Sárospataki Füzetek 2. (1998)
1998 / 1. szám - Dr. Frank Sawyer: Is there a place for God int he inn of Philosophy?
r0r. S^i-an/t Sa wyer necessary (being). In Kantian terms: we cannot prove noumenal things from phenomenal effects. 4. The MORAL proof for God says that God is the condition of the possibility of the highest good: the universal moral law requires a Lawgiver. Though Kant rejects any rational proof for God’s existence, he did argue that God is a necessary moral postulate. In other words: God is not rationally demonstrable, but he is a practical-moral presupposition. For example, Kant thought that since we cannot reach completion of the greatest good in this life, there must be a God and a future life. Along the way Kant asks four famous questions': 1) what can I know? (metaphysics) 2) what should I do? (ethics) 3) what may I hope? (religion) 4) what is man? (anthropology). Kant was fascinated by the possibilities of empirical science and reason, but also saw the limits of human knowledge. He noticed that pure reason keeps leaping forward to practical reason; that is, thinking relates to doing and to morality. We would not be wrong if we said that even though Kant wanted to analyze the possibilities of pure reason, philosophy for Kant kept hinting at theology. And so he could write: ’I therefore had to abolish knowledge in order to make room for faith.’ This is Kant’s SECOND STEP. God then becomes a useful or ’necessary’ postulate of’practical reason’. Kant means that the knowledge (proofs for God) had to be abandoned in order to accept God and moral demands on the basis of intuition. What is happening here? Hendrikus Berkof says: "It was Kant’s purpose to save religion as well as the Enlightenment: in this double objective, we think, lay his deepest passion as a thinker." Thomas Aquinas spoke about proofs for God’s existence; Kant spoke about pointers. Kant was trying to find a synthesis of pure reason and practical reason, without being dishonest about the limits of human knowledge. The task Kant undertook was to somehow get beyond both rationalism (which offers abstract knowledge without attention to concrete reality) and empiricism (which offers data without a structural perspective). In other words, thoughts are empty without empirical 'Colin Brown, Christianity and Western Thought, vol. I. (Leicester: Apollos, 1990), p.311. 24
