bodies—does not depend on knowing that they are composed in this manner, a question that has exhausted the minds of these intelligent thinkers.
The third argument:
It may be said: The coming into existence of fruits, crops, animals, and other things whose coming into existence is witnessed is directly observable. When a person considers the wood of a tree, the blossoms and fruits Allah brings forth from it, the crops He brings forth from the earth, and the animals He brings forth from semen and eggs, he becomes certain that these individual entities have come into existence.
If he is told:
“This has not come into existence; rather, its parts were scattered and then came together, and it was given an attribute different from its previous attribute,”
he replies:
“As for things whose attributes change—something white becoming black, something stationary beginning to move, something sour becoming sweet, scattered things coming together, or a body changing from one shape to another, as when a candle, silver, or something similar changes from one form to another—in all these cases and others like them, one observes that the entity itself remains. Only its attributes have changed: motion and rest, combination and separation, colours, tastes, and shapes.
“This is unlike the fruit that emerges from a tree, the fetus that emerges from its mother’s womb, or the chick that emerges from an egg, for