In sum, that which is beginningless cannot cease to exist. For the same reason, a beginningless thing cannot have been moving from eternity because of the nonexistence of its own essence or of a beginningless attribute.

Only two possibilities therefore remain:

The first is that it has been as it is from eternity by virtue of its own essence or of a beginningless attribute.

If it has been at rest from eternity by virtue of its own essence, it cannot move after having been at rest, since its essence exists in both states. A thing cannot lose an attribute that belongs to it by virtue of its own essence while that essence, by which it possesses the attribute, continues to exist.

If it has been at rest from eternity because of a beginningless attribute, it cannot move unless its beginningless rest ceases to exist; otherwise, it would necessarily be moving and at rest simultaneously.

Since this is impossible, since its rest cannot cease to exist if it is beginningless, and since that which is beginningless cannot depart from the attribute it has possessed from eternity, it cannot—for the reasons we have explained—be subject to any transformation or change, operation or influence. Thus, what our shaykh Abū al-Hasan said is established from this standpoint.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s Commentary]

I say:

Someone might object: The substance of this argument is that whatever establishes that the sperm-drop came into existence also establishes that all other bodies came into existence, and that anyone who denies that all other bodies came into existence can likewise deny that the sperm-drop came into existence.

But that is not so. Rather, the coming into existence of animals, plants, minerals, and the like, and the coming into existence of their earliest stages—such as the sperm-drop, the egg, the young shoot, and the like—is directly witnessed and known through sense perception and self-evident knowledge,