is incompatible with being al-Samad (the Self-Sufficient), for al-Samad is He who has no hollow interior: He neither eats nor drinks nor begets, and nothing issues from Him, including any of the other wastes discharged by human beings. For a body to enter Him or leave Him would entail a deficiency involving something privative, which is incompatible with being al-Samad. This is not among the predicates established for existence as such, but among those involving existence or nonexistence. Consequently, its cause cannot be a characteristic common to both the Necessary Existent and contingent beings. Rather, it is a characteristic peculiar to contingent, originated beings: need and dependence. Food is needed to replace what the body loses through its breakdown, while ejaculation serves to avert the harm caused by semen, much as blood is drawn when necessary.

The presence within a body of another body that opposes and harms it constitutes an incapacity and need peculiar to created beings. Likewise, its need for a body outside itself, through which its existence is sustained, constitutes a dependence and need peculiar to created beings. Thus, the people of Paradise eat, drink and have intercourse, but they neither urinate, spit, blow their noses, defecate nor ejaculate. Rather, their food is eliminated through perspiration like musk