For centuries, religion determined how people lived their daily lives and what they considered morally right. For Kant, however, morality has its origin in reason and is independent of religion. His critique of the traditional proofs of God shocked his contemporaries; Moses Mendelssohn called him an “all-destroyer.”
Kant and the Enlightenment thinkers criticized above all ecclesiastical authority. Only what is rational should remain of religion; giving rise to an undogmatic, enlightened faith. Today this is being challenged in new ways: by atheism and by religious fundamentalism.