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

I say:
universe is known to God, and they understood this through
this argument, since they had found that He willed
everything that happens in the world.
He says this only as an introduction and preparation for the comparison
between his theory and that of the philosophers about eternal
knowledge, because his theory seems at first sight more satisfactory than
that of the philosophers. But when the theory of the theologians is tested,
and shown up to him for whom such an exposure is necessary, it
becomes clear that they only made God an eternal man, , for they
compared the world with the products of art wrought by the will and
knowledge and power of man. And when it was objected against them that
He must then have a body, they answered that He is eternal and that all
bodies are temporal. They were therefore forced to admit an immaterial
man who produces all existents. But this theory is nothing but a metaphor
and a poetical expression; and metaphorical expressions are certainly
very convincing, till they are explored, but then their deficiency becomes
evident. For indeed there is no nature more distant from that of the
transitory than that of the eternal. And if this is true, it cannot be that there
should exist one single species which is differentiated by eternity and noneternityz
as one single genus is differentiated through the various
differences into which it is divided. For the distance between the eternal
and the temporal is far greater than that between the different species
which participate in temporality. And if the distance between eternity and
non-eternity is greater than that between the various species, how then is
it possible to apply a judgement about the empirical world to the invisible:
for those two are opposite extremes? And when you have understood the
sense of the attributes which exist in the visible world and those which
exist in the invisible world, it will be clear to you that through the ambiguity
of the terms they are so equivocal that they do not permit a transference
from the visible to the invisible.
Life, for instance, added to the intellect of man only applies to the
potentiality of motion in space through will and sense-perception, ; but
senses are impossible for the Creator and still more impossible for Him is
motion in space. But the theologians ascribe to the Creator the faculty of
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