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

I say:
possibility of their realization and any purpose one might
imagine in their realization is concerned, is an evident fact.
Now, we regard it as equally evident that spaces, positions,
situations, and directions are equivalent so far as concerns
their receiving movement and any purpose that might be
connected with it. If therefore the philosophers are allowed to
claim that notwithstanding this equivalence they are
different, their opponents are fully justified in claiming the
same in regard to the times.
From what I have said previously, the speciousness of this argument and
the way in which it has to be answered will not be obscure to you. All this
is the work of one who does not understand the exalted natures of the
heavenly bodies and their acts of wisdom for the sake of which they have
been created, and who compares God’s knowledge with the knowledge of
ignorant man.
Ghazali says:
I say:
If it is said: as the two directions are opposed and
contrary, how can they be similar?-we answer: this is like
saying ‘since before and after in the existing world are
opposed, how could it be claimed that they are equivalent?’
Still, it is asserted by you philosophers that the equivalence
of times so far as the possibility of their realization, and any
purpose one might imagine in their realization is concerned,
is an evident fact. Now, we regard it as equally evident that
spaces, positions, situations, and directions are equivalent
so far as concerns their receiving the movement and any
purpose that might be connected with it.
The falsehood of this is self-evident. Even if one should admit that the
possibilities of man’s existence and non-existence are equivalent in the
matter out of which he has been created, and that this is a proof for the
existence of a determining principle which prefers his existence to his nonexistence,
still it cannot be imagined that the possibilities of seeing and not
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