The fourth point:

Al-Rāzī took this counterargument from those who had advanced it before him, such as Abū al-Maʿālī and his associates. They invoked it both in discussing “the temporal origination of the world” and in discussing “direction,” when each of the two opposing groups challenged them with one of the two propositions grounded in innate human nature. They thought that, by turning their opponents’ premises against them, they could escape the objections of both groups and establish that these propositions were judgments of the estimative faculty. Yet this did not free them from either group’s objections; rather, they made claims contrary to sound reason.

This gave the eternalist philosophers an opening against them, for they saw them relying on this weak argument. It also gave the Muslims who affirm the divine attributes an opening against him. This resembles what Imam Ahmad related concerning Jahm’s debate with the Sumaniyya.