rational speculation until they treated what is in fact irrational as though it were the product of reason, placing it above sense perception and above the explicit texts of the Messenger.
A second faction took the opposite course: they turned away from reason, rejected clear rational judgments, and preferred over them what they imagined to be scriptural and empirical proofs.
Thus, in matters of revelation, people divide into two types, and in matters of both inward and outward sense perception they likewise divide into two types.
It must therefore be known that truth never refutes itself; rather, every part of it confirms every other part.
Falsehood, on the other hand, is disparate and self-contradictory, as the Exalted says concerning those who oppose the messengers:

“By the sky with its woven pathways! You are certainly in contradictory speech; only the one who is deluded is turned away from it.” ⦗51:7⦘

Whatever is known by clear reason is never countered—neither by an authentic report nor by sound sense experience.
Likewise, whatever is established by sound revelation is not opposed by either reason or sense perception.
And whatever is verified by reliable sense perception is not contradicted by report or by rational proof.
The discussion here concerns those who set revealed texts or sensory data against rational evidence.
Accordingly, we say: the term “rational” refers to the self-evident rational knowledge that people recognize by the innate disposition on which they were created, without any need to receive it from one another,