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

visible and in the invisible world, we can be sure that the philosophers
cannot have a proof of this unity in God; but if the theory of the plurality of
knowledge and known is only a supposition, then it is possible for the
philosophers to have a proof. Equally, if it is absolutely true that the effect
of a cause cannot be delayed after the causation and the Ash’arites claim
that they can advance a proof to deny it, then we can be absolutely sure
that they cannot have such a proof. If there is a controversy about
questions like this, the final criterion rests with the sound understanding’
which does not base itself on prejudice and passion, when it probes
according to the signs and rules by which truth and mere opinion are
logically distinguished. Likewise, if two people dispute about a sentence
and one says that it is poetry, the other that it is prose, the final judgment
rests with the ‘sound understanding’ which can distinguish poetry from
prose, and with the science of prosody. And as, in the case of metre, the
denial of him who denies it does not interfere with its perception by him
who perceives it, so the denial of a truth by a contradictor does not trouble
the conviction of the men to whom it is evident.
This whole argument is extremely inept and weak, and Ghazali ought not
to have filled his book with such talk if he intended to convince the
learned.
And drawing consequences which are irrelevant and beside the point,
Ghazali goes on to say:
But the consequences of this argument cannot be
overcome. And we say to them: How will you refute your
adversaries, when they say the eternity of the world is
impossible, for it implies an infinite number and an infinity of
unifies for the spherical revolutions, although they can be
divided by six, by four, and by two.’ For the sphere of the sun
revolves in one year, the sphere of Saturn in thirty years,
and so Saturn’s revolution is a thirtieth and Jupiter’s
revolution-for Jupiter revolves in twelve years-a twelfth of the
sun’s revolution. But the number of revolutions of Saturn has
the same infinity as the revolutions of the sun, although they
are in a proportion of one to thirty and even the infinity of the
sphere of the fixed stars which turns round once in thirty-six
thousand years is the same as the daily revolution which the
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