Thoughts from Kant

"In order to reach God, freedom, and immortality, speculative reason must use principles that in fact extend merely to objects of possible experience; and when these principles are nonetheless applied to something that cannot be an object of experience, they actually do always transform it into an appearance, and thus they declare all practical expansion of reason to be impossible. I therefore had to annul knowledge in order to make room for faith."

Dogmatism in metaphysics: "Encourages them (youth) quite early and strongly to reason with ease about things of which they understand nothing and into which, moreover, neither they nor anyone else in the world will ever have any insight"

Comments

Anonymous said…

I'm not sure I like the dichotomy or wedge Kant drives between "knowledge" and "faith" - wouldn't this lead to the "check your brains at the door" phenomenon? Rather, experience (through creation, for example) in tandem with faith can become a means of experiencing God and appreciating Him more - as when a beautiful sunset, starry night, or overwhelmingly powerful hurricane stops us in our tracks long enough to wonder at His awesomeness.
Keep those blogs coming!

9/22/2005 10:33:00 AM

Keith Dow said…

there's a lot of people that don't like the wedge. most Christians certainly don't. the problem is that just not liking it won't change the fact that his theories are still, to my knowledge, undefeated. perhaps God allowed Kant's reflection for the purpose of driving us back from boasting in our knowledge rather than in Him. whether Kant was entirely correct is another issue. I think what he wrote had a lot of truth, but somehow we must move beyond that at the same time, perhaps knowing Christ in spirit allows us to trust that He did, in fact, pierce the knowledge/faith dichotomy through his man/God nature, allowing us to also move from faith to knowledge.

9/23/2005 10:17:00 AM

watch my language?

i have to say, sometimes swearing is so ridiculous it's downright humorous. one is particularly aware of this as a Christian. countless times people have apologized to me for swearing in my presence, as though i'm so holy that i can't be in the presence of such talk or i'll melt. at the same time, this is usually a relief, because it's difficult to communicate when every other word contributes nothing to the conversation except to make me well aware that the person i'm talking to has a vocabulary less than that of a three-year-old. then there's the other side of the coin - people who swear around me purposefully because i'm a Christian. somehow, one of the guys on my highschool bus in Northern Ontario learned that i had never used profanity, and promptly felt called to dedicate his life to causing me to curse. "just once, come on," he'd say. i could do nothing but smile. there was absolutely no reason that i could think of why i would want ...

smelly things

remember those scratch-and-sniff things? of course they still exist, but i haven't smelled one in a while. now all we have are those horrid cardboard car scents: those leaves of aesthetic tragedy. the one i'm thinking of has a strawberry scent. it might have been strawberry shortcake - that little red-headed girl with strawberries painted all over her ginormous hat, a hat ten times the size of her head. this reminds me of those markers you can buy that smell, too, often like berries of some sort. i can remember the blueberry ones the best. which scents do you remember? when Jodi and i (and sometimes Justin, Dan, Kaia or some other participant) would take empty milk jugs and stealthily place them on Mark Vust's doorstep (our Resident Director), i would sometimes smell the rotting milk. it didn't smell good. i'll give you that. but it was certainly a powerful scent. smelling things reminds me of how much i love life. like when i'm in a forest ...

one me at a time

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do." -Edward Everett Hale "i am going to make a lasting difference with my life!" "what idiocy," frail keith scoffs. "who am i to change this world, a planet upon which there is nothing new under the sun?" faithful keith timidly responds, "with men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." i know that frail keith will likely have the upper hand again soon. this is my tragic flaw, my achilles' heel: Frailty imprisons Faith and tosses him in a prison of apathy, scorning and taunting, "who do you think you are, to dream of living a life beyond you?" then, licking my wounds in my hypnosis of self-pity and hopeless abandonment, i hear a still, small voice whispering, "beloved Littlefaith, why do you doubt...

random anxieties of existence

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