The Christian Perspective
by

The short answer is no.

But depending on exactly how the words in the question are defined, that could make a difference in how the question is answered.


KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is generally understood to at least require justified, true belief. It may entail more than that, but it at least requires those elements.

What this means is that if someone is justified in believing something, but that something is false, then it cannot correctly be said that they "know" it. What's more, if someone believes something that is in fact true, but there is no rational justification for their belief, then likewise it cannot be said that they "know" it.

For example, imagine that you asked me my name, already knowing that my name is Timothy. Imagine that I told you that my name is Timothy. Sounds good so far, right?

Now imagine that you ask me why I think my name is Timothy. If I told you that I think my name is Timothy because the sky is made of molten lava, and therefore, of necessity, my name is Timothy, you would at first think that I am joking. However, if you found out that I was entirely serious, you would probably conclude that I was insane. You may conclude that I am completely irrational and I don't really "know" anything at all, and that if the babble coming out of my mouth happened to correspond to reality, it would be entirely accidental.

The key word there is "accidental".

If there is no God, then every belief we hold, every conclusion we come to, and every assertion we make is ultimately accidental. If our beliefs are accidental, they cannot be said to be rationally justified. Instead, they are irrational, no more justified than the beliefs of an insane person, and we cannot be said to "know" anything at all. Atheism, thus, demands absolute irrationality.

Now note that each of us comes pre-programmed with a foundation for rational thought. From the moment we begin to exist, we already recognize, for example, that the entire universe and everything in it is non-contradictory. We know contradictions are false before we learn anything at all. If this were not the case, learning itself would be impossible.

If this pre-programming is accidental, as atheists claim, then it is without rational justification. However, if it is intentionally directed by a rational entity for the purposes of enabling us to come to rational conclusions, then it is rationally justified. Compare, for example, the irrational conclusions of the Magic-8-ball with the rationally justified conclusions of the calculator. Which of the two was rationally programmed to come to rational conclusions?


PROGRAMMING VERSUS REVELATION

I've explained above why, in order for humans to be able to "know" things, we must (and indeed we all do) base our thinking on God's pre-programming of us. Everything we truly "know", therefore, is based on God's providing us with an informational groundwork.

However, the word "revelation" may, in some people's minds, connote the idea of something we did not know that was then revealed to us. The things we have been pre-programmed with are things that we cannot be said to have not known. Before we knew it, we didn't exist to be ignorant of it.

If this is more the meaning that the questioner had for the question, a meaning that excludes initial programming, then my answer changes from no to yes, since pre-programming gives us knowledge to begin with. Revelation would, under this definition of the word, only come after we begin to exist, and when we begin to exist, we already have knowledge, such as the knowledge that contradictions are false.

So, under this definition of revelation, knowing that contradictions are false is something we know independent of "revelation".


CONCLUSION

What we know is absolutely dependent upon God making things known to us. Otherwise, based on what we understand "knowledge" to be in common parlance, no one has any of it at all... and all beliefs are rationally unjustified.

However, there is a God (Genesis 1:1; John 1:1). A rational God (Exodus 3:14). A God who never contradicts Himself (2 Timothy 2:13), who created everything other than Himself (John 1:3; Acts 17:24) and knows it all perfectly (2 Timothy 2:13; John 21:17). A God who cannot lie (Titus 1:2; Hebrews 6:18; John 14:6).

And He designed us with an innate knowledge of these facts about Himself (Romans 1:20). We live by His programming every single day. Every time we come to a conclusion about anything at all, we do so in faith that the God who created us programmed us correctly, and that the world He created cannot possibly contradict itself, because God cannot cause things to be that He does not cause to be.

Each and every one of us places full trust in the perfect nature of God every time we think.

But many of us refuse to trust this same trustworthy God to save us from the results of our own disobedience, results that cannot possibly be good (Romans 3:23, 6:23).

We already trust Him with our reasoning. Why not also trust Him to save us? (Romans 10:9-11; 1 John 1:9; Hebrews 10:23)