Does God Exist? Kant’s Answer

[williambenjamin]

I love it when people have the ability to break down incredibly rich and difficult subjects so that ordinary folks (like me!) can grasp it. This is the gift of a true teacher.

[dr.satishsharma]

beautifully, elegantly explained in simple layman's language with deep meaning... thanks 🙏.

[olrwestbuckland]

Love Kant, his phenomenal / noumenal blew my mind, that we, with our human brains cant every comprehend and experience everything. That God could exist but we cant really know him as he is.

[davidholman]

There are days when I'm not even sure I exist.

[Eugene]

Anytime I talk about this with someone I always say imagine you could reduce yourself down to the tiniest particle and still possess consciousness. Imagine how different everything would appear. It would be alien, but just as real as before you were shrunk. As Huxley mused, "knowledge is a function of being." This same Kantian idea exists in some of the eastern philosophies, and it was Schopenhauer who noticed these similarities, and gave us his views on it, as well. Very interesting stuff. Thanks

[ADude-fz]

The comedy here happens when a mortal with a finite brain tries to “define” an omnipresent being and/or its intentions…

Maybe that’s where Dante got his title?

[ManergoTones]

TO THINK someone thought so deeply on an abstract level 220 years ago that is relevant today. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy, applied to computers, suggests that our understanding of tech is shaped by how we perceive and think about it, but we can’t fully grasp the true essence of its inner workings.

[DouglasBernes]

"The preacher said a prayer
To save every single hair
On his head--
He's dead."~Emerson Lake and Palmer, _Tarkus_

[carlosmarquez]

The argument assumes existence in another category, so Kant is adding attribute/characteristic to God, and for that, God needs to exist, so it's presupposed.

[stephenmerritt]

As a Christian, I understand the whole thing. It makes sense, at least in the layman description. Of course, one would have to have a relatively thorough understanding of Christian philosophy first. It reminds me of an essay by CS Lewis, namely 'transposition', for example, or 'meditations from a toolshed'.

It is as if there are two realities at play, one physical, the other metaphysical, where reality is a constant transpositioning from a higher medium into a lower medium. To reference the video, the tree represents one medium and the camera the lower, preceded and followed by higher and lower mediums.

Another analogy would be of a house. There is the house we see made of 2x4s and concrete, and then there is the home imagined by the person wanting the house built. One physical, the other metaphysical, both being real since the idea is communicable. It's really no different than the relationship between emotions and language, or music to song lyrics.

[maharaja]

Alot of what Kantt says is strikingly similar to what the Buddha said. Not only this, but also Kant's morality and categorical imperative as well.

The Buddha said, "What is the All? Simply the eye & forms, ear & sounds, nose & aromas, tongue & flavors, body & tactile sensations, intellect & ideas. This, monks, is called the All. Anyone who would say, 'Repudiating this All, I will describe another, ' if questioned on what exactly might be the grounds for his statement, would be unable to explain, and furthermore, would be put to grief. Why? Because it lies beyond range." -Samyutta Nikaya 35.23 (Sabba Sutta)

The Buddha too said, we cannot really know whether something exists or not. We cannot experience anything as it truly is. We can only experience as much as our 5 senses can capture. We can only experience our own mental image of sights, sounds, scents, tastes, bodily feelings, and thoughts, but we cannot actually experience the object itself. The Buddha said, the whole world revolves around these 6.

For example, the light rays which a human can see, are different from the visible spectrum of light rays another animal can see. The visible spectrum is very small compared to the full EM spectrum. The same goes for sound waves heard by the ear. There is more which your senses cannot detect, than they can detect. Even the hardness felt by the body, scents smelled by the nose, and tastes felt by the tongue, have their own range.

So, when a human looks at an object. And a cat, and a dog, and a mouse all look at it. Because our eyes can see only different frequencies of light, we all see it differently. So then, we cannot say that we see it correctly. Because ultimately, it's all subjective. It's exactly like the example in the video, about how a camera takes a picture of a tree, and the camera represents it as 0's and 1's. But the tree is not actually 0's and 1's. The same thing is happening with us.

So the Buddha says, we have not actually liked, or disliked anyone, or anything, or any place. When something comes to our senses, our mind creates a mental image of it (pali: mano rupa). And based on this mental image, the body or mind feels a sensation (Pali: vedana). And this sensation is either pleasant or unpleasant. And it is this sensation that people like, or dislike, not the external world itself. We only like or dislike our own mental images and thoughts, in other words.

For example, When you read a story book. The book is just letters. But you become sad, or angry, or happy, according to the story. But where is the story? The story is actually just something your mind makes up. The story is not in the book. The book is just letters. The story is actually in your own mind. Your mind creates YOUR world around you. You are actually reacting to your own mind which is the 5 aggregates (panca upadana khandha)

Dhammapada Verse 1 & 2: All mental phenomena have mind as their forerunner; they have mind as their chief; they are mind-made. -Gautama Buddha

[ivorfaulkner]

Kant( according to the brief video) is an agnostic, a sceptic. But I have to agree with Blaise Pascal’s comment: “ Le coeur a ses raisons que la Raison ne connaît point” meaning: the heart has its reasons which Reason doesn’t know anything about.

[FIREWARRIOR]

This is Kant's initial position, but his ethico-theology and physico-theology at the end of the third critique form the basis of reasonable belief in God as a moral lawgiver and world-cause. From this we can assert God has purposes and values which align with his purpose in creation - the faithful and pious obedience of man to the moral law.

[dominicthomas]

It makes perfect sense to me. After all its mentioned in the Bible " My ways are not your ways. "

Now, this small statement make a whole big-tonne of sense. After all we humans ( most of us ) only take the things which are measurable and finite into account, disregarding the existence of many things beyond everything.

[BERTRANDTIECHE]

This makes me think of the philosophy of Epicurus Epicurus who evaded the problem of the gods by affirming that these being happy and possessing everything, they will never turn to us, and that we therefore have nothing to expect from them. If the gods exist, men have no interest or importance for them. The problem of the existence of god is therefore also without interest.

[alexmeijer]

Aquinas was able to say a whole lot about the nature of God, based on the simple observation that everything physical has a cause. Working backwards from that he was able to show that God must exist and that His essence is existence. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Kant!

[hityourpotential]

OK soooo. If radio waves can be noumenal but can be made into per say "music" by a radio receiver, than if god is noumenal he may not be able to be felt, smelled, or tasted, but with the right "instrument be "heard" or "felt" by people?

[snapdragon]

Radio waves actually smell a little like pork sausage on a charcoal grill in the summer time just as the sun is about to set and a breeze slips in from the east

[arhabersham]

If God is (similar to) a radio wave, Jesus is certainly the radio

[AmorLucisPhotography]

This is a really just John Hick's application of Kantian transcendentalism to the Divine. Except the Kant asserts the necessary existence of the noumenal as a preseupposition for the possibility of experience, much as Hick affirms the necessary existence of the Divine as a presupposition for the very possiiblity of Divine experience.