A general evaluation of the Gazali critics regarding the thesis of the eternity of universe

The subject of creation is one of the key concepts in understanding other attributes of God and the relationship between God and the universe. Because this subject contains many other important problems such as God's knowledge, will, not resembling what he created, possibility, causality, existence-nature relationship, eternal creation, creation from nothing, and the issue. The subject of creation is based on two foundations in both philosophy and theological tradition of thought. While one of these is the "temporal (post) creation" usually expressed by theologians, the other is the "eternal creation" understanding generally expressed by philosophers. Although al-Ghazali tries to defend his views on creation through philosophy and logic in some of his works, the point he reached is actually the same as the Ashari theologians. According to him, God, who is free to do whatever He wishes, created the world whenever he wanted, in the way he wanted, with his infinite knowledge and absolute will, from nothing and afterward. While defending these ideas, Ghazali did not hesitate to use religious nass as evidence and put forward some ideas that were open to interpretation. Thinkers such as Farabi, Avicenna and Averroes, who were Islamic philosophers like him, who viewed creation and the issues of the universe from different angles, did not adopt the same style with him, but took a different approach in research, analysis and thinking. Although it is open to interpretation, it is not true for me that al-Ghazali has created religious beliefs on such a subject that we cannot obtain clerical data and accepts his own opinion as absolute correct and evaluates the opposite views as non-religious.