For religion to take its place among today's ideologies, it has to have a foundation to which it has given considerable thought, if it is to defend its ground while verifying that ground for itself. As any religion is prone to influence from without, the proponents of that religion need to stand firm in the face of [such influence], or risk losing their standpoint altogether.

At present, the greatest adversary religion faces is the natural sciences, in particular the concept of man derived from a basis in natural sciences. It is not necessarily the case that the natural sciences are antagonistic to religion, but if the truth of natural sciences is made the sole truth, this gives the truth of religion no place to stand. What the truth of the natural sciences is and how to consider this problem critically thus become matters of extreme importance. We must also ask whether it is necessarily the case that religion has to be destroyed by the natural science version of truth, or whether religion has a standpoint of religion apart from this? These are problems we must turn our attention to today.

When we ask what truth is, common sense tells us truth is where our thinking corresponds with events in the outside world. In philosophy, this is known as correspondence theory or mimetic theory. But when we try to explain truth this way, we run into complications. To give a mathematical example, no one would deny the sum of the angles of a triangle equals that of two right angles, but there is no way to demonstrate this by correspondence theory. This is because the geometrical figure made up of points and lines that mathematicians deal with has no actual existence in the outside world. Mathematicians say a circle is inscribed by a trail of points equidistant from a central point, but rigorously speaking no such circle exists in reality. Even drawn using precision instruments, it would not be possible to rigorously produce what mathematicians call a circle. What mathematicians call truth thus has no existence in reality. This is a riddle that correspondence or mimetic theory can never solve in a million years.

Next, if we think the reverse: that something existing in the external world has to have a basis wholly in our beliefs. That is, the source of our beliefs lies within ourselves. The source of truth is to be sought within ourselves. That something exists in the external world first has to fit a logical configuration. Logical configurations are already provided in our subjective/intuitive view [of things]. As we proceed further, we find there are categories for various kinds of logic. Once an existent fits a certain category, for the first time we can believe it to exist. Once an existent is seen to fit a Kategorie, for the first time it can be regarded an actual existence. In today's philosophy this is called an a priori. An a priori is not a subjective/intuitive view -- this we must make clear. An a priori does not refer to each individual person's beliefs; it refers, rather, to a pre-experiential configuration [of the truth] that all people have to accept [as true]. If that were not the case, it would not be possible for us to establish what we know [about reality]...