the evidence demonstrates its falsity.

Hence the unsoundness of their argument, as pointed out by Ibn Rushd, is all the more evident. Ibn Rushd said:

“Then, if what has a cause is divided into the contingent and the necessary, and we understand ‘contingent’ to mean the genuinely contingent, this leads to a necessary contingent being, not to a necessary being without a cause. If, however, we understand ‘contingent’ to mean that which has a cause and is necessary, nothing follows except that whatever has a cause has a cause. We may then suppose that this cause itself has a cause, and that this continues indefinitely.

“This does not lead to an existent without a cause—which is what they mean by the Necessary Existent—unless what is meant by the contingent, which he sets in contrast to what has no cause, is the genuinely contingent. For it is in the case of these contingent beings that an infinite regress of causes is impossible.”

Ibn Rushd has thus explained that if existence is divided into what has a cause and what has no cause, and what has a cause is then divided into the contingent and the necessary, then, if by ‘contingent’ he means the genuinely contingent—namely, that which comes into being—while having defined the contingent as whatever has a cause, this leads to what has a cause. This is then divided into the necessarily contingent—which is eternal—and the genuinely contingent—which comes into being.

This does not establish a necessary being without a cause, namely, the Necessary Existent. Merely dividing existence into two categories does not entail that both categories exist; rather, evidence is needed to establish the existence of both,