this that all temporal events came into being without an originator. That is more serious than their coming into being without a newly arising cause. This has been discussed at length elsewhere.

As for what the judge related from Thumāma, it is an implication of his position. Likewise, when the Basran Mu'tazila said, “A will arises without inhering in a substrate, [without] a will,” their critics argued that this committed them to holding that all temporal events arise without a will. He denies that they have an agent acting by will, not that there is a cause necessitating their occurrence. Nevertheless, they acknowledge that temporal events must have an agent acting by choice. Yet an implication of a doctrine is not itself a doctrine held by its adherents. Not everyone who states a position accepts its implications, whose invalidity he has explicitly acknowledged. Indeed, rational people may agree on a premise even though some contradict themselves regarding its implications.

Thus, the objections raised against the assertion that a newly arising specification must have an originator who specifies it, or that something contingent must have a determining factor, are greater than those raised against the assertion that whatever comes into being must have an originator.

[Al-Rāzī’s discussion in Nihāyat al-'uqūl concerning the question of establishing Allah’s existence]

The contradictions entailed by those people’s positions are more numerous.

For this reason, in discussing a method of establishing the Maker’s existence, Abū 'Abd Allāh al-Rāzī raised questions to which he gave no sound answers. For he bases all the methods he presents on the premise that whatever is contingent