The Quran Verse
Surah 31:10:
He created the heavens without pillars that you see and has cast into the earth firmly set mountains, lest it should shift with you...
The Scientific Critique:
This verse repeats a common Quranic claim: that mountains act like "pegs" or anchors to keep the Earth from shaking or shifting.
Geological Reality:
Modern Plate Tectonics shows that mountains are actually the result of shifting plates (collision zones). Far from preventing "shifting," mountains are located in the most seismically active and unstable regions on Earth.
The Quranic view reflects a 7th-century layman's intuition—that something big and heavy must hold the ground down. However, the theory of Isostasy does not support the idea of mountains preventing the Earth’s crust from "shifting" or vibrating.