Thus, Kant maintains, we can avoid the vicious sort of dogmatic anthropomorphism which Hume rightly attacks and, for example, attribute to God a rational relationship to our world without pretending that divine reason is exactly the same as ours, for example, discursive and, thus, limited (Prolegomena, pp. S., with which it traditionally has worked to develop trade with other parts of the world. If, indeed, an infinitely perfect and supremely moral God governs the world with divine providence, how can there be so much evil, in all its multiple forms, in that world? You will argue with yourself that there is no way forward. Most-but not all-of the religious epistemology that is of note in Kant’s Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics is already contained in his more philosophically impressive first Critique and will not be repeated here. The case involved two Pennsylvania laws: one permitting the state to “purchase” services in secular fields from religious schools, and the other permitting the state to pay a percentage of the salaries of private school teachers, including teachers in religious institutions. Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in this country and around the world.

Although Kant exhibits considerable respect for the teleological argument from design, in addition to its conclusion being so disappointingly limited, it also fails as a logical demonstration, in trying to show that an intelligent Designer must exist to account for the alleged intelligent design of the world. While they are being pursued by law enforcement, Dom, Brian and Mia escape to Rio de Janeiro. The Ontological Argument fails because it tries to attribute infinite, necessary existence to God; but existence, far from being a real predicate of anything, is merely a concept of the human understanding. Then the cosmological arguments also fail, in trying to establish that God is the necessary ultimate cause of the world, for both causality and necessity are merely categories of human understanding. Then there is the Senate, with 76 different senators who take office. Although it is essentially a work of ethics, a significant part of it is devoted to establishing belief in God (as well as in the immortality of the soul) as a rationally justifiable postulate of practical reason, by means of what has come to be called his “moral argument.” The argument hinges on his claim that we have a moral duty to help bring about, not just the supreme good of moral virtue, which we can achieve by our own efforts in this life, but also “the highest good,” which is the “perfect” correlation of “happiness in exact proportion to morality.” Since there cannot be any moral obligation that it is impossible to meet (“ought” implies “can”), achieving this highest good must be possible.

Hume means to replace theism with an indeterminate deism. Kant, himself a theist, admits that Hume’s objections against theism are devastating but holds that his arguments undermine only attempted deistic proofs and not deistic beliefs. In King, NC, a war memorial holds one flagpole to provide a privileged place for Christianity. One such document, translated quite recently, describes and illustrates an ancient concept of a sun-centered solar system. If even one of them proves logically conclusive, would not that constitute some sort of knowledge of God? He cleverly shows that the first of these, even if it worked, would only establish a relatively intelligent and powerful architect of the world and not a necessarily existing Creator. He conceives of the God of rational theology as the causal author and moral ruler of the world. Such physical teleology points to a somewhat intelligent and powerful designing cause of the world. But, as we never can have sensible experience of objects corresponding to such transcendent ideas and as the concepts of the understanding, without which human knowledge is impossible, can only be known to apply to objects of possible experience, knowledge of the soul, of the cosmos, and of God is impossible, in principle.

The transcendental method seeks the necessary a priori conditions of experience, of knowledge, and of metaphysical speculation. In order to establish it as a necessary Being, some version of the second approach is needed. Again, none of them is an object of experience; rather, they are all categories of the human mind, necessary for our knowing any objects of experience. And, again, they can only be known to apply to objects of sensible intuition. More specifically, for Kant, how can moral evil be consistent with divine holiness, pain and suffering with divine benevolence, and morally undeserved well-being and the lack of it with divine justice? Played with hammy, over-enunciated charm by William Shatner, Kirk was more cowboy than scientist, constantly breaking Starfleet rules in order to save the day. For travel and immigration purposes, the area essentially functions as one big country, with common rules for visas, asylum requests and border checks. One of the abiding problems of the philosophy of religion is how we can speak (and even think) about God except in anthropomorphic human terms without resorting to an indeterminate fog of ineffable mysticism. Instead, it was understood as a paradoxical set of reciprocal ideas: voluntary will and voluntary restraint in the sense of father over family or host over guest, whereby one party willfully surrenders to a party who could harm but chooses not to, thereby entrusting or confiding in them.