al-Qādī Abū Bakr, in a response he presented in keeping with his own principles.

Al-Qādī Abū Bakr said:

“Know that he used the examples of cotton and milk only because their significance is clear to ordinary people and the learned alike. They all regard as ignorant anyone who allows that structures could be assembled, bricks and earth brought together, and manufactured objects given shape without anyone to make or arrange them. Were you to approach anyone whose senses were sound and whose reason was intact and ask him whether the various well-ordered things he mentioned could exist without a maker, knowing that they had not previously been so, he would reject this and consider anyone who asserted it ignorant. This is because the proofs of its falsity have already become established in the minds of ordinary people and the learned alike, even though ordinary people cannot express themselves as the learned do, with the terminology of speculative theologians and the formulations of those who reason by inference, as when they say: ‘You have never found writing except from a writer, striking except from someone who strikes, or a building except from a builder. Striking without anyone who strikes, or a building without a builder, is as impossible as someone who strikes without any act of striking, or a builder without anything built.’ This meaning has become established in their minds, even if they cannot articulate it. It has come to stand alongside self-evident knowledge, and anyone who disputes it is regarded by all of them as someone who disputes what is perceived through the senses.”

He said:

“To sum up this matter, we do not claim—nor does the author of