The (Imaginary) God of Pure Reason: How Kant Rejected Rational Theology and Paved the Way for Humanism

[u/EclecticReader39]

Very few thinkers today would claim that the ontological argument proves the existence of God. Yet Immanuel Kant demonstrated how all arguments for God’s existence ultimately depend on this single, flawed idea. 

Kant is therefore an underappreciated figure in the history of atheism, and did nothing less than undermine the entire foundation of rational theology.  

The (Imaginary) God of Pure Reason: Kant on the Failure of Rational Theology

[u/Techtrekzz]

Kant had an argument for God, one based on morality instead of ontology.

Kant was a theist, and argued for theism.

[u/thePantherT → u/Techtrekzz]

Which is funny because he couldn’t hold his own against Diderot and the secularists!!!

[u/Techtrekzz → u/thePantherT]

I don’t buy his argument either, but framing him as some founding father of atheism is just disingenuous.

[u/bunker_man → u/Techtrekzz]

Tbf op didn't say that. Unless the article did.

[u/thePantherT → u/Techtrekzz]

I agree, and his arguments for theism were his greatest vulnerability and weakness among the philosoph.

[u/Techtrekzz → u/thePantherT]

I disagree. His greatest weakness in my estimation is his dualism. He fundamentally sees reality as a dichotomy. He frames his dualism as distinct from Descartes by claiming it’s a dualism between what we experience vs what really is, as opposed to between mind and matter, but i find the two dualisms functionally synonymous.

Of course his idea of God is also dualistic, and that makes it a weak argument, but arguments for God are not necessarily dualistic or weak. Take Spinoza for example.

[u/thePantherT → u/Techtrekzz]

Interesting take, and I have to agree with your assessment completely. With the exception that Spinoza was not arguing for a god in any religious sense, but rather, equating nature and existence itself as god.

[u/Techtrekzz → u/thePantherT]

Spinoza’s God is nature, but it’s nature as a literal omnipresent, supreme as in ultimate being. Whether that’s religious or not, depends on your definition of religion.

[u/thePantherT → u/Techtrekzz]

But ultimate being in a scientific mathematical material philosophical sense, being is just “existence, or nature” itself. As for it being “supreme” Spinoza defines it as such because it it eternal or infinite and therefore a greater state of perfection than men, who seek the same thing, life longevity and to improve their state towards perfection. Spinoza explicitly defines nature or god as not having a will or intention or anything else, but instead everything is the way it is because of the nature and infinite attributes of the universe and laws of nature, explicitly rejecting the idea of a religious god. By every definition Spinoza was an atheist.

When you strip away will, intention, purpose, providence, and teleology, you have functionally removed the operational definition of a religious deity. In Spinoza's Ethics, he explicitly rails against the idea that God acts for the sake of an end or has a purpose, famously writing that if triangles could speak, they would say God is eminently triangular. To Spinoza, teleology is a human projection, we look at the world backwards, mistake the effects for causes, and people invent a cosmic architect to flatter their own desire for meaning.
Calling something "supreme" merely because it is infinite, self caused, and logically necessary is a structural definition, not a theological one.

That is precisely why Bayle and his other contemporary critics labeled him the "systematic atheist." And they were right, Spinoza established a revolutionary metaphysical basis which would later become the foundations of human rights representative government and scientific inquiry.

[u/Techtrekzz → u/thePantherT]

Very much not in a material sense. Spinoza predates materialism, and im very sure he would see both materialism and idealism as nothing more than extensions of dualism.

Here’s a question he might ask, are mind and matter the same substance with the same attributes?

If the answer is yes, you are a substance monist, and there’s no justification to make a distinction between mind and matter, and no argument to be made for materialism or idealism.

If the answer no, you are a substance dualist.

Spinoza’s substance has every possible attribute, mind and matter(thought and extension), being only two such attributes. The substance has the attributes of both, everywhere always, but is exclusively neither.

Spinoza’s God is not a personal God, meaning you can’t ask favors or expect forgiveness from Spinoza’s God, but it is a conscious being, the only conscious being.

Spinoza’s substance is the only thing that objectively exists. Human beings, do not objectively exist. They are modes of God, as is anything you consider a thing. You can’t have a relationship with Spinoza’s God, not because Spinoza’s God isn’t conscious, but because Spinoza’s God is not a separate being from you.

From the Ethics, Part II, Corollary to Proposition 11:

"The human mind is a part of the infinite intellect of God. Therefore, when we say that the human mind perceives this or that, we are saying nothing but that God... has this or that idea."

“You” as an individual human being, don’t even exist in Spinoza’s metaphysics, only God exists, and you are but limited perspective of God. The consciousness you think belongs to you, actually belongs to God.

It’s the monism that defines it as an omnipresent supreme being, not the fact that it’s infinite, but the fact that it is the only thing that exists. It’s reality as a single, continuous, thing and being.

If only one thing exists, that one thing acquires every possible attribute that can exist, including attributes like all power, all knowledge, and even all thought and being, including even what you consider your thought and being.

It’s supreme in the sense that it can not be any greater than it already is, as there is no attribute that does not apply to it.

If only one thing exists, then by logical necessity, that one thing is an omnipresent, supreme as in ultimate, being.

Im sure you can name multiple atheists who have tried to claim Spinoza as their own, just as the op just tried to claim Kant, but Spinoza was no atheist. If anything he was absolutely intoxicated by God. God is his everything.

[u/EclecticReader39 → u/Techtrekzz]

It is sometimes the case that a historical thinker either (1) doesn’t take their argument far enough, or (2) unintentionally works against their stated purposes. For Kant, we can reject his invocation of faith, but his arguments against the traditional, rational proofs of God’s existence are brilliant and remain relevant. 

[u/Techtrekzz → u/EclecticReader39]

Only if you buy into his dualism and definitions. Granted the Abrahamics have to buy into dualism, but not all theists do.

[u/EclecticReader39 → u/Techtrekzz]

This is addressed in the article. Kant attacks all arguments for the existence of God in the Critique of Pure Reason. Kant does not believe in rational theology, or the ability for the mind to transcend its own experience to prove God’s existence. In this, Kant was successful. 

Kant made room for faith, on moral grounds, but we need not follow him in this regard. But the fact that his moral philosophy envisioned a God quite different from the God of organized religion does not invalidate his critiques of the traditional arguments for God’s existence. 

Kant showed us how to reject God on rational grounds. We can go one step further and reject the moral need for God. But Kant is still, in my opinion, historically important and valuable for the atheist/humanist cause.

[u/Techtrekzz → u/EclecticReader39]

Kant rejects any kind of reasoning outside of experience, not just theistic reasoning. His goal was not to promote atheism or get people to reject the idea of God. God is a necessity of his philosophy.

[u/inscrutablemike → u/Techtrekzz]

"Kant rejects any kind of reasoning outside of experience"

That's the first time I've ever heard of anyone who believes this about Kant. Usually, Kantians hold the exact opposite position about what Kant believed.

[u/ghjm]

To leap from a hypothesized ultimate cause to the perfect being of classical theism, you need an a priori argument—one that establishes the necessary existence of that being.

Yes

In other words, you need the ontological argument (or some variation thereof).

Not unless you're using the term "a variation of the ontological argument" to refer to a priori arguments that, to a reasonable person, seem to have nothing whatsoever to do with the ontological argument. Neither the article nor Kant argue for this - it's just asserted.

[Omitted: my other hundred issues with this dreck of an article]

[u/Tombaya]

Kant argued against rationalism for all transcendental issues. Basically, his position is that at the outermost limits of inference, rationalism fails because the inevitable "Antinomies" emerge. In 'The Critique of Pure Reason' he was demonstrating the boundaries of reason. Kant's true epistemological heir was actually Kierkegaard and there's a clear epistemic through-line from him to Wittgenstein. The differences between the three of them were this: Kant grounded his Christian theism in a claimed moral need for God, Kierkegaard in an inward reflection of spirit that leaps to faith based on something like a radical need for meaning/fulfillment, and Wittgenstein regarded the matter as reaching beyond the limits of what could properly be said and so outside the limits of substantive philosophical discourse.

[u/TreebeardsMustache]

Wow. What a fantastically spurious argument. . .

I cannot rationally prove that God exists

Does not translate to:

I have rationally proved that God does not exist

The only reason zombie Kant hasn't come for your brains is the lack of nutrition therein. . .

[u/EclecticReader39 → u/TreebeardsMustache]

You’re overlooking the more relevant consideration: the burden of proof. 

Consider the famous thought experiment by Carl Sagan. If I insist that there is an invisible, undetectable fire-breathing dragon that lives in my garage—but that this dragon can escape every conceivable means of detection—the burden of proof certainly isn’t on you to prove that it isn’t actually there. 

Kant is essentially saying that you cannot conjure God into existence, via reason alone, and expect anyone to take you seriously, any more than I can assert the existence of my garage dragon and expect anyone to feel the need to disprove it. 

Kant is saying all arguments for God’s existence include the same final step: conjuring an undetectable entity, either as a first cause or grand designer, into existence. Since there’s no rational (or empirical) support for this, and, further, no conceivable way to prove the negative, the most appropriate response is to simply reject it (or take it on faith, hence his critique of rational theology). 

[u/thePantherT]

You’re right about dualism and materialism. What made Spinoza so revolutionary was that he created a closed, deterministic universe that left zero room for traditional theology, effectively clearing the path for modern secular thought.

To Spinoza, if you follow the logic of perfection and infinity to its absolute conclusion, you realize that existence itself is perfection, and an infinite substance cannot leave anything outside of itself. Therefore, nature, reality, and existence are that infinite, perfect being. And the only reason Spinoza uses the word “Being” is that True being is that whose essence inherently involves existence, meaning it requires nothing else outside of itself to exist or be conceived. This applies exclusively to existence and nature itself or the one substance from which everything else derives its existence.

Simply put, everything that does or can exist within existence and nature itself is dependent upon the one substance that is nature and existence itself and therefore is a mode of existence but not self causing or independent from existence or nature. Everything finite, every individual object, thought, or human being, is a mode that exists in and is conceived through that single substance, lacking independent or self caused existence.

My understanding of that statement you cited is that When Spinoza writes that God... has this or that idea, or when a human perceives something, he is saying that your subjective experience is experiencing reality from a specific, limited point of view within the grand architecture of existence. When a human mind thinks, perceives, or reasons, that mental activity cannot happen outside of the infinite attribute of Thought. The infinite attribute of thought is one of the two ways we perceive the single, infinite substance of the universe, with extension, or physical matter, being the other.

Although for Spinoza Thought is an infinite, fundamental attribute of the one single substance.

Spinoza would actually object to calling substance a "conscious being" in the personal or agent like sense, because to Spinoza, "consciousness" or "intellect" belongs strictly to the infinite attribute of Thought, whereas substance itself is the neutral, foundational reality comprising infinite attributes, only two of which, thought and extension, we know. Substance has intellect, but it isn't a "being" that sits around thinking the way a person is a being.

While your synthesis rightly captures that people lack independent, self caused existence, Spinoza does not deny that modes have real existence. Modes do exist, they just exist in and are conceived through substance. You are a real, finite modification of nature, you just aren't a separate substance with your own independent cause and foundation. Individual people do exist in Spinoza’s metaphysics, just not independently. Only nature and existence itself or the first cause of everything, exist independently.