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

THE FOURTH DISCUSSION
SHOWING THAT THEY ARE UNABLE TO PROVE THE
EXISTENCE OF A CREATOR OF THE WORLD
Ghazali says:
I say:
We say: Mankind is divided into two categories; one, the
men of truth who have acknowledged that the world has
become and know by necessity that what has become does
not become by itself but needs a creator, and the
reasonableness of their view lies in their affirmation of a
creator; the other, the materialists, believe the world, in the
state in which it exists,, to be eternal and do not attribute a
creator to it, and their doctrine is intelligible, although their
proof shows its inanity. But as to the philosophers, they
believe the world to be eternal and still attribute a creator to
it. This theory is self-contradictory and needs no refutation.
The theory of the philosophers is, because of the factual evidence,
more intelligible than both the other theories together. There are two kinds
of agent: (t) the agent to which the object which proceeds from it is only
attached during the process of its becoming; once this process is finished,
the object is not any more in need of it-for instance, the coming into
existence of a house through the builder; (2) the agent from which nothing
proceeds but an act which has no other existence than its dependence on
it. The distinctive mark of this act is that it is convertible with the existence
of its object, i.e. when the act does not exist the object does not exist, and
when the act exists the object exists-they are inseparable. This kind of
agent is superior to the former and is more truly an agent, for this agent
brings its object to being and conserves it, whereas the other agent only
brings its objects to being, but requires another agent for its further
conservation. The mover is such a superior agent in relation to the moved
and to the things whose existence consists only in their movement. The
philosophers, believing that movement is the act of a mover and that the
existence of the world is only perfected through motion, say that the agent
of motion is the agent of the world, and if the agent refrained for only one
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