Thus, those who affirm the indivisible atom say:

“A body is never devoid of the four states: conjunction, separation, motion, and rest.”

Those who do not affirm it do not regard conjunction as an accident additional to the body’s essence.

Many groups among the speculative theologians and philosophers deny the indivisible atom, including the Hishāmiyya, Najjāriyya, Dirāriyya, Kullābiyya, and many of the Karrāmiyya.

As for the claim that denying it is the position of heretics, and that maintaining that bodies are not alike, and similar views, are likewise heretical positions, this is something asserted by speculative theologians such as the author of al-Irshād and others like him. They suppose that the argument they employed to establish the world’s existence is the foundation of religion, and therefore that anything which invalidates this argument can only be a position held by heretics.

Those who do not maintain that a body necessarily has every kind of accident say that it necessarily has some of them, such as these states, or motion and rest, and that these are temporally originated.

This is the method followed by most of the Muʿtazila and by others who may sometimes agree with them on certain matters, such as Abū al-Wafāʾ ibn ʿAqīl and others.

Then, after establishing that a body necessarily has accidents, or some accidents, and that those it necessarily has—or some of them—are temporally originated, they needed to say:

“Whatever does not precede temporally originated events is itself temporally originated.”

Some considered this sufficient, supposing it to be self-evident. Others recognized that it required disproving a beginningless succession of temporally originated events, since one could say:

“What comes into existence after not existing is each individual instance of these events; the kind, however, has always existed.”

At this point, they discussed disproving the existence of what is infinite through point-by-point matching, parallel comparison, and alignment.