Now, I have not read Kant, but my well-read new friend theonefroberg says that he proved that you can’t make intelligent statements about god, because of something or other.
Assuming that this is true, then wouldn’t the only method of choice between religions be a pragmatist consideration of their benefit?
Hi thezeus18
Yes, and it is a serious question. What do you want? How can religion help in this want?
For me for example, I have a keen interest in “meaning” How can I experience “meaning.” This is personal. I also have a chess player’s mind. I appreciate logic and common sense. My religion then strives to unite meaning as originating from a higher source with the knowledge we know as science on earth. In this way I can strive to be a complete human being in which science and religion, psychology including the arts, become complimentary.
This is my pragmatic concern but you must define yours.
Dudeman, chill.
I’ll explain after my finals are over (ie tomorrow). Don’t go slammin’ someone’s ideas while they’re busy gettin’ slammed by hardcore university classes!
Is high school fun?
Me too mate, my bag is PC strategy games, I hang with internet clubs and play by e-mail with doods all over the world, Combat Mission is my numero uno game, I picked up a silver trophy for topping a league a couple of years ago, I’m kool…
It’s not high school that’s doing this to me. It’s 2 classes at Northwestern University.
Mick
I hate to admit it but I’m not cool. I appreciate chess because of its depth and internal wholeness. This is why idiot savants are possible in chess as in music and math.
I just cannot get into video games. The art isn’t in it that I find in chess.
“I’m kool…”
Stay cool man, yeah.
I like games too. They rock. Out loud. Yeah.
Going back to the topic, it’s certainly the case that the Kantian philosophy is silent when it comes to god. Kant - who was a christian - trod what I think he called “the honest path of metaphysics” and he didn’t meet god on the way. It’s well known that he kept some of his metaphysical views on religion secret for a number of years because the powers that be didn’t want their established religion threatened.
You can’t derive the existence of god from science, nor from maths, nor even from proper metaphysics. It is, and will probably always remain, speculative.
Re probing the thing-in-itself, that’s one of the main challenges of philosophy, and I wish all the best to anyone who tries it. I wouldn’t be so bold as to say that the thing-in-itself and god are the same thing!
If god is a thing in itself how does it interact with us? Doesn’t seem possible.