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

and invest with authority the man who lays them down. The denial and
discussion of these principles denies human existence, and therefore
heretics must be killed. Of religious principles it must be said that they are
divine things which surpass human understanding, but must be
acknowledged although their causes are unknown.
Therefore we do not find that any of the ancient philosophers discusses
miracles, although they were known and had appeared all over the world,
for they are the principles on which religion is based and religion is the
principle of the virtues; nor did they discuss any of the things which are
said to happen after death. For if a man grows up according to the
religious virtues he becomes absolutely virtuous, and if time and felicity
are granted to him, so that he becomes one of the deeply learned thinkers
and it happens that he can explain one of the principles of religion, it is
enjoined upon him that he should not divulge this explanation and should
say ‘all these are the terms of religion and the wise’, conforming himself to
the Divine Words, ‘but those who are deeply versed in knowledge say: we
believe in it, it is all from our Lord’. ‘
Ghazali says:
I say:
There are two answers to this theory. The first is to say:
‘We do not accept the assertion that the principles do not act
in a voluntary way and that God does not act through His
will, and we have already refuted their claim in treating of the
question of the temporal creation of the world. If it is
established that the Agent creates the burning through His
will when the piece of cotton is brought in contact with the
fire, He can equally well omit to create it when the contact
takes place.
Ghazali, to confuse his opponent, here regards as established what his
opponent refuses to admit, and says that his opponent has no proof for his
refusal. He says that the First Agent causes the burning without an
intermediary He might have created in order that the burning might take
place through the fire. But such a claim abolishes any perception of the
existence of causes and effects. No philosopher doubts that, for instance,
the fire is the cause of the burning which occurs in the cotton through the
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