through the nose? All of this negates wisdom and negates the meaning by virtue of which He has named Himself All-Wise. Exalted is He above that, and hallowed are His names.

The third response is to say to him: What you have said about the necessity of these causes applies only to one who did not create them, not to their Creator. This is where the error arose: you measured Allah’s acts against our own, until you deemed Him incapable of anything other than what He has created.

For when any one of us wishes to eat, drink, clothe himself, travel, or do anything else, he cannot attain his objective unless he secures the causes through which Allah has made its attainment possible. These causes lie beyond his power. He can only assemble what can be assembled, move something from one place to another, or perform similar acts; he cannot originate the entities themselves.

As for Allah, glorified and exalted is He, although He has made certain things causes—for example, making eating a cause of satiety and creating food to nourish human beings—He is the One who created all pairs, from what the earth produces, from ourselves, and from what we do not know. Since He is the Creator of everything, it is impossible that He should be compelled to depend on any of it.

Thus, if it is said that sight is impossible without the eye, hearing is impossible without the ear, and likewise with other causes, the response is: He is the One who fashioned and originated these natures and endowed them with these attributes through which these ends are attained. It would have been possible, if He altered