Those who say, “We do not know whether realities are affirmed or denied, nor whether knowledge is possible or impossible,” represent only one variety of sophistry, for sophistry itself comes in several forms.

The second variety is the stance of the brazen rejecters—those who categorically deny the existence of realities and the possibility of knowing them.

The third consists of people who make realities follow beliefs: if someone believes a thing to exist, then for him it exists; if he denies it, then for him it does not exist. They grant realities no intrinsic state of their own.

The fourth category concedes that realities do exist but insists there is no path to knowing them, either because, they claim, the world is in perpetual flux and therefore cannot be truly known, or for some other reason.

All four of these strands are found among such godless heretics. Some of them are the agnostic abstainers who say, “We neither affirm nor deny.” Others are the outright deniers. Still others make realities depend on beliefs, like the faction said to declare every holder of mutually contradictory opinions correct. The same claim is made by certain advocates of the doctrine of existential unity—such as Ibn ʿArabī and those of his ilk—who maintain that everyone who adopts any creed concerning God is, in that creed, correct, to the point that he said: