Knowledge and belief in God

[downbeatplumb]

I am a practitioner of reverse phrenology.
You want to be smarter, I hit you on the head to create the right bumps.

Damn, if only I'd thought of saying something witty like that.

I probably should have read the whole thread before...oh well beaten again.

[Whateverist]

Does anyone really read an overlong diatribe like that? Meh.

[Cyberman]

Damn, if only I'd thought of saying something witty like that.

I probably should have read the whole thread before...oh well beaten again.

You got the kudos for it, so maybe it's the way you tell 'em.

[drfuzzy]

AAAAAND, of course, it was a copy-paste shit and run poster.  Dump pseudo-scientific wall of text - argument from ignorance crap on our forum, and never come back.

[Minimalist]

Kant is a Kunt.

[Minimalist]

Today's Dilbert

[robvalue]

What do people like this hope to achieve?

They're showing their God is so irrelevant, so hidden, so powerless that it needs their help just to get us to acknowledge its very existence.

Then what?

[downbeatplumb]

I probably should have read the whole thread before...oh well beaten again.

You got the kudos for it, so maybe it's the way you tell 'em.

2 kudos, he he I steals your glory.

[Minimalist]

Then what?

Then you give money to the churchie bastards.... like in every other scam.

[Harris]

According to Kant we are born with “Predetermined Conceptual Schemes.”

And what is his evidence for such?  Let's remember that Kant died in 1804 when "doctors" still adhered to the miasma theory of disease.

If I ask you what is the evidence that the object lies in front of you is an apple then your natural response might be, because it looks apple, it smells apple, and it tastes apple. Fair enough, but why you come to the conclusion that it looks apple, it smells apple, and it tastes apple. Perhaps your conclusions are based on the general opinion of other people but what if all people decide to name it donkey instead of apple, would you still keep on saying it apple or would you get agreed with the generalised opinion of other people. If you also start saying it donkey, then what is the evidence that the object in front of you is apple.

People construct their generalisations based on their “Predetermined Conceptual Schemes” which are common in all human beings just like the knowledge of building nest is common in almost all birds. To explain this Kant has given few analogies one of which is:

“For example, I see a ship float down the stream of a river. My perception of its place lower down follows upon my perception of its place higher up the course of the river, and it is impossible that, in the apprehension of this phenomenon, the vessel should be perceived first below and afterwards higher up the stream. Here, therefore, the order in the sequence of perceptions in apprehension is determined; and by this order apprehension is regulated.”

THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
by Immanuel Kant
translated by J. M. D. Meiklejohn

Kant is not alone who had vocalised the idea of A Priori. Leibnitz had also talked over this idea:

“This fits in with my principles, for nothing naturally enters our mind from outside; and it is a bad habit of ours to think of our soul as receiving messenger species, or as if it had doors and windows. We have all these forms in our mind and indeed always have had; because the mind always expresses all its future thoughts, and is already thinking confusedly of everything it will ever think clearly. We could not be taught something unless we already had the idea of it in our mind, the idea being like the matter out of which the thought is formed.”

Section 26.
Discourse on Metaphysics, (1686)
trans. G. Montgomery, La Salle

According to Rene Descartes knowledge cannot all come from perceptual experiences because anything based on experience could not be totally certain and we do have some certain knowledge.

In his third Meditation Rene Descartes explained that the idea of God is innate. The abstract of third meditation is something like this:

• We have ideas of many things.
• These ideas must arise either from ourselves or from things outside us.
• One of the ideas we have is the idea of God—an infinite, all-perfect being.
• This idea could not have been caused by ourselves, because we know ourselves to be limited and imperfect, and no effect can be greater than its cause.
• Therefore, the idea must have been caused by something outside us, which has nothing less than the qualities contained in the idea of God.
• But only God himself has those qualities.
• Therefore, God himself must be the cause of the idea we have of him.
• Therefore, God exists.

and do not forget about Plato

“Humans know many things and have many concepts, which they have not learned or acquired on earth.”
Plato
(Phaedo 73a-78a; Meno 81b-86b)

Let us also remember that Immanuel Kant is considered the central figure of modern philosophy.