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1455
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Belief in justice requires belief in a place for justice (heaven), a time (eternity), and a cause (God) [Kant, by PG]
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Full Idea:
To believe in justice in an unjust world, you have to believe in a place of perfect justice (heaven), a time for perfect justice (eternity), and a cause of perfect justice (God).
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From:
report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.V) by PG - Db (ideas)
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A reaction:
Compare Boethius in Idea 5765. I can see that we might need to grasp the ideals of eternal justice in order to understand morality, but belief in their genuine possibility, or even actuality, doesn't seem to follow.
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6205
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To know if this world must have been created by God, we would need to know all other possible worlds [Kant]
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Full Idea:
We can't infer the existence of God from knowledge of this world, because we should have to know all possible worlds in order to compare them - in short, we should have to be omniscient - in order to say that it is possible only through a God.
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From:
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI)
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A reaction:
A nice remark, but not wholly convincing. This argument would block all attempts to work out necessities a priori, such as those of maths and logic. Must we know all possible worlds intimately to know that 2+2 is always 4?
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6204
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Using God to explain nature is referring to something inconceivable to explain what is in front of you [Kant]
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Full Idea:
To have recourse to God in explaining the arrangements of nature is not a physical explanation but a confession that one has come to the end of philosophy, since one assumes something of which one has no concept to conceive what is before one's eyes.
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From:
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI)
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A reaction:
Hume had many objections to the design argument, some of them positively sarcastic, but none as ruthless as this, since Kant (here) seems to find God to be a totally empty concept, and hence a complete non-starter as explanation for anything.
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6206
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From our limited knowledge we can infer great virtues in God, but not ultimate ones [Kant]
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Full Idea:
Since we know only a small part of the world, and cannot compare it with all possible worlds, we can infer from the order, design and magnitude to a wise, beneficent and powerful Author, but not that He is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful.
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From:
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI)
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A reaction:
This is very much in the spirit of David Hume, who inferred from the flaws in the world that God did not seem to be entirely competent. Hume is also more imaginative, in seeing that God might be a committee, or a hired workman.
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6202
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In all naturalistic concepts of God, if you remove the human qualities there is nothing left [Kant]
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Full Idea:
One can confidently challenge all pretended natural theologians to cite one single definitive attribute of their object, of which one could not irrefutably show that, when everything anthropomorphic is removed, only the word remains.
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From:
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.II.II.VI)
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A reaction:
This idea derives from Hume's very empiricist view of our understanding of God (Idea 2185), but Kant is (remarkably) more hostile than Hume, because he actually implies that most people's concept of God is totally vacuous.
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