Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

and earth that he should be of those who are safe. Therefore you will
understand that the creation of these bodies and the principle of their
becoming cannot be like the coming to be of the bodies of this sublunary
world, and that the human intellect is too weak to understand how this act
works, although it knows that this act exists. He who tries to compare
heavenly with earthly existence, and believes that the Agent of the divine
world acts in the way in which an agent in this sublunary world works, is
utterly thoughtless, profoundly mistaken, and in complete error.
This is the extreme limit we can reach in our understanding of the
theories of the ancients about the heavenly bodies, of their proof for the
existence of a Creator for these bodies who is immaterial, and of their
statements concerning the immaterial existents under Him, one of which is
the soul. But to believe in His existence as if He were the cause through
which these bodies had been produced in time, in the way we see the
production of the bodies of this sublunary world, as the theologians
desired-this, indeed, is very difficult, and the premisses they use for its
proof do not lead them where they desire. We shall show this later, when
we discuss the different proofs for the existence of God.
And since this has been firmly established, we shall now go back to
relate and refute in detail what Ghazali tells of the philosophers, and to
show the degree of truth reached by his assertions, for this is the primary
intention of this book.
Ghazali says, refuting the philosophers:
I say:
What you affirm are only suppositions and in fact you do
nothing but add obscurities to obscurities. If a man were to
say that he had seen such things in a dream, it would be a
proof of his bad constitution, or if one should advance such
arguments in juridical controversies, in which everything
under discussion is conjectural, one would say these were
stupidities which could not command any assent.
This is very much the way the ignorant treat the learned and the vulgar
the eminent, and in this way, too, the common people behave towards the
products of craftsmanship. For, when the artisans show the common
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