Then, if they do this, claiming that it is to avoid “likening Allah to creation and attributing a body to Him,” they are told:

“What you have fled to is worse than what you have fled from. Acknowledging the Creator, in whatever manner, is better than denying Him.

“Moreover, if this observable world, including the heavens and the earth, is eternal and necessarily existent in itself, then you have made observable bodies eternal and necessarily existent in themselves. This is worse than what you sought to escape. If, however, it is not eternal and necessarily existent in itself, it must have a Creator who is eternal and necessarily existent in Himself. It then becomes clear that knowing Him and speaking of Him—affirming the Lord in heart and speech—is undoubtedly true, according to both revelation and reason. If this necessarily entails what you call likening Him to creation and attributing a body to Him, then whatever necessarily follows from truth is itself true. If it does not entail this, you can affirm Him without such language.”

Thus, the inconsistency of those who negate the attributes becomes evident, however the proofs are brought to bear against them. So too does the inconsistency of those who affirm some attributes but not others.

If the “negators” say, “We denied the attributes only because our proof that the world came into being and that the Creator exists also demonstrated that these attributes must be denied. We established the Creator’s existence through the world’s having come into being; we established that the world came into being only by establishing that bodies came into being; and we established that bodies came into being only through the coming into being of attributes, which are accidents.”

Or they say:

“We established that bodies came into being only through the coming into being of actions, which are motions, and through the fact that whatever admits them is never without them, while whatever is never without things that come into being must itself have come into being. Alternatively, whatever admits coming, arrival, and descent would be characterized by motion; whatever is characterized by motion is never without either motion or its opposite, rest; and whatever is never without things that come into being must itself have come into being. Once it was established that bodies came into being, we said that whatever is brought into being must have one who brings it into being. Through this, we established the Creator’s existence;