As for the claim that whatever has an essential nature, an attribute, or a magnitude is, merely by virtue of that, like anything else that has an essential nature, an attribute, or a magnitude, this is false according to both reason and revelation. Neither in Arabic nor in other languages is the word “like” applied on such a basis. Otherwise, every bearer of attributes would have to be like every other bearer of attributes, everything with an essential nature like everything else with an essential nature, and everything with a magnitude like everything else with a magnitude. This would entail that every existing thing is like every other existing thing.
Besides being utterly unsound and contradictory, this is something no rational person would maintain. It entails likeness among all things, leaving no two things that differ without being alike. It would then follow that the Lord is like everything, so that likeness between Him and anything whatsoever could not be denied. This contradicts revelation and reason. Thus, their position, ostensibly denying likeness to Him, actually entails affirming that everything is like Him. They are therefore self-contradictory and opposed to both revelation and reason.
[Fourth]
The fourth response:
One may say: Grant that some of these texts may be understood to convey one of the premises of your argument. That premise is necessarily sufficient in the judgment of rational people. Rather, it must be supplemented with another premise or further premises for which the Quran provides absolutely no indication. If it is supposed that setting is motion, where in the Quran is there any clear indication that everything moving is originated in time or contingent? Or that motion can inhere only in something originated in time or contingent? Or that whatever temporal occurrences inhere in has never been free of them? Or that whatever is never free of temporal occurrences is itself originated in time? And where in the Quran is it stated that temporal occurrences without a beginning are impossible?
Indeed, where in the Quran is it stated that a body, in the technical sense, is composed of indivisible atoms, or of matter and form, and that every body is divisible rather than one?