Quranic exegesis: A Scientific Letdown

Hailstones form when raindrops are carried upward by ascending thunderstorms into very cold regions of the atmosphere and freeze. The hailstones then grow by colliding with liquid water droplets that freeze on the surface of the hailstone. If the water freezes instantly on impact with the hailstone, cloudy ice will form as air bubbles will be trapped in the newly formed ice. However, if the water freezes slowly, air bubbles can escape and the new ice will be clear. A hail falls when an updraft thunderstorm can no longer support the weight of a hailstone, which can happen if the hailstone becomes large enough´-or-the updraft weakens.
Hailstones can contain layers of clear and cloudy ice if the hailstone encounters different temperatures and liquid water content conditions in the thunderstorm. The conditions a hailstone experiences can change as it passes horizontally through´-or-near an updraft. However, layers do not occur simply because hailstones go through up and down cycles within a thunderstorm. The winds inside a thunderstorm aren t just up and down-;- Horizontal winds exist either from a rotating updraft, as in supercell thunderstorms,´-or-from the horizontal winds of the surrounding environment. Hailstones also do not grow from their height to the top of a thunderstorm. At very high altitudes, the air is cold enough (below -40 degrees Fahrenheit) that all liquid water freezes into ice, and hailstones need liquid water to grow to an appreciable size.
In the Quran, Surah Nur we find the following:

Do you not see that Allah gently drives the clouds, then joins them together, piling them up into masses, from which you see raindrops come forth? And He sends down from the sky mountains ˹-;-of clouds˺-;- loaded with hail, pouring it on whoever He wills and averting it from whoever He wills. NUR (43)
أَلَمْ تَرَ أَنَّ اللَّهَ يُزْجِي سَحَابًا ثُمَّ يُؤَلِّفُ بَيْنَهُ ثُمَّ يَجْعَلُهُ رُكَامًا فَتَرَى الْوَدْقَ يَخْرُجُ مِنْ خِلالِهِ وَيُنَزِّلُ مِنَ السَّمَاء مِن جِبَالٍ فِيهَا مِن بَرَدٍ فَيُصِيبُ بِهِ مَن يَشَاء وَيَصْرِفُهُ عَن مَّن يَشَاء يَكَادُ سَنَا بَرْقِهِ يَذْهَبُ بِالأَبْصَارِ
(43)
Al-Tabari says that:
Two sayings were said about that: one of them: that it means that God descends from the sky from mountains in the sky from the hail of a creature there is His creation, as if the mountains on this saying are from hail, as it is said: mountains of mud. And the other saying: God descends from the sky as many mountains, and like mountains of hail to the earth, as it is said: I have two houses of straw, and the meaning is as much as two houses of straw, and the two houses are not of straw․-;-
Ibn-Kathir says that:
Some of the grammarians said that it follows the saying of those who commented that the saying: (of mountains in which there is hail) means: that there are mountains of hail in the sky from which God sends down hail. And as for the one who made the mountains here a word for the clouds, the second “from” at this point also refers to the beginning of the goal, but it is a substitute for the first, and God knows best․-;-
These interpretations reveal that the verse speaks of two possibilities. Either there are mountains in the sky that produce hail,´-or-God sends hail in huge amounts compared to the might of the mountains. The ambiguity of the verse indicates that the Qur’an is not as smooth, eloquent, and logical as a Muslim imagines, and the inability to be decisive in the meaning is evidence that the book is not from a all-knowing, wise, and rational Deity․-;- At a time when the book claims that it was revealed in a clear Arabic tongue, the Muslim’s plight remains clear in believing in the differences of the predecessors and the scientific miracles of the successor, which, that is, the latter, is nothing more than reverse inference and betrayal of truth․-;-

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