Eleventh consideration:

We maintain—beyond any doubt—that Allah is living, all-knowing, all-powerful, and speaks. Muslims possess rational demonstrations for these attributes, demonstrations to which the Messenger pointed and which he taught, so that they are now both intellectually evident and scripturally attested; their detailed exposition is set out elsewhere. You, however, despite professing that you establish these truths through reason, have produced no such rational proof.

Your statement, “When we saw that things come into existence, we knew that something other than them had brought them into being, for they cannot arise from themselves given the opposition and change found within them,” is defective in several respects:

First: You have not observed the origination of all created beings. You have only witnessed the appearance of those phenomena whose coming-to-be is perceptible—clouds, rain, animals, plants, and the like. Where, then, is your evidence for the origination of everything else?

Second: You ought to have said, “When the origination of contingent beings,” or “of created things,” or “of all that is other than Allah,” became known—phrasing that makes clear that whatever is originated is everything apart from Allah. The unrestricted claim that “all things” have come into being is invalid, for Allah is called a “thing” both by you and by the majority of Muslims. This is unlike His—Exalted is He—word:

“Say: Allah is the Creator of all things.” [Quran 13:16]

The very structure of this verse shows that the Creator is other than the created, in contrast to the expression “the origination of things.”