2 hours ago, DonAthos said:
Hypotheticals are always a fraught business*. Whether omniscience is required for “certainty” is another discussion (and actually, one we’ve had together), but if we take “certainty” as “a measure of confidence, with ‘certain’ being one extreme,” then we can reasonably posit a person or persons certain of something, yet not omniscient – can we not?
Certainly. I merely meant to exclude hypotheticals involving literal impossibilities or unknowables Absolute certainty about the life shortening effects of eating ice cream would be one such hypothetical. OTOH, I might entertain a hypothetical about life on other planets; there is evidence that life does evolve on planets, after all. The point, as I said earlier, is that such hypotheticals cannot lead to conclusions about reality.