For them, reports that have reached the level of tawātur are exceedingly scarce. Most people have neither repeated all the experiments the philosophers claim to have performed nor verified the observations they allege to have recorded. When one is told, “So-and-so and so-and-so made a confirmed observation,” the most they can adduce is a handful of observers—and that, at best, amounts to a limited or “specific” tawātur transmitted by a small circle.
If someone insists that no demonstrative proof can be based on the widely transmitted reports of the prophets, how can that same person establish any proof for other matters on the basis of so meager a transmission, all the while exalting astronomy and philosophy and declaring them rational sciences proven by demonstration?
The Philosophers’ Profound Ignorance of the Lord of all Worlds
This, then, is the very strongest ground on which their so-called rational demonstration rests. What, then, should we suppose of their discourse on divinity? When a discerning, intelligent reader examines the statements of their first teacher, Aristotle, he learns only that they were among the most ignorant of creation concerning the Lord of all worlds. Such a reader is left in endless astonishment at those who dare to place the philosophers’ theology alongside what the prophets brought. The comparison is like coupling blacksmiths with angels—or rather, like equating the petty landlords of rural villages with the sovereigns of the earth. Even that latter analogy is closer to knowledge and fairness than likening the philosophers to the prophets, for the village headman does exercise over his hamlet a kind of authority resembling the king’s rule over his realm and thus shares, however slightly, in kingship.
As for the truths the prophets brought, these philosophers know absolutely nothing of them; they are nowhere near them. Indeed, even the unbelieving Jews and Christians possess a greater understanding of divine matters. I do not mean the exclusive knowledge granted to the prophets through revelation—knowledge unattainable by anyone else—for that lies outside both the philosophers’ discipline and that of others. Rather, I refer to those rational sciences that the messengers set forth for humanity by clear intellectual proofs: knowledge of the Lord, His oneness, His names and attributes; knowledge of prophethood, the resurrection, and the practical ordinances that secure felicity in the Hereafter. Much of this the prophets elucidated by rational argument.
These sacred, religious, divine rationalities are matters whose very scent the philosophers have never inhaled; nothing in their sciences even points toward them. As for the unseen realities known solely to the messengers and conveyed by them—that is