Part V: Christianity and Philosophy

Chapter 15: The World Beyond our Senses

D'Souza presents transcendental idealism as an argument against a rationist philosophy. He argues that Kant showed the limits of reason and trusting in the five senses. Kant is cited as saying that we can not know reality because we only have the five senses, we have only our experiences. In the same way that a bat experiences through his senses what it is like to be a bat, the best we can do is devise devices that allow us to have new tools for sensing the world, but everything is still filtered through our senses.

Drawn out, Kant can not say that we do not know reality, only that we can not be sure if what we perceive is reality. From an materialistic perspective, this leaves us in an agnostic position. For the Christian, this coincides with the belief in supernatural phenomena.