your fellow philosophers for refuting this, since, according to you, the celestial sphere is an eternal body, and it is composite in this sense of the term.

As for your statement, “Although the philosophers allow eternal accidents, they do not consider it possible for something to be eternal in itself ن, because composition is a condition of its existence. Nor can the parts themselves bring about the composition, since composition is a condition of their existence.”

The response is: If composition is a condition of the parts’ existence ن and the parts are a condition of the existence of composition, neither brings the other into being. Rather, if both require an agent, the agent that brings the parts into being also brings about their composition. If neither requires an agent, neither depends on one 0. The discussion assumes that the composite is eternal, with its composition intrinsic to it 0. When you say that it is “composed in and of itself,” you do not mean that its parts brought about the composition. You mean only that the parts themselves are mutually inseparable and need nothing beyond themselves.

[The fifth point]

One may say: You have acknowledged that Ibn Sīnā’s method is unsound and does not establish that every composite must have an agent external to it.

What you have said about Ibn Sīnā’s method applies with even greater force to your own. Nothing in what you have presented establishes that every composite must have an agent external to it, except what you have inferred from the word “composite.” This is a deception whose nature has already been made clear.