and His wisdom and mercy, and have denied their existence altogether. They claim that none of this involves bringing any entity into being or creating anything self-subsisting, but merely producing accidents—and any one of us can produce some accidents. Thus they reduced all this to the mere production of accidents and attributes.

Then they sought to establish that He brings all entities into being by asserting the existence of discrete substances that have no reality, and by asserting a likeness among differing entities that has no reality.

Then they sought to establish that these substances came into existence merely because accidents or motions subsist in them. Yet this is among the things least capable of proving what they seek to establish. They therefore needed those false premises through which they contradicted the understanding of rational people and denied the accounts brought by the Messengers. They also needed to deny the reality of the Lord after denying the reality of His creatures. Ultimately, they either denied His attributes as well or affirmed attributes with no subject possessing them, just as they affirmed nothing of His signs except the attributes that arise in things.

Anyone who ponders and reflects upon all this will see that the Quran’s exposition of the Lord’s signs and the proofs of His oneness and attributes is the truth, known through clear reason. These people have opposed the Quran concerning the fundamentals of religion, both in the proofs for its doctrines and in the doctrines themselves. In doing so, they have contradicted the Quran and faith, as well as clear human reason. In the propositions they put forward to the contrary, they have been guilty of falsehood and fabrication, even if they did not deliberately lie; rather, they were confused by the nonsense they themselves invented.