because he has committed another forbidden act. These and similar attempts to compel agreement are invalid, even though such conduct, when it occurs, forms part of the original acquiescence in falsehood.

The fifth response is that reason’s rejection of a being above the world that is not described as either larger or smaller than it is not like its rejection of a being that is neither inside the world nor outside it. The latter is like reason’s rejection of a being that neither subsists in itself nor subsists in another, and is neither separate from another nor co-located with it. The former involves denying both equality and its absence. Equality and its absence are properties of magnitude, whereas separation and its absence are properties of a thing’s very reality. The innate disposition apprehends existing things themselves before it apprehends their magnitudes.

Moreover, human beings are innately disposed to acknowledge that their Lord is above the heavens. To deny this is to deny the necessary, innate knowledge with which the children of Adam were endowed. As for His being equal or unequal in magnitude, this is not rooted in their innate disposition in the same way. Since reason does not reject the one as it rejects the other, disputing the less evident proposition is not like disputing the more evident one. Nor is it legitimate to compel someone who acknowledges the more evident proposition to acknowledge the less evident one on the grounds that the two are alike.

The sixth response is to say: your claim that reason requires