the necessary—which is eternal and beginningless—and the contingent—which is originated, having come into existence after not existing—is self-evident to all rational people, including ordinary people.

Their Sufis say that necessary, eternal, beginningless existence is identical to originated existence. There are not two existences here, one necessary and eternal, and the other contingent and originated. These people thus affirm two contradictories together, making one and the same existence eternal and originated, contingent, caused, brought into being, and necessary, yet neither brought into being nor caused.

The others have not established either of the two contradictories; indeed, they are uncertain whether both are false. They have established neither a necessary existent nor even a contingent existent in the sense he defined.

Yet it is well known that what exists is directly witnessed and is either contingent or necessary. Whoever denies both categories, or doubts whether both—or either one—are established, is engaging in sophistry in the extreme. Likewise, whoever does not affirm both categories, but instead makes everything necessary in itself, eternal and beginningless, and denies the existence of originated things, is engaging in sophistry in the extreme.

The discussion of these people is set out at length elsewhere.

The purpose here is only to recount what Ibn Rushd said. Despite his esteem for the philosophers, his excessive veneration of them, and his claim that they had discovered the secrets of the divine sciences, he recognized the unsoundness of the account presented by the foremost of their later thinkers and his followers. Upon examination, that account is better than what Aristotle and his followers presented. If even this is unsound, then theirs is all the more so.