and His words, Exalted is He:

‘Indeed, in the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of night and day are signs for people of understanding,’

and other such forms of evidence and manifest proofs accessible to all people of reason and to the general body of those bound by the divine address. Tracing and surveying these exhaustively would take too long.”

He said:

“Through these means, the reality and existence of the Maker became established for them.”

Al-Khattābī thus explained some of the ways in which the Quran directs attention to reasoning from the signs within ourselves and in the world around us. These are rational proofs.

Al-Khattābī criticized the method of arguing from accidents and their necessary association with bodies. The Quran did not direct people to this method. Some people, however, claimed that this was the method of Abraham, the intimate friend of Allah—may Allah’s blessings be upon him—in his statement:

“I do not love those that set.”

They said: “For setting is the motion from which no body is free.”

This is false for several reasons:

[The Invalidity of the Philosophers’ Argument]

First: Linguists and Quranic commentators agree that setting means disappearing and becoming hidden from view.