Signs require no analogical reasoning. The sun’s rays, for example, are a sign of the sun; this does not involve comparing the sun with other causes or its rays with other effects. Rather, through sense perception and reason, people have an innate knowledge that the rays themselves necessarily indicate the sun in a manner unique to it. Likewise, every created thing is itself a sign of its Creator in a way that points to Him alone. As has been said:

“In everything there is a sign of Him,
Which shows that He is One.”

But this requires an extended discussion, for which this is not the place. The purpose here is simply to point out that if what those who affirm the divine attributes have mentioned—people’s innate acknowledgment that their Lord is above them—entails their innate acknowledgment of their Lord and that acknowledging Him is innate, then there is nothing implausible about this implication. Indeed, this is the view held by the great majority of people of all kinds.

Only those whose innate disposition has been altered by innovators among the speculative theologians find this implausible. These innovators have led them down their cramped, narrow paths and deluded them into believing that they alone understand proof and evidence, to the exclusion of all others, earlier and later, of every class and generation. This resembles the claim of the esoteric Qarmatians that they are the elite among the people of knowledge