of himself. Whoever is uncertain whether this is possible, or cannot answer a specious objection suggesting its possibility, is plainly ignorant—more ignorant even than those who make the most outrageous, utterly false claims likening Allah to His creation and attributing corporeality to Him. This holds even if we suppose the claims reported from the most extreme among those Jews and others who disparage Allah, such as those who describe Him as weeping, grieving, biting His hand until it bleeds, and suffering from inflammation of the eyes. Glorified and exalted is He, far above what the wrongdoers say.

If, then, we suppose a being whose existence is necessary in itself, yet who is described as having these deficiencies, this would be no more irrational than supposing an agent that does not exist of itself, which has another agent that does not exist of itself, and so on without end. For this amounts to describing all these agents as nonexistent, which is the utmost deficiency. Deficiency ultimately consists in the absence of something; what, then, of the nonexistence of that which is supposed to be the agent responsible for the world?

It thus becomes clear that those who claim to possess rational arguments that contradict revealed teachings are among the furthest removed from what reason requires and entails, just as they are among the furthest removed from following the revealed Book and the Prophet who was sent. Had they used the very objections with which they undermine the proofs of truth that accord with what the Messenger brought to undermine instead what contradicts his message, they would have escaped contradiction, and their reflection, reasoning, and argumentation would have been sound. Their opposition to authentic transmitted evidence and clear rational evidence is through unsound, specious objections.