Steven Den Beste has a long post on why he is not a "raving atheist." The point of the post is to establish his position that there is no ontological difference between his atheistic position and a believer in ethical monotheism's theistic position. Den Beste spends a lot of digital ink pointing out that knowledge is either ontologically inductive or deductive. Inductive knowledge is based on a model of mathemtics and moves from unassailable premises to inevitable conclusions. Deductive knowledge is empirical and requires a host of examples from which one can draw probablistic statements of the real world.

Although this appears to be a hot topic among atheists, who apparently believe that they are in possession of the Truth because they don't believe in "sky god, baby talk," Den Beste's conclusion borders on the banal. Obviously, one can be no more certain of atheism than theism, but not because of ontology. Rather, the problem is epistomology. There is simply no such thing as a rationalistic knowledge of the empirical world. Our only knowledge of the real world is based upon our examination of the real world. One can construct beautiful models of the universe through mathematics or geometry which are consistent and indisputable and wrong. Do the interior angles of a triangle add up to 180 degrees? Rene DesCartes proved that they did, and he is wong on a relativistic scale.

Does God exist? If you don't accept Anselm's Ontological Proof of the Existence of God, all you are left with is empirical data. One data point in favor of the existence of God would be if Jesus was resurreced from the dead. I take it that if one saw Jesus dead and then Jesus alive and He explained that this was the result of God, one might take this as evidence for the existence of God.

Was Jesus resurrected? I don't know. I believe He was. Why? Because I have trust in the Church which vouches for it. That source of knowledge incidentally is no different than my belief in Sulla or Charlemagne.
Is the Church's testimony wrong? I don't know how you're going to prove such a thing by logic or reason. You really can't. You can marshall arguments against that testimony. You can point out the improbability of the testimony. [But, frankly, history is by its nature pure contingency and improbable.] You can engage in ad hominem attacks, which can explain the childish mockery of religion that some atheists engage in. [Frankly, Den Beste's position is almost uniquely mature from what I've read on the internet.]

The breakdown of the world between inductive and deductive ontologies and epistomologies does have a glitch. There may be a completely different from of knowledge entirely. Some knowledge may be "noetic," which involves intuition or inspiration. Although I am deeply skeptical about such knowledge claims, at least one of the greatest thinkers believed that noetic knowledge was possible. Saint Aquinas believed that the Angels didn't reason so much as they exercised intuition. In addition, you do have the troubling examples of mathematicians whose greatest insights appear to be noetic:

For the notion of the inspired moment of mathematical creation, we have Henri Poincaré himself partially to thank. Poincaré was not only a monumental figure in the mathematics of the late 19th century but a popular writer on science, creativity, and philosophy. In a famous 1908 lecture at the Société de Psychologie in Paris, he recounted his discovery, at the age of 28, of a principle underlying the theory of automorphic functions.

Just at this time I left Caen, where I was then living, to go on a geological excursion under the auspices of the school of mines. The changes of travel made me forget my mathematical work. Having reached Countances, we entered an omnibus to go some place or other. At the moment when I put my foot on the step the idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it, that the transformations I had used to define the Fuchsian functions were identical with those of non-Euclidean geometry. I did not verify the idea; I should not have had time, as, upon taking my seat in the omnibus, I went on with a conversation already commenced, but I felt a perfect certainty. On my return to Caen, for conscience's sake I verified the result at my leisure.

Poincaré's story is the most famous contemporary account of mathematical creation.

Is this a true form of knowledge? It's hardly scientific knowledge, which is quintessentially empirical. It's also tremendously limited since others may not be willing to accept your intuition on faith alone. But it may be a legitimate source of knowledge.

And, if it is, then claims of certainty by atheists become even more problematic.