1) An absolute statement that something is not knowable would need to provide universal knowledge to prove. For someone to say that something cannot be known, they would need to know all the pieces of information about a certain topic so that they can actually validate the claim that something is not knowable, in other words, proving a negative. Some non-Christians (mainly agnostics) claim that a negative cannot be proven, such as, "You cannot prove that God does not exist." The non-Christian states, "It is impossible to prove a negative since there is nothing there that would need to be proved." This is a false statement because negatives are proved all the time, for example, there are no living Unicorns on planet earth, I am not black, there are no Muslims at my Christian University, etc. So it is a false claim that a negative cannot be proved, though, it is harder for one to prove it since to prove a negative you would need absolute knowledge about what you are trying to prove. This is unlike affirming a positive, since all you would need to do is search until you find it, and once you find it, you would not need to go beyond it. For example, I look for my car keys in my friends house and I do not find them there after I look all over the house, I can conclude accurately that my keys are not at his house, but if I look for my car keys in my house and I look in the family room, then the bathroom, then my bedroom and find them, I do not need to search the kitchen, the living room, the laundry room...etc.
So, for one to state that God cannot be known is to say that they have absolute knowledge, of all knowledge, and know every pathway of life, and finally conclude that God cannot be known. To combat this I will not say that a person does not know everything (because we all have been teenagers, we knew everything at one point or another we just forget it the older we get hahaha), but I would simply ask them, "Do you know everything about everything there is to know? or are you making a statement of faith?" If they do know everything about everything, they are fooling themselves; but if they state that they do not know everything about everything, it cannot be an accurate assessment that "God is not knowable."
2) One would need to know absolute knowledge to affirm a negative which I have shown already that takes out one leg of the agnostic's argument, but do we need absolute knowledge to affirm a positive? do we need to have certainty to affirm any knowledge? This is again, simple. It was answered in the last point when I said in my analogy about looking for my car keys, "...if I look for my car keys in my house and I look in the family room, then the bathroom, then my bedroom and find them, I do not need to search the kitchen, the living room, the laundry room...etc." But what about the question that may come from this, "could there be even more than what we know? since we have not explored every option, nothing can be known for certain." This is the harder question to answer by the Christian and seems to be the most common in agnosticism. I like what Dr. Bill Craig states about this::
Notice that they equate knowledge with certainty. If you’re not certain that some proposition p is true, then you do not know that p. But what justification is there for that assumption? I know that I have a head, for example. But I could be a brain in a vat of chemicals being stimulated by a mad scientist to think that I have a body. Does this mere possibility imply that I do not know that I have a head? If your friends answer, “Yes,” ask them for their justification for thinking that knowledge requires certainty. Anything they say, you can reply to by asking, “Are you certain of that?” If they say, “No,” then they don’t know that knowledge requires certainty. If they say, “Yes,” then it’s not true after all that we can’t know anything about life, the universe, or logic.
Scepticism, ironically, draws its life’s blood from claims to have a good deal of knowledge. For example, your friends claim to know, “Since every possible option has not been explored, nothing can be said for certain.” That statement is itself a claim to knowledge! (A claim that is patently false, but never mind!) How do they know that? Or again, how do they know that “Since nothing can be said for certain, we cannot say that your premisses are absolutely true”? This is a claim to knowledge (again, funnily enough, a false claim, but never mind). Or how about the claim, “If the premisses cannot be proven absolutely true, then there is no reason to believe them”? How do they know that? (Again, this seems patently false, but leave that to the side.) Where do these sceptics come up with all this knowledge?
And if we cannot know anything about logic, how can they reason:
1. Since every possible option has not been explored, nothing can be said for certain.2. Since nothing can be said for certain, all of the premises that you pose may seem true to us, but we cannot say they are absolutely true.3. If they cannot be proven absolutely true, then there is no reason to believe them.
That looks to me for all the world like the premisses for the logical inference form called Hypothetical Syllogism! But if that inference rule is not true, then no conclusion follows from (1-3) and we have no reason to doubt my original argument.
The fundamental problem with scepticism is that it presupposes that in order to know p, you must know that you know p. But if I can know some truth without knowing how it is that I know it, then the nerve of scepticism is severed. The sceptic actually is making a very radical claim, for which he cannot provide any justification without pulling the rug from beneath his own feet.
Scepticism is thus strangely presumptuous and self-defeating. It relies on our having knowledge of some very non-obvious claims. The sceptic cannot provide any justification of those claims, lest his view becomes self-referentially incoherent; yet without them his scepticism collapses, for then my lack of certainty does not imply that I have a lack of knowledge. (1)
Put simply, many claim that we need to know with certainty a claim that we have for that claim to knowledge to be true. It is a claim to knowledge to say that something can or cannot be known, and since they cannot provide an accurate justification for their claim without claiming they have knowledge to something 1 of 2 thing will happen, 1) they will only make the claim to an incoherent argument since they cannot provide justification for it, or 2) they destroy their own argument by making a knowledgable claim that knowledge cannot be known, and they say this with certainty. Either or, to say that God is not knowable is a fallacious argument unless God does not exist.
There are 2 final questions that stem from here, "Does God exist?" and "How can we know God?" Which I will post eventually, but I encourage you to read a few books::
Does God Exist?
Reasonable Faith by William Lane Craig
Christian Apologetics by Norman Geisler
The Resurrection of Jesus by Michael Licona
The Historical Jesus by Gary Habermas
Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel
Case for Christ by Lee Strobel
I Don't have enough faith to be an Atheist by Frank Turek and Norman Geisler
....and many more (be sure to look in the footnotes and bibliographies of these books for other suggested readings)
Also check out Apologetics 315's recommended book list for more books on the existence of God and other topics involved with the defense of the Christian position.
How can we know God?
The Holy Bible
Knowing God by J.I. Packer
Desiring God by John Piper
All of Grace by Charles Spurgeon
Basic Christianity by John Stott
50 Reasons Why Jesus Came To Die by John Piper
Has Christianity Failed You? By Ravi Zacharias
Our Awesome God by John MacArthur
....and many more (be sure to look in the footnotes and bibliographies of these books for other suggested readings)
And for both of these sections I have a massive book list that I want to get which I could send you if you would like.
God bless you and may the knowledge of Him fill your heart and the love of Christ surround you and bless you.
(1) http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=8490
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