this al-Rāzī, although he presents it here on behalf of his Muslim associates who agree that the world came into existence, in their arguments against fellow Muslims concerning the divine attributes, constantly invokes these arguments to counter the arguments advanced by Muslims and all other religious communities against the eternity of the world. Sometimes he appears perplexed, treating the evidence as evenly balanced and the two parties as counterbalancing one another, like the wavering hypocrite who belongs neither with these nor with those. Sometimes he supports the Muslims with sound dialectical arguments, while making abundant use of unsound ones. At other times he bolsters the views of those polytheistic Sabian alterationists, whether as someone unable to counter them, someone assisting them, or someone objecting to them, rightly or wrongly.

In the present discussion—where his aim is to establish the existence of what is self-evidently known to be impossible, claiming that this is a judgment of sense and imagination that must be rejected—we answer his appeal to the acts of Allah Most High that he has mentioned by showing that we have witnessed acts of Allah Most High analogous to, or even greater than, those we have not witnessed; that what he finds astonishing is like what we have witnessed, or less remarkable; and by