Many Eastern religions make this claim about God. And now, it is being picked up as a popular idea among Westerners. Unfortunately, it is incoherent.
To say God is unknowable is either a statement about God or a statement about ourselves. If it is a statement about God, it is an affirmation that he has no properties capable of being known. And yet having at least one property is what differentiates existence from non-existence. If God has no properties, then he doesn’t exist.
If it is a statement about ourselves – our ability to know a God with specific properties – then it is self-refuting because the statement itself is a claim to know something about God: He is unknowable. If God were unknowable, we would not even be able to know that He was unknowable. The point can be made succinctly by asking, “How do you know God is unknowable if nothing can be known of God? Isn’t that something you know about him?”
Either way you look at it, that statement is incoherent.
October 27, 2022 at 1:01 pm
Jason, as soon as I saw this, I immediately thought of Philippians 3:10……
“That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death”
Yes, I do know Jesus Christ the One True God, and it’s by His grace & mercy that He came into my life to give me hope, peace, love and the (very real) born-again experience that changed my life & destiny tremendously. Thank you Jesus!!!
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October 27, 2022 at 5:55 pm
Yes, Jason, you’re correct. If one knows nothing whatsoever about something, then one has no basis to make any claim about it, including the claim that an entity is unknowable. There has to be something about said entity that you know in order to assert that nothing can be known about it (else, the statement is self-stultifying). And if there is no basis to make any claim about whatever, then we could not ever know whether it exists. That is essential atheism.
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October 27, 2022 at 5:56 pm
The parenthesis in Post 2 should read, “thus, the statement is self-stultifying.”
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October 27, 2022 at 10:19 pm
Scalia, it’s off-topic, but I just want to say I appreciate you flying our beautiful American flag!👍🏼🙏🏼 May God bless America!
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