ABSTRACT
Classical arguments for God’s existence came under increasing fire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, culminating in David Hume’s scathing attack on design and cosmological arguments and in Immanuel Kant’s critiques of all attempts to establish God’s existence by “theoretical” or speculative reason. Yet Kant also thought that a belief in God and immortality were necessary postulates of “practical” (that is, moral) reason. It is important to realize how innovative Kant’s move was. Many had previously offered religious interpretations of morality, or claimed that sincere religious belief was a necessary causal condition of moral behavior. But Kant was the first to clearly argue that morality provided rational support for belief in God and an afterlife.
