If he has said:

“When something could have occurred earlier or later, but comes to exist rather than remain nonexistent, reason judges self-evidently that it requires a determining factor that determined its occurrence,”

then it is all the more appropriate to say:

“Whatever comes into existence after not existing is self-evidently judged by reason to require an originator who brought it into existence.”

For the knowledge that something newly originated requires an originator is clearer than the knowledge that something determined requires a determining factor, or that favoring one of a contingent thing’s two alternatives over the other requires a factor that favors it.

The second objection:

It may be said to all these thinkers, such as Abū al-Husayn and those who agree with him: You contradict yourselves concerning this premise upon which you have based your proof of the Maker, Exalted is He. Its substance is that neither of a contingent thing’s two alternatives can prevail over the other without a factor that favors it, or that its existence cannot prevail over its nonexistence without such a factor.

For some of them say: If something comes into existence when it could either come into existence or not, its coming into existence was no more warranted than its not doing so.

The others say: If it is assigned one time rather than another, although the times are alike, or one magnitude rather than another, then its being assigned either one was no more warranted than its being assigned the other, except through a determining factor. The first argument rests on the fact that, considered in itself, its coming into existence and its not doing so are equally possible; hence it requires a factor that favors its coming into existence.

The second rests on the equivalence of times, magnitudes, and attributes. There must therefore be a determining factor that selects one of the alternatives for its occurrence. All of this rests on the principle that, where two alternatives are equally possible, neither can prevail without a factor that favors it. This is true in itself.

Yet they contradicted it when they said that these newly originated things and determinations occur without any cause necessitating either their coming into existence or their particular determination.