Indeed, this is related to one of the standard arguments for agnosticism:
Many describe themselves as agnostics because they believe that certain knowledge is impossible in religious matters. Whatever evidence there might be for or against the existence of God, both God’s existence and God’s non-existence remain conceivable. If we form a belief on uncertain evidence then we might turn out to be wrong. It is therefore better for us to withhold our judgement, to remain agnostic.
This argument is not especially persuasive. Though it is plausible to think that we cannot ever attain certainty as to whether or not God exists, this is true of all matters; nothing can be proved beyond all doubt. Descartes‘ argument from error establishes this: I have made errors of reasoning in the past, even concerning simple matters, and so can on no occasion be certain that I am not in error again. In spite of this unavoidable uncertainty, we nevertheless form beliefs. Why should we not do the same in matters of religion?
A more subtle version of the argument from uncertainty has an answer to this question: because religion is so important. Religion matters, and that is why we ought to be particularly careful in forming our religious beliefs.
The more important it is to be right about a matter, the more cautious we should be in forming our beliefs. If a matter is of great importance, as religion is, then our evidential standards concerning it should be set high, we should demand strong evidence before settling on what we believe.
In fact, religion is of unquantifiable importance - there is nothing more important than being right about the question of God’s existence - and we should therefore set our evidential standards infinitely high.
If this is correct, then the standard of evidence required for justified religious belief is so high that it can never be satisfied; we can never have enough evidence to form beliefs about such questions as whether God exists. In this way, the importance of religion works to suggest that we can never have religious knowledge, that we ought to remain agnostic.
http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/arguments-for-agnosticism/the-argument-from-uncertainty/
This is a good topic. I suggest you start a thread on it.
I just want to give you my own perspective on certainty before we start this discussion, so that we may know the positions we take in this debate/discussion. I would like to know if you personally hold the view you presented above or were they just a presentation of ideas relevant to my question? I hold this view on uncertainty, which I will flesh out more in subsequent posts -
"Strong and weak atheism make a clear distinction between rejecting a belief in god [practical behaviour as if god doesnt exist, even though he just might - non-acceptance of the claim of god's existence] and asserting the belief that god doesn't exist [an ideological claim that claims the god is knowable and that he doesnt exist]. I want to try and reconcile the two and say that the difference is a matter of probability - to the knowability of god and his existence. High knowability [gnostism] gives rise to strong a/theist while the opposite leads to weak a/theist. Belief in belief is another plane independent of these two.
God, if omnipotent, is under no obligation to do anything his omnipotence makes him capable of doing. So omnipotence couldn't rule out agnositism, and the choice in belief can be therefore independant of the "contradiction" implied against agnosticism - that if god exists and is omnipotent, he can reveal himself to us and thereby acertain his existence; as nothing like this has happened, we reject the claim of his existence till we have enough proof otherwise rather than withhold our judgement. So, this argument against Agnosticism is not valid. But, on the other hand, this doen't leave the situation 50-50. The point that if god is omnipotent he should make himself observable is not an absolute measure of god's presence, but its a good probabilistic weight against the claim of theism. Theists sometimes miss out that the stand of atheism is not a belief claim or a denial of god because its a probablity claim.
No sensible atheist would say that god doesn't exist for sure, because the prime reason for athiesm as well as the main alternative to theism is science [though the two could coexist and do so for about 7-9% of the scientific elite]. One could therefore only make a claim of probability [as required by scientism], like the existence of god being as likely as...say....spagetti monster, pink unicorn, celestial teapot, bigfoot, santa, etc. but a claim of absolute atheism [strong atheism] is a faith claim, its a claim similiar to saying you know exactly how many heads or tails will come up in 10K flips. Weak atheism is akin to saying that the exact number is unknowable [until flipped] and till then based on weighting of the coin and motion of the hand, etc, a probability of around 45-55% can be ascertained.
The claim to existence of god is similiar, but the coin is weighted - by observations, philosophy and the sciences. The yes side is losing the weight and the no side is being reinforced by science and philosophy, thereby shifting the probability, [IMPO] to somewhere around 85-95%. Like Zeno's paradox, we would never call it an even 100, it will always be 99.something, like it is today for the animal spirit that warns warblers when a cat approaches [fictitious example animism in tribal people]. Which is where the scientific methods of modelling and theorising come in, and the naturalist model is maintained as the only one, given its theories are proven beyond reasonable doubt to be a fitting and parsimonious explaination - like coincidence, placebo, baises, etc. And that is how [IMO] atheists resolve their rejection of the belief in God, something they cannot be certain about, only so much sure."
This is about a month old, modified from this thread -
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=111921
So please excuse my somewhat strong and/or militant ideas - more obvious the closer you get to my joining date to this site, and to my deconversion to atheism - I am just now finally putting back together the defragged pieces of my mentality. Like I said, I will refine it and flesh it out better if you wish, but this represents the basic gist of my ideas of uncertainty.
