who allow it in the past just as they allow it in the future, while others allow it in the future but not in the past.

The weakness of the arguments purporting to establish its impossibility is already known.”

He also says to him:

“You know with certainty that the predecessors’ belief in the Messenger, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was not founded on these arguments. Thus, knowledge of the Messenger’s truthfulness does not depend on them; neither does my own knowledge of his truthfulness, nor my knowledge of the Maker, Exalted is He.

“These methods and others like them are not the rational methods to which the Quran points and guides us. Those methods are rationally sound, and no rational person can dispute them. The coming into being of things is observable and known through the senses, while the fact that whatever comes into being requires something to bring it into being is self-evident to reason. Indeed, sound reason recognizes that everything known to have come into being requires something to bring it into being, just as it recognizes that things that come into being, considered as a class, require something to bring them into being. Thus, particular entities existing in external reality are known, as is the universal proposition encompassing them, along with all the other signs in this regard that lead to knowledge of the Maker—glory be to Him—as has been explained at length in the appropriate place.”