who has bestowed His favor upon His servants by sending His messengers, concluding their succession with their foremost member, Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him. He sent him with guidance and the religion of truth, to make it prevail over all religion, even though the polytheists dislike it. Only someone who knows the Sender can recognize the messenger. You have already acquired knowledge of Him, blessed and exalted, through what is contained in al-Misbāh (The Lamp) and other works. The noblest, greatest, clearest, and most evident proofs are those in the Quran to which Allah has drawn attention and which He has placed within the minds of rational people. One should therefore attend to them, continually examine them, persist in reflecting upon Allah’s signs, and draw lessons through transmitted knowledge and reflection; thereby knowledge is attained.”

Al-Ashʿarī likewise spoke in his well-known book al-Lumaʿ (The Gleams), where he discussed the creation of the human being and used it to demonstrate the existence of the Creator, exalted is He.

We have already quoted his words and discussed both his account and al-Qādī Abū Bakr’s commentary on it, explaining that his account is better. Yet he treated the human being as something whose constituent substances are proven to be created because they are never devoid of newly occurring events. This rests on the premise that what is observably brought into being consists only of accidents, such as combination and composition, and that this is what is meant by creation—a premise based on affirming the existence of the indivisible atom.

Although this reasoning is weak, and most Muslim scholars dispute it,

[Al-Bāqillānī’s discussion in his commentary on al-Lumaʿ]

the point is that he inferred the existence of the Creator from creation.

Al-Qādī Abū Bakr said:

“Then Abū al-Hasan, reinforcing what he had said about the human being’s coming into existence and the coming into existence of his form