This argument is invalid for several reasons:

First: According to these thinkers, the soul exists only in conjunction with the body, being bound to it as its governing principle. They differ among themselves as to whether the soul is a substance or an accident, yet by their own admission the existence of souls without bodies is impossible; the very basis of their answer therefore collapses.

Second: The Muʿtazila and those who follow them argue for the createdness of bodies on the ground that an infinite chain of temporal events without a beginning is impossible. That very argument demands the createdness of the soul as well, for events inhere in it; if an endless series of events cannot subsist in the soul, then the soul must be created. Hence, if the Muʿtazilite proof for the creation of bodies is valid, it equally proves that souls are created, and if it is invalid, the distinction they draw between souls and bodies falls apart. In either case, saying that bodies are created while souls are eternal is false.

Third: The same proof for the creation of bodies—the impossibility of an infinite regress of temporal events—also entails, as noted, the creation of souls. As for the intellects, assuming they exist in the manner claimed by these philosophers, they are eternal, inseparable from Allah’s Essence, and He necessarily produces them by His very Essence from pre-eternity in an everlasting act of necessitation. The eternity of the intellects therefore entails that He perpetually and essentially necessitates a specific entity. Yet to claim that He subsequently brings bodies—or bodies together with souls—into existence after they were nonexistent contradicts His being a necessary cause from all eternity; for whoever begins to act after previously not acting can only be conceived of as an agent by choice. Thus this view inevitably entails that He is a necessitating cause