God would not cause things to come about through lengthy, suffering-involving processes (such as childbirth and growth to maturity) if He could simply make them exist from nothing

As for matter, time, and place, these principles are required in order that the universe may be created at all (for an overview see Fakhry 1968). First, al-Rāzī thinks that there must already be some material before the cosmos exists, out of which it is constructed. As Nāṣir-e Khosraw (NK: 75) complains, al-Rāzī believed that creation ex nihilo was impossible. He argued for this on the grounds that we constantly see things being produced through lengthy processes of development, even though inst