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

his attacks on the philosophers in this passage, so that he even forces on
them the implication of atheism, we have already answered them
previously and there is no sense in repeating ourselves, but, in short, the
philosophers hold that body, be it temporal or eternal, cannot be
independent in existence through itself; and this principle is, according to
the philosophers, binding for the eternal body in the same way as for the
temporal, although imagination does not help to explain how this is the
case with the eternal body in the way it is with the temporal body. Aristotle
therefore, in the second book of De caelo et mundo, when he wanted to
explain the fact that the earth was circular by nature, first assumed it to
have come into being in time so that the intellect might imagine its cause,
and then transferred its existence to eternity.
Having forced on the philosophers these reprehensible deductions,
Ghazali now gives an answer in defence of them and objects then to their
answer.
Ghazali says:
And if the philosophers say: ‘Everything that has no
cause is of a necessary existence, and we philosophers
have already mentioned the qualities of the necessary
existent through which it is proved that body cannot be the
necessary existent, ‘ we answer: We have shown the
mistake in your claim about the attributes of the necessary
existent, and that your proof does not demonstrate anything
but the termination of a causal series, and this termination
also exists for the materialists at the beginning of things, , for
they say that there is no cause for the bodies, and the forms
and accidents are causes for each other and terminate in the
circular movement part of which is the cause of another part
in the same way as it takes place according to the doctrine
of the philosophers, and this causal series’ ends in this
circular movement.
And the man who observes what we have related will
understand the inability of those who believe in the eternity
of bodies to claim at the same time that they have a cause,
and the consequence of their theory is atheism and
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