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Old 10-30-2007, 10:29 AM
Splendour Splendour is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Posts: 650
Default Re: Evolution (Redefined)

Are you referring to Kant tame_deuces? Kant was a theist just like Newton. Its interesting they both arrive at the same conclusion just by different routes. In many senses Kant probably built on Newton. His work evolved from the study and correction of Newton. Only time will tell if he invalidated everything of Newton's, but human time as measured by an individual life is finite.

An excerpt on Kant from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-science/:

Kant was born in Königsberg; he spent his life there; he died there. At the age of forty-six, Kant received an appointment as a professor of logic and metaphysics at his alma mater the University of Königsberg. His famous claim: "Though our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises out of experience." A philosophical classic is his work Critique of Pure Reason wherein he asserts that our perceptual apparatus is capable of ordering sense-impressions into intelligible unities, which, while in themselves cannot be proven, we are led to conclude through "pure reason," that intelligible unities, such as God, freedom, and immortality, do exist; and that the formation of such intelligible unities are practical necessities for one's life. An admirer of Rousseau, Kant's work gave rise to the Idealist school (Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer).

Kant was of the view that while the existence of God could not be proven, we ought to come to a belief in God's existence by way of "logical understanding." Kant concluded that this world was not sufficient in itself, that an external power, which he identified with God, was a regulative necessity; and that God was a requisite for morality, it gives meaning to our life here on earth. The existence of God was, for Kant, but one of three postulates of morality, the other two being freedom of the will, and immortality of the soul. These moral axioms, unprovable as they are, existed for Kant simply because they were the sine qua non of the moral life. (So much for the notion that morality is something that arises from our own character, from our own intelligence: - I would argue that the acceptance of an external, all powerful being reduces us to mere servants; and, thus, there is no need for morals, there is but only the need to obey.)

Edit and Correction: excerpt is actually from http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Bi...sophy/Kant.htm
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