rests on these three premises. Unless all three are established, your argument fails. How much more so if one of them is shown to be false—and more still if all three are shown to be false.

This will be explained under each point.

[The First Point]

As for the first point, the proponents of affirmation say that they know self-evidently that two beings cannot exist with neither permeating the other nor being spatially separate from it, and that no self-subsisting being can exist that cannot be physically pointed to.

Indeed, they may say that their knowledge that Allah is above the world is self-evident and innate; that whenever people face hardship or some pressing need, they turn their hearts towards Allah, calling upon Him and asking of Him; and that this is common to all nations whose innate disposition has not been altered, without their having arrived at it through collusion or agreement.

Hence this is found in the innate disposition of Bedouins, elderly women, and children—among Muslims, Jews, Christians, and polytheists—as well as those who have never read a book or received such teaching from any teacher or instructor.

Authors addressing this subject—scholastic theologians, hadith scholars, and others—have continually mentioned this much.

They said:

If this is something these people acknowledge as established in their knowledge, despite not having colluded, then they are speaking truthfully. For a large number of people cannot lie without collusion. It is through reasoning of this kind that the truth of reports transmitted by numerous independent witnesses is known concerning matters known through sensory perception and self-evident knowledge. If a person's report does not correspond to reality, he is either deliberately lying or mistaken. Under ordinary circumstances, a large number of people cannot deliberately lie without collusion, and error on the part of a large number of people is impossible in