of eggs the hens in your country are laying, but over here, it is rather far from the shape of a ball that is a bit flattened at two antipodal ends. Since you probably want to maintain the circular shape of the earth around the equator, you would have to set it on the table the "ball shaped" end at the bottom and the peak end at the top. But then, you have the problem that the North pole is not flattened but instead bulging outwards further than what the perfect ball would be. So, instead of being LESS than the ball shape the egg is MORE than the ball shape and the error in comparison to the real shape of the earth is much worse in the egg than in the ball.

In article <4rq5er$ah9@shellx.best.com>, "Arthur Bulul" <abulul@flexnet.com> 
writes:

> "He (God) made the earth egg-shaped" 79:30.

The earth is not egg-shaped.  The moon is not egg-shaped.

If you were an astronaut on the moon, the earth would appear round like
a marble ... with a "little ... and I mean little"  depression at the
poles.  Next time you look at an egg, take a look at the "huge" depression 
at its poles when compared to its left and right ends.

Are there any Islamic scientists out there?

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as-salamu 'alaykum.

This nonsense about "egg-shaped" crops up from time to time. An egg
has an equator which is smaller than that of a sphere with the same
polar radius. This is opposite to the situation with the earth, where
the equator is *very slightly* larger than that of a corresponding
sphere.

An egg is more or less a prolate spheroid, and the difference between
it and a sphere is quite obvious visually. The earth is quite
spherical, but, if one must be more precise, it is an oblate spheroid.
It is not egg-shaped, no matter how one slices it.

AbdulraHman Lomax

Qur'an and Science
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