Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

In his pride the wicked man does not seek him;
    in all his thoughts there is no room for God.

• Psalm 10:4

I have a message from God in my heart
    concerning the sinfulness of the wicked:
There is no fear of God
    before their eyes.
In their own eyes they flatter themselves
    too much to detect or hate their sin.
The words of their mouths are wicked and deceitful;
    they fail to act wisely or do good.
Even on their beds they plot evil;
    they commit themselves to a sinful course
    and do not reject what is wrong.

• Romans 3:23

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, and their ways are vile; there is no one who does good.

• Psalm 53:1

“ ‘It is thoroughly necessary to be convinced of God’s existence, it is not quite so necessary that one should demonstrate it.’ – Immanuel Kant”

• Bryan Magee, The Story of Philosophy

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

• C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher.  He was a leader in the Enlightenment.

Philosophers have a tendency to get stuck in a particular gear.  Like George Berkeley, the renown empiricist, who believed that nothing exists unless you can experience it at that moment.  Being a bishop in the church, he was asked about God.  Well, Berkeley was amazed that his office ceased to exist when he left it to teach a class, but when he returned , his office recreated itself to be exactly as it was.  And thus, he decided that God was the guarantor that put things back in their place as he perceived them.

But here in this quote, Kant breaks the philosopher code, if there really was one.  He makes it imperative that we believe in God, but let’s hold off on trying to demonstrate God’s existence.

But is that not one of the main fields of philosophical thought?  We have the study of beauty, color, art, etc. in Aesthetics.  We have the study of the source of knowledge and the nature and validity of knowledge in Epistemology.  Logic uses reason and valid inference.  And existence is part of the study known as Metaphysics, which also studies the cosmos.

Thus, Kant is suspending metaphysics with regard to the existence of God.  God is a spirit and does not have a body like man.  So, we could argue until we are blue in the face, and we can come down to a lot of evidence of the works of God.  So, if there are things that only God could have created, then there must be a God.  But a lawyer and an empiricist philosopher would be dissatisfied with that argument.

Oddly, the same argument can be said about Evolution and even millions of years of the earth’s existence.  We have no evidence from those times, no eyewitness accounts.  But the politicians refuse to let the science world show that empirical data (data that we have observed) points toward the biblical narrative and refutes evolution.  This is pure evil in its nature to ignore the Epistemology that stares us in the face while excusing the data of a biblical narrative as being “outliers.”

But I like the Kant quote.  We need God.  And if we suspend our intellectual endeavors long enough to see God, then we have our proof.  That proof might not be good enough for our neighbor until they see the change within us, and they will want that change in themselves.

If you like these Tuesday morning essays about philosophy and other “heavy topics,” but you think you missed a few, you can use this LINK. I have set up a page off the home page for links to these Tuesday morning posts. I will continue to modify the page as I add more.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.