Musing on Kant and the gods
October 25, 2009
I want to wonder about the origin of the gods. I suspect (cued by Kant) that we first imagined invisible beings in the woods and then around us. And we would come to think that these invisible beings had great power and would seek ways to get these beings to do our will. In Kant’s word: we invented idols, and the religion was idolic.
The Jews reduced these gods into a single one with all the powers of all these other gods combined into one. Seeking to unify a multiplicity. And still the goal was to get this god to do the will of the Jewish people. One of the ways to get this god’s favor was to treat other Jews in a special way of courtesy and deference.
And then suddenly, according to Kant, this Jesus appears and announces the fact of God and introduces the moral religion. God is not a combination of the idols of the past, but rather is an independent and self-sufficient being with infinite power and able and determined to judge people according to their moral conduct, and only that. All the inane (though perhaps necessary for development) rubbish of the Jewish law was swept away leaving merely the moral, i.e., love of neighbor. This was the authentic mark of God, that his will for humans is love of neighbor, and this is the single standard for the judgment of all people. Kant calls it “revolutionary†in the history of mankind, the introduction of the moral religion.
The moral religion, according to Kant, is the natural free religion (where unbiased people would naturally acknowledge freely*), the religion which has two tenetsâ€
1. God judges only in accordance with the moral law, and
2. each person can expect any aid of God only after that person is doing his best on his own.
[* The Atheist would declare that this is the only religion fit for man, i.e., if there were a God this would be the religion of that God (for it is only by means of the moral law that man becomes certain enough of the existence of God to simply postulate it, as though self-evident, the necessary postulation of Kant’s Practical Reason).]
Of course since that introduction a corruption has taken place such that there are few clear examples of such a religion among the Christians today. But the Christian scriptures possess a clear certification of this revolutionary idea. That is the good news. Those who profess a recognition of scriptural authority have all they need to organize a church which would be able to represent the moral religion, for amongst all the laws and regulations are a clear representation of the liberty of the Christian from all these laws and regulations. It seems that Jesus and his apostles felt that the moral law (love of neighbor) were sufficient for all right conduct and pleasing to God.*
[* That is the practical side of the Christian. When the individual converts to Christianity, two things are denoted: the Christian can count himself among those who have entered into eternal life; and the evidence of that redemption is the Christian’s allegiance to the law of love.** *** The consequence of this conversion is a lack of fear, and a growing propensity to give without counting [though not without sense].]
[** And so it is not, as some have maintained, that the evidence is based on the memory of having paid allegiance to the law of love, but on the present state of mind. Jesus did not count among his band those who started out, but who then looked back.]
[*** Thus the non-believing Christian would accept Jesus as Lord and Savior in the ritual and would mean by that only the practical, namely an intention to emulate the life and principles of Jesus (the moral law) and the banishment of all fear. The believing Christian would acknowledge