(October 7, 2016 at 7:21 am)robvalue Wrote: When it comes to specific character gods from books, I think yes, we have certainty for all practical purposes. It's as much certainty as one can reasonably have. If you're not prepared to act as if you're certain about that, you're not going to be certain about anything. I don't need to justify my strength of belief against story book characters to anyone, anyway. I'm not going around telling people how to act based on their non-existence.
Even gnostic atheists would (I expect) usually admit that there is a fundamental problem with knowing anything with complete, absolute certainty. This is more to do with the limitations of our perception rather than the subject at hand. I imagine most theists would happily say "Santa doesn't exist" without a paragraph of preamble about epistemology.
So, why does any claim about god(s) deserve epistemological preambles?
God thinks it's fun to confuse primates. Larsen's God!
