Saturday, June 9, 2012

I Kant Stand It

So a friend of mine writes philosophical articles for examiner.  I'm going to comment on the one about Kant. First, I will summarize the article in layman's terms. 

Immanuel Kant wrote a book about "Critique of Pure Reason."  In that he questions the possibility of synthetic propositions.  Actual propositions are verified facts, while synthetic propositions are meaning derived from observations of the world.  This can include worldview, beliefs, things ingrained in you from your parents.  Synthetic propositions come about by reasoning instead of observation.  Kant explores synthetic propositions in math, natural science and metaphysics. 

Can synthetic propositions be possible in metaphysics?  Kant says, NO.  While reasoning is important in learning things, it is not the same as actually observing something empirically.  Most of the time, scientists want to know what caused things, then they find the causes and try to find what caused them.  They are on an endless quest for an unconditional something that caused all these conditions.  Scientists see noumena, or things that can be seen, and try to find the phenomena behind all that. 

To Kant, the phenomena cannot be found.  It cannot be proven despite the good reasoning behind it.  If you can't see it, you can't prove it.  This includes God and the supernatural.

I think that's the gist of the articles.  In other words, Kant thinks metaphysics are pointless because they are intangible.  Any scientist will research the world from the viewpoint of his religious upbringing, causing a bias in every conclusion from their research. 

Kant is right.  Unless a person is taken by the Holy Spirit, he will never truly believe in God's revelation or a world beyond this one.  These people will not be able to prove God to non-believers who know the truth but don't want anyone ruling them.  And even Kant in his agnosticism knows that every cause in this world had to be caused by something, eventually leading up to some uncaused cause. 

And the organization of Answers in Genesis bases their whole scientific research on their literal Biblical worldview showing that evolution did not happen, but the flood did happen and made this world look old.  They have such reasoning that a hardened theistic evolutionist can leave their museum completely changed to young-earth creationism.  However, this only works on people the Lord has saved.  Those who will never surrender to the Lord will believe the truth no matter how compelling the evidence.  And they have Kant to thank for their stubborn decisions.

No comments:

Post a Comment