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Immanuel Kant’s impact has been even more devastating to the Christian worldview than David Hume’s Skepticism philosophy.

In Kant’s philosophy, there is no way to know anything about the real world-even things verified by your senses.

Why? Because according to Kant, the structure of your senses and your mind forms all sense-data. So you never really know the thing in itself. You “know” the thing to you after your mind and senses form it.

To understand this concept, look for a second outside out the window at a tree.

Kant is saying that the tree you think you are looking at appears the way it does because your mind is forming the sense-data you are getting from the tree.

You really do not know the tree in itself; you only know the phenomena your mind categorizes about the tree.

In short, you cannot know the real tree in itself, only the tree as it appears to you.

But, why is it that the ordinary people do not doubt when they see with their own eyes, but supposedly brilliant philosophers do?

There is a simple answer to counter this principle – the Road Runner tactic.

Kant commits the same error as Hume – he violates the Law of Non-contradiction.

He contradicts his own premise by saying no one can really know the world around us while he claims to know something about it – that the real world is unknowable.

In conclusion, Kant says the truth about the real world is that there are no truths about the real world.

Personal Reflection:

What are some other fallacies of this principle?