Does Morality Inevitably Lead to Religion? A Critique of the Strong Claim to Justification of Kant's Practical Faith in Reason

Abstract

With his famous thesis that morality inevitably leads to religion, Kant has given faith in God a rather strong rational justification in terms of practical reason. This justification also seems to imply an argumentative immunity against atheistic or agnostic challenges resulting from the experience of suffering. This article offers a critique of this strong claim. Different from what Kant assumed, it will be argued that faith, in the light of experienced suffering, can only be justified in a mode of permanent fragility. This has massive consequences for the theological project of vindicating religious belief and of doing metaphysics on the basis of practical reason, since the problem of evil, and the atheism or agnosticism possibly resulting from it, is bound to become an even more radical challenge than before.