Is it not all just guess work though? I'm confused by seemingly contradictory religious positions such as 'god is unknowable' vs 'god wants us to... xxxx'.

To give a really bad example: Whenever I poke a tiger, he'll attempt to chew my hand of. Thus, I have it on very convincing evidence that a tiger wants me to not poke him. That doesn't mean that I "know" tigers.

Why is it a bad example?

in a lot of the early church fathers who emphasize the fundamental unknowability of God they draw a distinction between God's "essence" which is unknowable and His "energies" through which He is active within us spiritually and in the world, and thus can be known via experience of them.

It's still a thing which is mysteriously and vaguely defined (and I'm not attempting to try to wade into all that just now) but that would be part of the answer to the apparent contradiction.

Beyond that, the way I think about it also is that apophatic theology is not exactly to say that nothing whatsoever can be known about God, but that any knowledge of God is at best limited and approximate and flawed. We say "God is Love" or "God is Good" or even "God exists" and they all express something that we believe to be true, yet fundamentally God is neither love, nor good, nor even existing, because he is transcendent of everything, including every name or attribute. The purpose I think is not so much to deny the value of "God is Love" pedagogically or as a description, but to warn against the limits involved with using such propositions as premises for formal arguments

Doesn't the self, the I, the me, don't those all provide a sense of perspective, or direction, or point of view? If you presume that Others exist with their own experiences (I think you would), isn't it important to differentiate between theirs and yours in various ways, and isn't that difference something 'real'?

I don't think I really understand your perspective yet, so yes I'd be interested in some links (I'm sure others would as well and since this is RGT, it'd be rude not to go off topic occasionally).

I am not sure how to answer this. Its clear to me that the self, the I, the me, doesnt exist, and so how can it provide a sense of anything? Thoughts about a self may provide these things, but they are just thoughts, not an actual self. And theres no self that is producing these thoughts.

I , as a self, dont exist. Therefore how can others exist ? ( ok there could be a problem with assuming everyone is the same, and I could be the only one without a self) Yes , there appear to be different bodies walking around, and "I" dont experience what they do, but there is no separate controller in each body. There is no experiencer in each body. Each body ( including mine) is an automaton, fully on automatic, reacting from programmed desires and responses. Each one is blown hither and thither by the winds of existence. All these bodies are part of one system, one process, its just our mind that separates things out into individual objects and items.

Im not sure its possible to completely understand, without actually seeing it. I had a look at the few websites I visit that deals with this topic, and am not sure any of them would be of use to you, unless you were looking to investigate deeper for yourself, rather than just gain an intellectual understanding.

I could give you a link to an ebook that relates discussions where one person is helping the other to see through the illusion of an existing separate self.

I could give you a link to an ebook that discusses this kind of from a buddhist perspective, but does it in clear, non spiritual, logical language, and I found it very interesting and informative ( I am not a buddhist btw)

Or maybe a couple of links to blogs of people who claim to have seen through the illusion of an existing separate self?

Because God as an infinite being is in a categorically different way unknowable than a tiger and also makes his 'intentions' known in different ways. The example was just intended to show that 'ultimately unknowable' and 'wants me to X's aren't contradictory.

I don't know why Van Til didn't use modal logic. You were the one to bring that up as an issue, but you have never actually told me its relevance. So, to be perfectly clear, my criticism of the TAG argument does not rely on showing that it is invalid (in which case we would want to look at the logic of the argument), but that one of the premises is false. As I understand the argument, it runs something like this (using knowledge as an example).

1) To know anything there must be a god like the Christian God.
2) We do know something.
3) Therefore, there is a god like the Christian God.

I am disagreeing with (1). I do not think that the ability to know anything presupposes that there is a God. I can show this by giving hypothetical examples of knowing something where that knowledge does not presuppose God (e.g. such as in the case of the Platonic Forms). Modal logic is not really relevant to my point here, at least, not in any way that I see.

I am not sure what point you are driving at here. Are you disagreeing with Van Til here? I'm not really sure what absolute certainty has to do with either my point or the TAG argument.

I have a few questions. What is a 'self' as you're using the term? How do you know that we don't possess them? Why do we feel that we do? What are the implications, if any, of the self's non-existence?

Would you mind explaining how you know this?

It can get quite vague, and change meaning depending on who is talking , but in general, I am talking about the subject, the doer, the thinker. We say "my body", and I am talking about the assumed owner of the body.The separate entity, who is choosing what thoughts to think, who makes decisions about what to have for lunch. The self can also have qualities or characteristics. eg we talk about someone being very generous, or being lazy, or homosexual, or bright, or sporty. We hang labels onto the self, to identify what it does, what its good at , what its bad at. It can also mean the watcher, the person who is looking out of your eyes, and so on.
but generally, its about a controller, a chooser, a doer, a thinker.

First, can I point out how this sort of question highlights exactly where we can look. You are asking whether we possess a self, so what you are saying, is that there is a self, who possesses the self? I realise that its a language thing, but I am guessing its partly because of language that the belief in a separate self is so entrenched, and almost invisible, in a way.

I know that no such thing exists, because when you look at how things actually happen, you see that there is no such thing anywhere. There is no thinker of thoughts, there is no decision maker. Decisions and thoughts just happen.

There is no owner of the body, the body does everything on automatic. There is no self controlling the muscles, moving the body about. Its obvious for some functions (digestion, working of internal organs etc) but for some reason we assign other bodily functions to the self.


I can only guess that its useful.

That all beliefs are false. That thoughts are false, they may point to reality, but never correctly represent or mirror reality. That a huge amount of energy goes into supporting and protecting the beliefs about self and others, wasted energy. That all concepts are false, they dont exist, they are just agreed upon thoughts. That you werent born, and so you arent going to stop existing when you die, because you didnt exist in the first place. That blaming others for their actions is as pointless as blaming a tornado. That such things as success and failure dont exist, ownership doesnt exist,
and so on.

This, as well as your closing paragraph, seem more like they're aimed at the concept of free will than at the existence of 'the self'.

I don't understand how thoughts 'just happening' somehow means that there is no thinker of them. 'Thoughts' by definition require a thinker. To say there is no thinker is to say there are no thoughts, which seems absurd.

More broadly, you're basically telling me that you know the self doesn't exist because when you thought about it, you realised that the self doesn't exist. You're giving me more claims - I'm looking for your argument.

Probably because I can temporarily stop breathing if I want to, but I can't stop digesting something I've eaten (past a certain point at least). Certainly, if I said to you "Don't blink for the next ten seconds," you could probably do that. But if I said to you "Stop your heart beating for the next ten seconds," you wouldn't be able to.

So it seems to me that there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between the two.

Again, as I said earlier, all this seems far more relevant to the question of free will rather than 'selfness'.

Obviously, you can't literally mean that 'all beliefs are false'. I suppose that you mean beliefs are formed as an automatic process and thus that their contents are in a sense indifferent to reality? That the truth of any belief is only ever a happy coincidence, something like that? I still don't see where this points to the non-existence of the self.

The Koran, honestly, pays the ultimate tribute to the Bible... by completely re-writing it, and using it as a foundational source. You might even say that the Koran is a commentary on the Bible. I don't know if you've ever read it, but you won't get too far into it without running into Jesus, Mary, Abraham, Moses, Gabriel, etc..

I'm pretty sure the Mormon church has retreated a lot in their "infallibility" claims about the Book of Mormon, seeing much of the historical claims in it in "spiritual" terms rather than a literal accounting of historical fact. Furthermore, if there were no Holy Scriptures, there would be no Book of Mormon. It too, is dependent on the original Hebrew scriptures, as Mormonism is a Christian offshoot of sorts.

AIF has asked some of the first questions I thought of. I have to admit that so far I am not really getting it. It seems to be at least partly a problem with the limitations of language, of sorts - something that I think you can see a lot of with the fundamentals of philosophy; e.g. ontology, epistemology.

I also noted how often you said "I" in your reply And while it made me smile, isn't it important as a reference to your self?

Anyway, I'm not sure what links might help to understand what you are trying to describe, perhaps you could provide a couple of them that you think might help the most?

Also: when and how did you first find yourself starting to think this way? When I first noticed you posting these kinds of ideas, I thought you were presenting them as more of an academic exercise rather than a view you held day-to-day. Guess I was wrong?

So, you're basing the similarity of parts of the Koran to the Bible and Christian beliefs and drawing the conclusion that Islam was... inspired.. by Christianity? That it borrowed from religions that went before it and that what is passed as 'truth' in the Koran may be nothing more than a rehashing of the stories from a prior religion?

I realise that I'm putting words in your mouth here but they seem obvious conclusions to draw. Can you elaborate what conclusions or theories you draw from this 'ultimate tribute' and 'foundational source' hypothesis of yours?

You'd have to be brain dead not to see where this is going so what interests me is how you will sidestep me turning your own hypothesis on Christianity.

Islam as an Abrahamic religion shares foundations with the other Abrahamic religions so to try and undermine it as a rehashing of prior stories misses the point. It's a part of it's tradition not borrowed from elsewhere.

I was simply extending Doggg's hypothesis to his own religion. However, I'm now curious about how quite distinct and contradictory religions can 'share foundations' and retain any credibility for people who follow one or the other. You seem to have turned something that IMO does undermine both religions (from the premise that 'copying' the stories from a prior religion makes a religion less credible, rather than more likely to be true) into something we should just accept as a matter of fact with no implications.

Christianity and Islam can't both be correct. Since Doggg has pointed out that Islam copied Christianity, is Christianity not the more likely of the two to be correct?

Perhaps you would do well to first gain some understanding on how exactly Islam "copied" christianity. Wikipedia is your friend.

Not really, no. thinking about it gets you nowhere, as beaucoupfish is finding out.

I dont have an argument. you have to look for yourself. I cant convince you. Of course, I am using thoughts and language to communicate with you, but the thoughts arent "it", the thoughts arent the argument.

Basically we have a belief in a self. And, when you look for the self in reality, you find none, and no evidence that there is one. You find that everything that you attributed to a self is happening on its own. Its the looking that is important, not thinking about it.

Yes, that is what you think. And those thoughts are also automatic. What is the subject that is doing the thinking? Again you are accepting as unquestioned the idea that "thoughts by definition require a thinker". Its built into the language. subject verb object.

An example I like to use is rain. We say "it is raining" ,this implies a rainer. Is the cloud doing the raining? what is the active subject? does rain require a rainer?

Digestion requires a digester. but you agreed that digestion just happens.

It's not my hypothesis.

Yes, unfortunately it is:


Even more than that, you extend the words you put in his mouth step by step:

He never said anything even close to it.

Islam didn't copy Christianity you need to move away from this notion.

Would you consider that that Protestantism copied Catholicism or would you consider that they were the same until they diverged? Can Sunni'ism and Shia'ism not be seen as two traditions within Islam? If these can be seen as sharing foundations why must Islam and Christianity be copyists of Judaism? Because Judaism is the old Abrahamic tradition?

Oh and I'm not saying that Christianity and Islam were the same before divergence they weren't and they didn't a better example would have been how the Christian Church diverged from Judaism.

And just as a footnote:

That is simply lazy arguing. If I incorrectly copy the 2nd law of thermodynamics and promote it as frets law of continuity - why should that shed any doubt on the truth of the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

What is it you are not getting? It seems pretty simple to me. everyone believes they are a separate self. I am saying its not true, and you can find out that its not true.

Yes, "I" refers to a non existent self. Just as the word santa refers to a non existent fat man in a red suit. I use language to communicate, and so have to use the subject verb object structure, otherwise it sounds stupid, or clunky.


Thinking about it isnt "it".

An example I have used before( although it didnt seem to work very well ) , lets say I tell you "I have a blue ball". You can think lots of stuff about it. "hey, maybe he does have a blue ball", you can deduce from what you know of me how reliable and truthful I am, you can think about what it may mean if I do in fact have a blue ball, you can debate the meaning of "blue" and "ball", you can spend hours, days, months, in thoughts about the subject. You can base some of your life actions on whether you believe I have a blue ball or not. But in none of these thoughts will you be any closer to knowing if I have a blue ball. And the only way to find out is to look. After you look, there will also be lots of thoughts about it , "what a lying bastard" "noooo I really wanted to see a blue ball" "why did I act as if he had a blue ball", "what does it mean now that I know he doesnt have a blue ball" ,"maybe he had one and hid it when I looked" , and none of these thoughts are "it" either.




I realised that there was no such thing as a self about 2 years ago, after a thread on this forum, I spoke to a couple of people, looked , and saw that it was true.