The following is adapted from my new book What's So Great About Christianity. For more information about the book, see my website dineshdsouza.com.
Bestselling atheist tracts like Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell, and Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great portray religion as an unreasonable form of "blind faith," often leading to fanaticism and even violence. Some of these atheists call themselves "brights," implying that they are the smart people who base their opinions on reason and science and don't fall for silly superstitions. But for all their credentials and learning, the atheists have been duped by a fallacy. This may be called the Fallacy of the Enlightenment, and it was first pointed out by that great Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant.
The Fallacy of the Enlightenment is the glib assumption that human beings can continually find out more and more until eventually there is nothing more to discover. The Enlightenment Fallacy holds that human reason and science can, in principle, unmask the whole of reality. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant showed that this premise is false. In fact, he argued, that human knowledge is constrained not merely by how much reality is out there but also by the limited sensory apparatus of perception we bring to that reality.
Consider a tape recorder. Being the kind of instrument it is, a tape recorder can capture only one mode of reality: sound. Tape recorders can "hear" but they cannot see or touch or smell. Thus all aspects of reality that cannot be captured in sound are beyond the reach of a tape recorder. The same, Kant says, is true of human beings. The only way we apprehend reality is through our five senses. But why should we believe, Kant asked, that our five-mode instrument for apprehending reality is sufficient for capturing all of reality? What makes us think that there is no reality lies beyond our perception, reality that simply cannot be apprehended by our five senses?
Moreover, the reality we apprehend is merely our experience or "take" on reality. How can you know that your experience of things is in any way like the things-in-themselves? Normally you answer this question by considering the two things separately and then comparing them. I can tell if my daughter's drawing of her teacher looks like the teacher by placing the portrait and alongside the person. I compare the copy or portrait with the original.
Kant points out, however, that we can never compare our experience of reality to reality itself. All we have is the experience, and that's all we can ever have. We have only the copies, but we never have the originals. So we have no basis for presuming that the two are even comparable. When we equate experience and reality, we are making an unjustified leap.
It is essential to recognize that Kant isn't diminishing the importance of experience or what he called the phenomenal world. That world is very important, because it is the only one our senses and reason have access to. It is entirely rational for us to believe in this phenomenal world and to use science and reason to discover its operating principles. But Kant contended that science and reason apply to the world of phenomena, of things as they are experienced by us. Science and reason cannot penetrate what Kant termed the noumena: things as they are in themselves.
Some critics have understood Kant to be denying the existence of external reality or of arguing that all of reality is "in the mind." Kant emphatically rejects this. He insists that the noumenon obviously exists because it is what gives rise to phenomena. In other words, our experience is an experience of something. Perhaps the best way to understand this is to see Kant as positing two kinds of reality: the reality that we experience and reality itself. The important thing is not to establish which is more real, but to recognize that human reason operates only in the phenomenal domain of experience. We can know of the existence of the noumenal realm, but at this point reason has reached its limit.
In Kant's view, the limits of human reason cannot be erased by the passage of time or by further investigation and experimentation. Rather, they are intrinsic to the kind of beings that humans are, and to the kind of apparatus that we possess for perceiving reality. The implication of Kant's argument is that reality as a whole is, in principle, inaccessible to human beings. Put another way, there is a great deal that human beings simply will never know.
So powerful is Kant's argument here that his critics have been able to answer him only with derision. When I challenged Daniel Dennett to debunk Kant's argument, he posted an angry response on his website in which he said several people had already refuted Kant. But he didn't provide any refutations, and he didn't name any names. Basically Dennett was relying on the argumentum ad ignorantium-the argument that relies on the ignorance of the audience. In fact, there are no such refutations.
Although Kant's argument seems counterintuitive-in the way that some of the greatest ideas from Copernicus to Einstein are counterintuitive-no one who understands the central doctrines of the world's leading religions should have any difficulty grasping his main point. Kant's philosophical vision is entirely congruent with the teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism and Christianity.
It is a shared doctrine of those religions that the empirical world we humans inhabit is not the only world there is. Ours is a world of appearances only in which we see things in a limited and distorted way, "through a glass darkly," as the apostle Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians 13:12. Ours is a transient world that is dependent on a higher, timeless reality. That reality is of a completely different order from anything we know, it constitutes the only permanent reality there is, and it sustains our world and presents it to our senses. Christianity teaches that while reason can point to the existence of this higher domain, this is where reason stops: it cannot on its own investigate or comprehend that domain.
Thus when Christopher Hitchens and other atheists routinely dismiss religious claims on the grounds that "what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence," they are making what philosophers like to call a category mistake. We learn from Kant that within the domain of experience, human reason is sovereign, but it is in no way unreasonable to believe things on faith that simply cannot be adjudicated by reason.
When atheists summarily dismiss the immortality of the soul or the afterlife on the grounds that they have never found any empirical proofs for either, they are asking for experiential evidence in a domain which is entirely beyond the reach of experience. In this domain, Kant argues, the absence of evidence cannot be used as the evidence for absence.
Notice that Kant's argument is entirely secular: It does not employ any religious vocabulary, nor does it rely on any kind of faith. But in showing the limits of reason, Kant's philosophy "opens the door to faith," as the philosopher himself noted.
So the new atheists and self-styled "brights" can do their strutting, but Kant has exposed their ignorant boast that atheism operates on a higher intellectual plane than theism. Rather, as Kant showed, reason must know its limits in order to be truly reasonable. The atheist foolishly presumes that reason is in principle capable of figuring out all that there is, while the theist at least knows that there is a reality greater than, and beyond, that which our senses and our minds can ever apprehend.
Reader Comments ( Page 12 of 48)
166. Sense is cognitive because it can receive images free from matter, and the intellect is still further cognitive, because it is more separated from matter and unmixed. God is the highest degree of immateriality. He occupies the highest place in knowledge. Plants don't know because they are completely material. The intellect is cognitive because it is more separated from matter and unmixed. St. Paul said: "O the depth of the riches of wisdom and knowledge of God." (Romans 11:33) Job said: "With Him is wisdom and strength, He has counsel and understanding. (Job 12:13)
Kiro at 1:14AM on Oct 20th 2007
167. Dinesh,
Maybe the real problem with man and reality is that people cannot take just a little reality. They want it all. Scientists send probes millions of light years away to discover the nature of where we are and yet the friendly outer space surrounding our planet is ignored as a key to our gaia. This leads people to believe in strict laws of gravity and the like and the beauty of God is dismissed as unrealistic. If a mass of dark matter lived in a town 150 miles away and could float things, how many people would believe in magic...and yet the dark matter floating our globe beneath us lives in a town only 120 miles away, straight above every man, woman and child our whole lives, and is ignored.
Cool article, by the way! :) Olli
faerch at 1:13AM on Oct 20th 2007
168. Wes, I think I'll address you, simply because reading your posts, you are open to discussion.
I am a Christian. I've noticed that not many have come forth on this blog. You see, for me, it is hard to explain. I can't speak for anyone else but myself. I was agnostic all my life until about 4 years ago. How can it be just this? That in itself doesn't make any sense...to me. I thought it used to make sense, but looking back, that was foolish.
I guess a good example on how I feel, and I can only speak for myself, is this: My Wife gave birth to our third child in June. Within minutes after the delivery, our daughter already knew how to breastfeed. Where to go to eat. When the baby cries, and my wife is not near her, her breasts leak. Sorry to be graphic. It's things like these, that I'm sure someone with great intelligence can explain to the best of their educated abilities, but in the end, when you see it first hand and live it......well you know.
The best way I can put this, is that feelings like Love, Sorrow, Excitement, Joy, and Anger..Do we imagine those feelings? I don't think we do. Just, life is amazing. It's all connected in some way.
I just don't like how certain athiests, who don't try to learn the scriptures or open their minds and hearts to at least give it a try give me their opinions. There will always be people that are corrupt. There will always be people who take things to the extreme. There will be people in all religions that don't truly understand it and act very different than what they should. But those people don't speak for me. They don't represent me. Certain athiests use these instances as reasons to not believe. That is a mistake.
The Bible is not a rule book. It is the "word". All the answers to this world is in the Bible. I don't care what the problem is, what the circumstance is, or what the question is. The answers are in it. People need to try to stop interpreting it, and I mean Christians as well. It is not to be interpreted. Just read it....quietly on your own time. Than judge it for what is.
Knight.....who created God? It's a question that can't be answered. Can I prove there is a God? To you and a lot of athiests, most likely not. Proof of God is in all of us. It is all the things that are in front of us.
To the athiests that love something or someone. Prove it.
That's the great thing about free will. Believe what you want. I won't judge you. I'll except you for what you are. I have many friends who don't believe. When they ask me things, I answer them. But I won't push my agenda on them. People have to find things out for themselves. But I am here to help when needed.
All the best to everyone, and there have been some great responses on this topic from both sides of the fence.
Botts
Botts at 1:14AM on Oct 20th 2007
169. Good point, Dinesh.
This was a very interesting blog article. Man will never figure everything out, it is impossible, and it is very arrogant to assume that humans could be capable of that.
Amanda at 1:38AM on Oct 20th 2007
170. This is the same old hogwash.
Reality is a mystery, and there are questions that can't be answered, therefore I have the right answer to those questions. I even have the authority to decide which of those questions are "REALLY" important.
A tape recorder can only record sound, blah, blah, and blah. So, we as humans are equivalent in your mind to a tape recorder? A tape recorder can also record the impact of a sledge hammer. A tape recorder can 'record' the heat of a bomb blast. Its surfaces record fingerprints and collect DNA evidence. So what? It's still not even close to being alive or sentient -- unless you count Bill O'Reilly as sentient and Ann Coulter as a woman -- let alone capable of analyzing the stuff that sticks to it. So, since you apparently didn't take WR101 in college, here's a clue about argument by analogy: IT'S THE WEAKEST POSSIBLE ARGUMENT. No matter how many ways something is like something else, there are nearly infinite ways that is completely unlike something else. Since you have gotten this far on Cow Manure I have to suspect your typical audience is not very demanding.
We can't see in the X-Ray or Infrared spectra, but we can build machines that see in those spectra. Are you suggesting that they cannot be trusted? When you break your leg will you argue with the Doctor about whether he "EXPERIENCES THE SAME X-RAY YOU EXPERIENCE?" I quote Bugs Bunny quite often these days so, "What a Maroon!" Consider the old story of the blind men and the Elephant. If the blind men were capable of working together and analyzing their shared information they would know that they were not dealing with a rope, or a tree. The moral to be drawn from that story is that inductive reasoning only works in the simplest of cases, and that we can -- though there is no guarantee because even really smart people are susceptible to the same optical illusions the rest of us are, so why should they be less susceptible to other illusions and delusions? -- Though there is no guarantee -- by working together and applying the scientific method we can derive a more accurate picture of the Reality we inhabit. Why? This is mostly because we are assembled in such a way that we can't help ourselves -- we have to do what we do because of who we are. We will explore and learn to manipulate the world we inhabit because everyone who didn't do that died a long time ago and so to a large extent we really can't help ourselves. Why, because we want to gain control over our environment in order to propagate our genetic material. Oh, let me put that in pre-school terms for you: BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY. HEY! YOU! The Republican elected official, or Religious Fundamentalist, take your penis out of that person's mouth!! I don't care if you paid them and the Bible gave you the choice between the belly of a whore and the ground. Hey! We know that "belly" didn't mean stomach, and whore didn't mean altar boy. It might have once. But the unchanging eternal God changed temporarily. So put it back in your pants, Sundance!
I mentioned the other day to someone who will remain nameless that, "Science can provide us with greater comfort, longer lives and less pain and suffering..." if we can drop our delusions and actually attempt to comprehend the world we live in rather than an imaginary world plucked from an infinity of "POSSIBLE" unknowable Fantasies -- and I fully expect "The Religious" (and the recently disaffected and shunned Jehovah's Witnesses among us) to ask "Why?" and go on with some blather about how the length of our lives doesn't equal happiness, and the Native Americans were so freaking happy digging up roots with a stick. Yeah, whatever -- sorry about the long sentences, they don't break up well and I'm worried that most of you will forget where you were by the time you get to the end of the -- PANCAKES!!!!
Religion cannot help at all in the effort to understand Reality. It provides no testable hypotheses about the world we live in, and requires that even when all evidence is against our cherished notions that we attempt to believe "more harder". I am fairly certain that if you fell and broke your leg, you would go to a Doctor, and not to a Priest. If you were a farmer and your crops were failing you would seek a crop scientist, and not a crop priest. Yes, our knowledge of the Universe is asymptotic. We can approach, but never achieve complete understanding. Your "God of the Gaps" is going to have to keep getting thinner and thinner while your obvious delusion and unwillingness to let go of your fantasies will become more bizarre to everyone around you because evolution really doesn't favor the delusional.
Is there "some reality" "out there" "beyond my perceptions" ?? Who knows? I don't really care if there is, or not. You say:
When I challenged Daniel Dennett to debunk Kant's argument, he posted an angry response on his website in which he said several people had already refuted Kant. But he didn't provide any refutations, and he didn't name any names.
Imagine this scenario: I send a letter to Steven Hawking claiming that the Sun, the Moon and the Planets all move in circles around the Earth and the logic that Ptolemy has provided is such an overwhelming argument for the spherical arrangement of the Universe around the Earth that no one could ever prove him wrong. What kind of answer would I get back? Something like Dennett gave you. Did you expect him to provide with a free education in the History of Philosophy? Do you have a library card? Do you have a college degree? Can you secure transportation?
Here's another little "mind game" you can spin for a while:
Imagine a Universe where people believe in Gods that control, or at least can control all that happens, and that they attempt to appease these Gods to get things to go their way. Sometimes the Gods feel benevolent and grant the people some token of their appreciation.
Now imagine a Universe where everything is exactly the same except there are no Gods. All the same events happen, and the people think the same thoughts, and make attempts to appease the Gods, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. But there are no Gods.
Which is more likely to be true? Yes, you in the back with your hand up ... Occam?
The claim being made here is that we cannot know the unknowable, we therefore should not demand proof from people who make extraordinary claims about the nature of the unknowable. Because he has no proof to give us, Dinesh asks instead that we suspend disbelief. Like this little gem from Dinesh:
When atheists summarily dismiss the immortality of the soul or the afterlife on the grounds that they have never found any empirical proofs for either, they are asking for experiential evidence in a domain which is entirely beyond the reach of experience. In this domain, Kant argues, the absence of evidence cannot be used as the evidence for absence.
Let's flip that one over:
When delusional people summarily claim to have evidence of the immortality of the soul or the afterlife on the grounds that they have never found any empirical proofs against either they are asking for experiential evidence in a domain which is entirely beyond the reach of experience. In this domain, Daffy argues, anything falls faster than an anvil.
This of course is a corollary to, "When the cut-and-runners summarily dismiss the win-ability of the war on International Tourism on the grounds that the people we have selected to run our country are mentally defective they are asking for experiential evidence in a domain which is entirely beyond the reach of experience."
Not all Atheists feel -- note that I do not use believe here, because I am not a believer -- that religion is an unreasonable blah, blah, blah, blah, blah... For many of us, Religion is just another example of the fallibility of the Human Mind. For us the tendency of Humanity towards what Humanity itself defines as Evil is just like the various optical and auditory illusions that have been so thoroughly documented. Just like the effects shown by Milgram, Harlow, Zimbardo, and a multitude of others. No one is immune to being a dumbass. Like diarrhea, it runs in our jeans.
ohdotoh at 1:39AM on Oct 20th 2007
171. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen His Glory, the Glory of the One and Only, Jesus Christ, who came from the Father, full of Grace and Truth.
Kiro at 2:04AM on Oct 20th 2007
172. Kant said: "The observations and calculations of astronomers have taught us much that is wonderful, but the most important lesson that they have taught us has been by revealing the abyss of our ignorance. A great change in our estimate of the purposes for which our reason should be employed."
Kiro at 2:29AM on Oct 20th 2007
173. One thing is for sure for theists as well as atheists is that the former see infinity as GOD and the latter see it as simply the UNIVERSE and all its contents. Neither however has the intellectual capacity to comprehend or reconcile infinity nor the power to rise above it. I will give Dinesh some credit here in that just perhaps it is a bigger picture than we can possibly imagine, knowing well that it may just be wishful thinking I revert to my worldly infinity and it still offers me nothing.
Now I know this may sound stupid and this mansion I use as an analogy has no connotation to any religious belief, but imagine this universe we live in is a very small room but part of a very big house. All rooms are accessible to us all and we know our way around that big house and we chose those rooms we would like to enter. I don't know what all those other rooms are because I chose for some reason to leave where I was created by a God and enter this one where space, time, and infinity is the door locked behind you. We will live sealed off from any possibility of banging on the walls and cracking the code or locks that is bound up in the infinity that we can never comprehend. When we entered we agree to be born and agree to die. That is the only key that fits the lock. No matter how long we live, we walk back thru the moment we walked in so to speak. We know why we chose this room only then and we return to the big house that we were created in and know very well. You know maybe its like a big theme park and we take this journey and back in some weird sense of thrill. So that is my GOD side of things where infinity is a concept only to that room. So I take that concept and reject that infrastructure and apply it to the universe. If we go back 14 billion years, 20 billion, it doesn't matter, before the big bang was there matter, was there just space, if so well space is something even if devoid of matter. Where did the first particle of matter come from??? If you can answer or truly reconcile that I'll bow and call you GOD. Any answers for me. P.S. no lectures on that room thing I can't prove any of it....talk about infinity
JOHN R HABIB, M.D. at 2:36AM on Oct 20th 2007
174. Responding to Knight,
On several blogs, I have repeatedly asked you for evidence or data that supports your claim “There is no god.” And you have repeatedly ignored it.
You will insist that you do not have to “prove the unproven”. That is logical BS.
If you want people to believe that you base your opinions and conclusions on evidence and reason, then, cough up that evidence.
You corrected Marc’s apparent misconception about a “flat-earth” being a widely held belief. Let’s explore that.
As the shape of the Earth was debated many centuries ago, the question arose as to whether there were people living on the opposite side of the Earth. I believe they were called “antipodes”. Saint Augustine argued that these people could not exist. I find it interesting that his logic is the asme as yours. I can hear him now, “No one has proven that these people exist and I do not have to prove the unproven.”
Look, you do not have to admit you to us that you do not have any evidence. We already know that you don’t.
I just want you to be honest with yourself.
That is the one necessary condition for enlightenment.
You also told Marc that he chose what he believes in blind faith.
Actually you did just that.
You told Marc that his beliefs were solely based on what someone else has told him or what heI read.
Actually that applies to you.
Marc wrote: "Science" continually disproves itself,"
You wrote: “No, it does no such thing. What you're really railing about is that the more we research, the more we learn. You want a static set of knowledge. Reality isn't like that.”
That is one of the most dishonest things you have written. Science has revised and reversed its position many times. Any who claims differently is an idiot or a liar! And YOU know it!!
You wrote to Hako: “The question of whether or not there is a god is just as answerable as the question of whether or not there are square circles.”
Then let us see such an answer….
ray at 3:38AM on Oct 20th 2007
175. Responding to Brian (#104)
You wrote: “In earlier days when most people thought that it was flat, the church said that it was true, thet it was indeed, flat. “
Another lame attempt to discredit people of faith as being “anti-science”.
First, the “church” did not invent the notion that the earth was flat nor did it invent “geocentrism” (The Earth is the center of universe). Babylonians and Egyptians (Ptolemaics) held the “flat-Earth” view as did the ancient Chinese. It was early scientists who advanced these views. Yes, the church embraced them as these ideas seemed to be supported by scripture.
Many early Christians considered and advanced the notion of a spheroid Earth. Remember it was Copernicus who advanced heliocentrism, the idea that the Sun was the center of the solar system. (Actually, I believe Copernicus calculated that the Sun was near the center of the universe.)
Some say Copernicus was a monk. His uncle was a bishop in the church and Copernicus was “destined” to become a bishop until he turned his academic attentions to medicine and astronomy.
The church has been criticized for “persecuting” Galileo when he wanted to spread the heliocentric views. (He actually spent most of his confinement in house arrest, not prison) The truth is, the church did not forbid Galileo from discussing or arguing his views. He was forbidden to teach these views as “divinely authorized”. Note: Copernicus and Galileo were actually WRONG. They wanted to replace one false belief (geocentrism) with another false belief. (heliocentrism). Were they less wrong than the church? YES. But, in the long run, the church’s demand that Galileo NOT claim his views as indisputable and divinely authorized was technically correct.
ray at 3:42AM on Oct 20th 2007
176. Knight, you asked "Where did god come from?"
I ask, "Where did the universe come from?"
If you can believe in an eternal universe, you should have no problem believing in an eternal god.
ray at 3:45AM on Oct 20th 2007
177. I'm agnostic - or at least I perceive I am. In other words, "I happily go through life KNOWING very little".
I'm not sure any "god" exists. But, I am sure that a Christian God as represented by the hate mongering, ego-centric, self-gratifying, and condemning Christians - cannot exist. If there is anything greater than the reality we individually perceive, than that "greater thing" is likely NOT the "Christian" God. A "greater thing" would not limit itself to one faith and certainly would not condone your profit-oriented hatred and fear.
If there is a God He (She?, It?) is looking at you Mr. D'Sousa and other 'like" Christians and saying, "Give me a break! Do you really think I need your bigoted and juvenile interpretations to defend ME?"
Christians have little right to adopt that greater thing - the ultimate perfection, if you will - as belonging to them alone. Too, that ultimate perfection would certainly have nothing to do with narrow minded and self-righteous Christians.
YOUR God may save you - but the ultimate perfection will ignore you.
Roglo at 4:20AM on Oct 20th 2007
178. science is COOL ,, BUT IT IS ONLY MAN ,,------TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW ACTUALLY DID ---GOD DO IT ALL HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
karen belanger at 4:41AM on Oct 20th 2007
179. HAHAHAHA MAN HAS BEEN TRYING FOR EVER TO FIGURE OUT HOW GOD HAS DONE ALL HIS CREATING ,, IT IS CALLED SCIENCE ,, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA,, GOOD LUCK MAN ,, YOU WILL NEVER KNOW ALL WHILE A FLESH BEING ,, SNIGGER SNIGGER HAHA
the groov at 4:44AM on Oct 20th 2007
180. CHRISTIANS REALIZE ,, WE ARE SO FAULTY ,, SO INEPT ,, SO UNWORTHY ,, YOU PEOPLE WHO THINK WE ARE SELF RIGHTEOUS ARE SEEING THE BIBLICAL SCRIBES AND PHARISEES ,, I AM NOT WORTHY OF SALVATION ,, BUT JESUS IS ,, IF I CLAIM HIM ,, HE IS MY LAWYER AND WILL PAY MY BOND ,, GET IT ,, ALL OF HUMANITY IS FLAWED ,, SOME WORSE OFF THAN OTHERS ,,I HAVE STUDIED SCRIPTURES FOR 7 YEARS ,, IT IS TRUTH ,, UNTIL YOU READ IT FOR YOUR SELF ,,, WITH UNDERSTANDING ,, DON'T TELL OTHERS THAT THIER FAITH IS BUNK ,,, ONLY UNBELIEVERS GO SOUTH IN THE END ,,, GOD IS ALL AND ALL IN GOD WHO BELIEVE ,, DON'T JUDGE A BOOK CALEED THE BIBLE ,, UNTIL YOU YOURSELF HAVE READ IT ,, MAY YOU BE BLESSED ENOUGH TO GET THIS MESSAGE---- AMEN
the groov at 4:54AM on Oct 20th 2007