is far more unsound than the view espoused by the Qadari Muʿtazilites and others, or by the Kullābiyyah and the remaining schools of kalām. These eternalist philosophers—especially those among them who strip God of His attributes—argue that a fully operative cause must invariably be accompanied by its effect. They then claim that the Lord must have been a fully operative cause from pre-eternity; for were this not the case, the completion of His causal efficacy would itself be a newly-occurring event, and the question of how that event came to be would be identical to the question raised about any other occurrence. This would lead to an infinite regress in which limitless completions of causation would have to arise simultaneously within the efficient Cause—an absurdity that no sect has ever affirmed, just as none has accepted an endless series of fully operative causes.

Their argument thus rests on two premises: first, the impossibility of an infinite regress of causes—a point conceded by all rational people—and second, the impossibility of preference without a preferrer. The Muʿtazilites, Kullābiyyah, Karrāmiyyah, and the like rejected this proof because, in their estimation, an agent possessed of power may choose without any determining factor.

It is already clear where this reply is deficient: it holds only if one adopts the principles of the Qadariyya and the Jahmiyya. Hence the dispute here is between the Qadariyya and the Dahriyya, and though both positions are false, the Qadariyya are marginally closer to the truth. They countered the philosophers by pointing to the continual occurrence of daily events, for the philosophers’ premise would necessitate that nothing ever come into existence—yet new things do in fact occur.

This counter-argument exposes the unsoundness of the philosophers’ proof, but it neither resolves the proof nor pinpoints its precise flaw. Al-Ārmūwī and others disparaged this objection; we have already demonstrated the weakness of their criticism and affirmed the soundness of the objection, following al-Ghazālī, al-Rāzī, al-Abharī, and others who used it against the philosophers.

After al-Ārmūwī, an Indian author appeared who merely repeated his criticism verbatim without providing any answer to it.