It's false and misleading to try and portray them as equivalent. A sceptical empiricist does not believe in certainties unless they are true by definition (e.g. 1+1=2). Whereas a religious believer believes in certainties when there is little or no evidence at all to support them, and even if there is a lot of evidence against them. No one with a modicum of knowledge about philosophy of science thinks that the physical sciences "prove" anything. They are simply a working estimate based on current knowledge, employed to understand and use nature and the universe to our benefit.
A sceptical empiricist simply states his knowledge as a probability estimate based on sense-data and any inferences that can be made from them. That theory has no holes or assumptions because he recognises that both the sense-data inputs, and the working hypothesis of induction may both be false. That is about as much of a polar opposite to faith-based belief (which is driven by emotions rather than deductive logical reasoning) as it is possible to get.
Compare this to the mindset of a believer. Look at this thread for the perfect example - people making the argument that something as complex as man could not have arisen by chance, therefore there must be a designer. That's a classic example of overconfidence without sufficient supporting evidence. First of all, even if god appeared before our eyes and told us that he designed the universe, that would not provide *certainty* that he exists. Our senses could be deceiving us, we could be hallucinating, someone else could be creating an illusion to fool us etc. Yet here we have an argument that claims certainty (not just high probability, but 100% confidence), and the only evidence is the claim that man could not have arisen by chance. No statistical significance testing to see what the odds of complexity arriving by random chance are; no examination of the possibility that an unthinking system of natural selection with a quasi-random evolutionary component could have resulted in this. And yet despite this, a mere query of an alternative explanation is providing *certainty* to them. This is completely illogical.
Let us be clear here - even if it were proven beyond all doubt that evolution does not occur, even if it were proven beyond all doubt that random chance has never before in the universe been able to lead to complexity, this would still not give sufficient confidence to be *certain* about any theory of creation at all. It would simply mean we had probably eliminated one or two potential explanations. That is all that can be logically inferred from it.
If even repeated sightings of god himself cannot give us 100% certainty that he exists, then no sightings plus no actual proof of intelligent design cannot do this. And, since there has yet to be an actual disproof of evolution or the possibility of natural selection or random chance leading to complexity, we are not even in the position of having dismissed several plausible alternative theories.
Given all this, to believe in absolute certainty that god exists, is clearly not justified by any reasoning process or evidence. The most plausible alternative explanation is that people believe for emotional reasons first, and then look around for arguments to rationalize what they want to believe anyway, just like a defense attorney comes up with arguments that may sway the minds of a jury, more than actually trying to find out if his client is innocent or guilty. No doubt many atheists do this too, however, that does not imply anything at all about people following a sceptical empirical approach to belief formation.
Sceptical empiricism and faith-based belief are polar opposites. The former has worked well as the foundation of scientific knowledge and progress. The latter has worked appallingly, giving us numerous totally disastrous assumptions and flawed theories about reality. It is pretty obvious which is more likely to be useful and correct. Anyone using faith as the basis of their belief is most likely committing a major thought error. Anyone using empiricism, tentative assumptions based on evidence and logic, cannot possibly be *certain* that god exists. The absolute most that can be assumed, given our current state of knowledge, is that he might. I am not aware of a single monotheistic religious person who goes around practicing their religion on the basis that there is a reasonable chance god might not exist and their beliefs might be totally wrong, something that *any* rational person is always aware of as a possibility.
