He said:

“These, then, are the doctrines. It is for you to weigh them with your reason, not your desires.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s commentary]

This is his statement in full. In this discussion, he has presented the position of the Mu'tazilah and similar speculative theologians, alongside his own position and that of philosophers like him. He has presented the Mu'tazilah’s familiar argument—the argument from accidents, founded on ruling out an infinite succession of events—and his own argument that singling out one state rather than another for action requires a determining factor. If the states are equal, no determining factor can exist; consequently, there can be no singling out, and hence no coming into being of the kind they describe.

This argument draws its substance from what is sound in the Mu'tazilah’s reasoning, for he adopted their principle that singling out one time rather than another requires a determining factor.

They used this principle to establish the Maker, while he used it to establish the Necessary Existent. However, he transferred its application to the contingent being, which has no existence of its own: singling it out for existence rather than nonexistence, or for nonexistence rather than existence, is like singling out one time rather than another for its coming into being.

It is thus clear that this argument draws its substance from the reasoning of the Mu'tazilah and the philosophers