the truth, there is no fixed limit to such objections, nor any finite number; rather, they depend on whatever occurs to people’s minds.

Thus, as time passed, later thinkers raised sophistical objections that their predecessors had not mentioned. They then added a premise to the proof to counter each objection.

First, they added that a thing that comes into being cannot be assigned one time rather than another without a determining cause. Times are alike, and where things are alike, none can be singled out rather than another without a separate determining cause.

Then they added that this determination is contingent, and that a contingent thing’s existence cannot prevail over its nonexistence, since neither of its two alternatives can prevail over the other without a preponderating cause. They further added that an infinite regress of preponderating causes is impossible, as discussed above. After this, they also added the exclusion of circular causation.

Likewise, Ibn Sīnā did not state in his demonstration that a contingent thing does not derive its existence from itself and must therefore derive it from something else. Al-Rāzī therefore said:

“The truth of our statement, ‘A contingent thing does not derive its existence from itself,’ does not entail the truth of our statement, ‘It derives its existence from something else.’ For between these two alternatives there is an intermediate possibility: that its existence derives from nothing whatsoever, neither from itself nor from anything else. If this is so, the demonstration is not complete unless this possibility is mentioned and refuted, either by claiming that its falsity is self-evident or by presenting a demonstration of its falsity.”

He said, “Yet he did neither of these things.”