dependent parts.

All this is clear and self-evident; no one who grasps it can doubt it. These matters can also be presented in other ways.

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Likewise, these proofs can be formulated in terms of coming into being, as follows:

One possibility is that all existing things have come into being. This is impossible, because whatever comes into being must have an agent, and this is self-evident. The agent that brings all existing things into being cannot be nonexistent; this too is self-evident. Anything outside the totality of existing things can only be nonexistent.

Thus, if all existing things had been brought into being, this would entail either that they came into being without an agent to bring them into being, or that they were brought into being by something nonexistent.

Both possibilities are self-evidently false. It is therefore established that there must be a being without a beginning. Yet sensory experience makes it self-evident that not every existing thing is without a beginning. Thus, existing things are divided into those without a beginning and those brought into being.

These two premises—that whatever comes into being must have an agent that brings it into being, and that whatever brings an existing thing into being must itself exist—are self-evident. Nevertheless, many practitioners of speculative theology have undertaken to establish them through inferential proofs and have adduced arguments in their support. Although these proofs are sound, nevertheless