Should some people need to dispel the sophistical doubts that have beset them, this would be one of those rare maladies that do not afflict most rational people. Treating it does not require a Book sent down from heaven whose purpose is to guide humankind and explain what they need to set their affairs right.

Were such matters mentioned in the Quran, there would be no end to them, for misguided thoughts are endless and have no fixed bounds. People’s time would then be wasted reading and listening to things that benefit few of them, distracting them from what they cannot do without and what alone can set their affairs right.

We had no need of such methods to believe in Allah and His Messenger. We discussed them only because those who followed them used their implications to oppose the words of Allah and His Messenger, claiming to possess rational proofs that contradicted what the messengers had brought. We therefore exposed the true nature of the methods they put forward, to show that any of them that contradict the scriptural texts can only be false.

As for those that do not contradict the scriptural texts, they may be true or false. Even those that are true and do not contradict the texts may be unnecessary, since the rational methods to which the texts point and guide us suffice in their place. Indeed, those methods