Moreover, an originated thing depends on a complete originator that acts independently. Whatever does not act independently depends on something else and therefore cannot be the sole agent; rather, the agent consists of it together with that other thing. It cannot, then, be the sole agent producing the originated thing. If that other thing is itself originated, it too must have an agent. Originated things must therefore have an agent that acts independently and has no need of anything it originates. Reason knows self-evidently and with certainty that an originated thing depends on an originator that brings it into being. This knowledge is even more self-evident than its knowledge that a contingent being depends on a necessarily existent being that necessitates its existence. There is thus no need to argue here that an originated thing is assigned one time rather than another, or one magnitude rather than another, and that such specification requires a specifying agent. For the dependence of an originated thing on an originator is clearer and more immediately evident to reason.

Hence Allah Most High says:

“Or were they created by nothing, or are they themselves the creators?”
Al-Tūr 35

Jubayr ibn Mut‘im said: “When I heard the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, recite this verse, I felt as though my heart had split open.”

He also says:

“Have you considered the semen you emit? * Is it you who create it, or are We the Creator?”
Al-Wāqiʿah 58–59

For both possibilities—that they were created without a creator, and that they created themselves—are self-evidently impossible. A person knows self-evidently that he did not come into being without an originator and that he did not bring himself into being.

Since it is self-evidently known that he must have an originator and that his originator is not himself, it follows self-evidently that he has an originator and creator other than himself. The same holds for anything supposed to be created.