Eric Hovind propagates a version of this argument too. What I see, though, is bad epistemology in this argument. I'm a Christian, but I see that the epistemology under-girding the argument isn't good.
I couldn't find a good, short, to the point, video on the argument, so I'm posting one with Eric Hovind. He's trying to use the argument on a 6th grader who is interacting with the argument quite well, independent of who is right or wrong. I'm posting it primarily because the argument I want to focus on is blatantly stated for clarity's sake.
Eric starts off by saying without God, you can't know anything. In a sense, I agree here, but not for Eric's reasons.
Next, if you could be wrong about everything, knowledge is given up. In other words, if you don't know everything, you can't have certain knowledge about any particular thing. Then, a motive is inserted to the effect that knowledge is purposely given up to deny the God we know deep-down exists. The motive-aspect of the argument I find sort of a waste and beside the point. Though I agree there is suppression of the truth in unrighteousness, I'm not sure it's tactically efficient to bring this up in this context.
To recap: could you be wrong about everything you claim to know? I would answer yes. The thesis is epistemologically harmless. But the inference he makes is that if you could be wrong, then it's not knowledge. That's the rub. I see no reason why this is so. The other point is: unless you know everything, you can't be sure about anything you know. Before I get to the point, let me underline an analogy Sye makes.
He typically asks whether you know what the speed limit on a highway is if you could be wrong about it. Now, it sounds counter-intuitive to think you could still know it if you could be wrong. But in essence there's nothing wrong with this. It depends on what is meant by 'could'. If the suggestion is that 'could' means 'logically possible', that's a harmless obstacle to knowledge. All 'logically possible' means is that in some possible world, it's true I don't know what the speed limit is. But it doesn't follow by any rule of inference that I don't know what the speed limit is in the actual world.
In some possible world I could be a bat. It doesn't follow that in the actual world I'm not a human. For a state of affairs to be possible all that's needed is that there's no contradiction. For example, it's logically impossible (re. there is no possible world) that there is a round-square, or a married bachelor, or a one-ended stick. So, when Sye insists that I don't know anything because I could be a brain in a vat, the fact that I 'could be' in no way means I don't know that I'm not. This gets to the crux of the issue. The fundamental cornerstone to Sye's epistemology is that knowledge is certainty: the only knowledge that qualifies is the certain kind, the kind where it's logically impossible for me to be wrong. This goes against the whole spirit of possible world modality and metaphysics.
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Logical possibility has no bearing on knowledge. It also seems to refute itself. If I don't know that I'm a brain in a vat because I could be wrong that I'm not, then it also follows that I do know I'm not a brain in a vat because I could be wrong that I am. What could be said then? But all that is neither here nor there. There is no good reason to think that knowledge equals certainty, because there's no good reason to think logical possibility is a sufficient block to knowledge of what's actual. And you can have knowledge of the actual even if, in some possible world, things are otherwise, since it's entirely reasonable to think that things could have been otherwise than they are. If they couldn't, then everything happens necessarily: no free will.
Another point. Eric sometimes asks whether it's possible I could be wrong about everything. I actually don't think that's logically possible. Suppose the only thing I believed was that it's logically possible I could be wrong about everything. I couldn't be wrong about that, since if I could be, then it 'confirms' that I believe that it's logically possible I could be wrong about everything. So, the supposition that I could be wrong about everything refutes itself if one of the things I believed was that it's logically possible I could be wrong about everything.
I've also heard Sye speak of knowledge as justified, true belief, but that definition has suffered debilitating criticism from Edmond Gettier. Christian philosophers have swayed into Rodrick Chisholm's particularism as elucidated in The Problem of the Criterion. That's the epistemology that has persuaded me.
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