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3
Modern Philosophy and Liberal Religion

For the past century and more the intellectual burden of religion
has been borne in our culture in considerable part by the idealistic
metaphysics whose chief technical foundations were laid by Im-
manuel Kant. This has been the case, at least, in the Protestant
segment of the culture for those who have been concerned with the
philosophical foundations of theology. Kant Critique of Pure Rea-
son was an attempt to establish the boundaries of knowledge by
defining the relationship of reason to sensory experience and deter-
mining the relation of the knowledge process to the object known.
This critical analysis of knowledge, which, due especially to Hume's
influence, had a strong empirical bent, resulted in a thoroughgoing
agnosticism in metaphysics. The traditional cosmological and tele-
ological arguments for the existence of God, upon which religious
philosophy had for centuries been partially predicated, were declared
by Kant to be invalid because of their lack of experiential grounding. 1

____________________
1 Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, Tran-
scendental Dialectic, chap. 3, The Ideal of Pure Reason, sec. 3-7. Kant, of
course, also rejected the ontological argument which, although it has persisted
to the present, has enjoyed less standing than the cosmologi-
cal arguments. The attempt of Anselm to achieve a rational proof of God's
existence that is completely free from experiential elements made the ontologi-
cal argument entirely unacceptable to Aquinas and to Catholic philosophers
and theologians generally.

-51-

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Publication Information: Book Title: Religion, Reason, and Truth: Historical Essays in the Philosophy of Religion. Contributors: Sterling M. McMurrin - author. Publisher: University of Utah Press. Place of Publication: Salt Lake City. Publication Year: 1982. Page Number: 51.
    
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