and the rain, thunder, lightning, and other such things—all of these are newly originated, not eternal, as anyone whose senses are sound recognizes, for he sees this with his own eyes. Those who say that the individual identity of a nonexistent thing is eternally established, or that its matter is eternal, say that the individual identities of all these things are eternally established, and that the matter of the entire world is eternal, though its forms are not.

Know that when a doctrine is intrinsically false, its critic cannot present it in a way that allows it to be truly conceived; this is possible only for the truth. As for a false position, once it is explained, the explanation itself reveals its unsoundness, until one asks, “How could anyone have been confused about this?” and marvels that they could have believed it. Yet one should not be astonished: there is no conceivable form of falsehood that some group of people has not embraced. This is why Allah describes the adherents of falsehood as dead; as “deaf, dumb, and blind”; as those who “do not understand” and “do not reason”; as being “indeed of conflicting opinions”—“Whoever is turned away is turned away from it”; as those who “waver in their doubt”; and as those who “wander blindly.”

Their confusion arose—and Allah knows best—from their recognition that Allah—glorified is He—knows what does not yet exist before it comes into being—or that:

“His command, when He wills a thing, is only to say to it, ‘Be,’ and it is.”

They saw that the nonexistent thing He creates is distinguished in His knowledge, will, and power, and supposed that this was because it possessed a distinct, established essence. But that is not the case. Rather, it is distinguished in Allah’s knowledge and His Book. Any one of us has knowledge of what exists and of what does not exist