proceed from an eternal, complete cause, this argument is invalid, and one may say that the world came into being through an eternal agent. If it is said that they cannot proceed from an eternal, complete cause, the reply is: these observable events cannot, then, proceed from an eternal, complete cause, so their complete cause must itself have come into being. The same reasoning concerning the coming into being of these events then applies to the coming into being of that complete cause. If a beginningless succession of events is impossible, their doctrine is invalid; if it is possible, one may say that the world’s coming into being depended upon a beginningless succession of events.

They cannot claim that the inherence of temporal events is impossible, since they allow something temporal to inhere in what is eternal. Indeed, every one of them allows something temporal to subsist in the Necessary Existent, as many speculative theologians have also allowed. They have no proof for this. Moreover, the argument does not establish the eternity of the celestial spheres. In short, they are compelled to affirm an originator who brought these events into being; their rejection of the celestial spheres’ coming into being is nevertheless invalid.

The point here is that this argument rests upon a false analogy: likening Allah to other agents and setting up rivals, equals, and counterparts to Him, so that the judgments applied to Him may also be applied to them. They even made Him a begetter of the world, thereby making the world His offspring and partner. Thus, by this argument, they denied that He is the Creator, Maker, and Originator of the world, making Him instead a begetting cause from which the world was begotten in a generation coexistent with that cause