Editing Mu'tazilism (section)

===Atomism===
Mu'tazilite ideas of God were underpinned by the doctrine of atomism. This is the belief that all things and processes are reducible to fundamental physical particles and their arrangements.

Mu'tazilite atomism however did not imply determinism. Since God was ultimately responsible for manipulating the particles, his actions were not bound by the material laws of the universe. This radically sovereign God entailed an occasionalist theology:<ref>RMaha Elkaisy-Friemuth, "God and Humans in Islamic Thought Abd Al-Jabbar", ''Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali'', 2006</ref> God could intervene directly in the world to produce contingent events at will. This radical freedom was possible precisely because the world was composed solely of inert matter rather than an immaterial spirit with an independent vital force of its own.<ref>William Lane Craig, ''The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz'', 2001.</ref>