So too with a house, a human being, any continuous magnitude, the number ten, a thousand, and the like: once their constituent parts are brought together, the resulting whole possesses a property that cannot be ascribed to the parts taken separately.

The point, then, is to call attention to the root of these atheists’ deviation, and to note that part of the blame lies with those who debated them yet fell short of championing the truth, thereby slipping into one or another form of falsehood. Sometimes they shared a false premise with the atheists—one the latter later turned against them elsewhere, such as the denial of the divine attributes. At other times they contested a false notion and showed its invalidity—like preferring one of two identical alternatives without a determining cause. Still other times their deficiency lay in the truth itself: at one moment failing to understand what the Messengers brought, at another failing to establish proof against their adversary. Such shortcomings—in grasping the truth and in articulating the arguments that compel belief in it—are what empowered those unbelievers.