He is told:
‘The proof of this is straightforward and clear: a body can stand in only three relations to originated events. Either it exists before the first of them, it exists alongside them, or it exists after them.

Since it has been disproved that a body can be devoid of originated events and entirely separate from them, only two possibilities remain: either it exists alongside them or it exists after them.

If it exists alongside them, and their existence has a beginning, then it must share their status: its existence must have a beginning, and it must come into being from nonexistence. This necessarily follows because, if it did not precede them, it shares with them the ground for origination.

If it exists after them, then there is even greater reason to judge it originated, since it exists after them.’”

This concludes al-Qādī’s and Abū al-Hasan’s argument for the existence of the Maker. Abū al-Hasan’s argument is better, for he based it on the perceptible change in the seminal drop. He had no need, in doing so, to establish that every body possesses accidents.

As for al-Qādī’s statement that, if the proof that the seminal drop and other bodies are originated hinges on this point, it must first establish the existence of accidents and then establish that they are originated—it is not as he claims.

Rather, al-Ashʿarī turned away from this approach