Yet many people fail to see the falsity of this reasoning. Some believe it accords with revelation and reason, even believing that Abraham, Allah’s intimate friend, used it in his argument. Some of these people make it the foundation of religion, holding that faith cannot be attained—or cannot be complete—without it. But anyone familiar with what the Messenger brought and the way of the Companions knows beyond doubt that neither the Messenger nor the Companions followed this approach. Those who recognize this therefore know that it is an innovation. Many of them, however, do not recognize that it is unsound. They still consider it rationally valid, but believe that it is lengthy, makes knowledge more remote, or is a frightening and dangerous path whose followers are at risk. They thus criticize it as one might criticize a long or frightening road, while believing that it leads to knowledge and is sound in itself.

Those with expertise who thoroughly understand it, however, know that it is invalid according to both reason and revelation, and that it is not a path leading to knowledge. Rather, it leads those who believe it sound only to ignorance and error, while leading those who recognize its contradictions to perplexity and doubt. This is why even its most accomplished adherents end in perplexity and doubt: its true implication is that everything that exists has come into being, having been preceded by nonexistence, and that nothing eternal exists.

This is an obstinate denial of the obvious. For existence is plainly witnessed, and what exists has either come into being or is eternal. Whatever has come into being necessarily requires something eternal. Thus, the existence of something eternal is established in either case.