Is absolute certainty necessary for knowledge?
Many times when I am sitting at Ask an Atheist the idea that we need absolute certainty in order to have knowledge is brought up. It comes up whenever we are asked “how can you know God doesn’t exist?” Most of the time the answer that I hear given is that we don’t claim to know God doesn’t exist since most of us are agnostic atheists. While this is technically correct I think it gives a little too much to the theist. If we except that knowledge does not require absolute certainty (which I’ll argue soon that we should) then I think we can claim that we do know that God doesn’t exist. So why should we accept that knowledge does not require absolute certainty? There are two arguments against both types of knowledge that we can have. The two types of knowledge being: • a priori • knowledge gathered prior to experience e.g. mathematical truths, laws of logic, • A posteriori • knowledge gathered through experience e.g. scientific knowledge, knowledge of the world around us Both the arguments
