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Why the classic proofs of God fail
💡 Theoretical reason can neither prove nor disprove God, the soul, or free will — the traditional metaphysical proofs all overstep the limits of possible experience.
The same overreach that produces the antinomies, Kant argues, doomed traditional metaphysics' three great objects: the soul, the cosmos, and God. Reason craves the unconditioned — a final, complete explanation — but it can never know such things, because they can never appear in experience.
On the soul, Kant exposes the paralogisms: from the mere unity of the 'I think,' rationalists illicitly inferred that the self is a simple, immortal substance. But that just misuses the category of substance beyond experience. On God, Kant dismantles all three classic proofs — the ontological (existence can't be squeezed from a definition, since 'existence is not a predicate'), the cosmological, and the physico-theological (design) argument.
But Kant is not an atheist debunker. His verdict is subtler: God, freedom, and immortality can be neither proven nor disproven by theoretical reason. They aren't objects of knowledge — they are Ideas of reason, regulative ideals that guide inquiry and, as the next card shows, find their real home elsewhere.
Source: Critique of Pure Reason — Immanuel Kant