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

I say:
apostasy, which one party has clearly admitted, those
namely who rely solely on the determinations of the intellect.
All this has been already answered, and its degree of truth has been
stated, and there is no reason to repeat ourselves. And as to the
materialists, they rely only on the senses, and when according to them the
movements had terminated in the heavenly body and through this the
causal series was ended, they thought that where sensation had come to
a limit, the intellect also had come to a limit; but this is not true. But the
philosophers considered the causes till they ended in the heavenly body,
then they considered the intelligible causes and arrived at an existent
which cannot be perceived and which is the principle of perceptible being,
and this is the meaning of the words: ‘Thus did we show Abraham the
Kingdom of Heaven and of the earth . . . . ‘The Ash’arites, however,
rejected sensible causes; that is, they denied that certain sensible things
are the causes of other sensible things, and they made the cause of
sensible being a nonsensible being by a way of becoming which is neither
experienced nor perceived, and they denied causes and effects; and this
is a kind of view which is inconsistent with the nature of man in so far as
he is man.
Ghazali says, objecting to the argument of the philosophers:
If it is said that the proof that body is not a necessary
existent is that, if it were a necessary existent, it would have
neither an external nor an internal cause, but if it has a
cause for its being composed, it will be possible in respect of
its essence, and every possible needs a necessary existent,
we answer: The terms ‘necessary existent’ and ‘possible
existent’ are devoid of sense, and your whole confusion lies
in these terms; but let us revert to their plain sense, which is
the denial and the affirmation of a cause, for then your words
amount to nothing else but saying that bodies either have a
cause or not, and the materialists affirm the latter, ‘ and why
should you deny it? And when this is understood by
‘possibility’ and ‘necessity’, we say body is necessary and
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