As for the philosophers, they held the world to be eternal, yet also affirmed that it has a Maker.”

He said:

“This doctrine is self-contradictory in its very formulation and requires no refutation.”

[Ibn Rushd’s response to al-Ghazālī in The Incoherence of the Incoherence]

Ibn Rushd the Younger said:

“Rather, the philosophers’ doctrine is more readily intelligible from observable experience than either of the other two doctrines. For we find two kinds of agents.

“One produces an effect upon which it acts while that effect is coming into being. Once this process is complete, the effect no longer needs the agent, as a house no longer needs its builder.

“The second produces only an action that operates upon an effect, which has no existence unless that action operates upon it. What distinguishes this agent is that its action is coextensive with the existence of that effect. I mean that if the action does not exist, neither does the effect; if the action exists, so does the effect: the two exist together. This agent is nobler