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Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion / The Natural History of Religion
David Hume is one of the most provocative philosophers to have written in English. His Dialogues ask if a belief in God can be inferred from what is known of the universe, or whether such a belief is even consistent with such knowledge. The Natural History of Religion investigates the
origins of belief, and follows its development from polytheism to dogmatic monotheism. Together, these works constitute the most formidable attack upon religious belief ever mounted by a philosopher.
This new edition includes Section XI of The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and a letter by Hume in which he discusses Dialogues .
origins of belief, and follows its development from polytheism to dogmatic monotheism. Together, these works constitute the most formidable attack upon religious belief ever mounted by a philosopher.
This new edition includes Section XI of The Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and a letter by Hume in which he discusses Dialogues .
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1757
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About the author
David Hume
3,108 books1,673 followersDavid Hume was a Scottish historian, philosopher, economist, diplomat and essayist known today especially for his radical philosophical empiricism and scepticism.
In light of Hume's central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, and in the history of Western philosophy, Bryan Magee judged him as a philosopher "widely regarded as the greatest who has ever written in the English language." While Hume failed in his attempts to start a university career, he took part in various diplomatic and military missions of the time. He wrote The History of England which became a bestseller, and it became the standard history of England in its day.
His empirical approach places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others at the time as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably René Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour. He also argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. He argued that inductive reasoning and therefore causality cannot be justified rationally. Our assumptions in favour of these result from custom and constant conjunction rather than logic. He concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
Hume's compatibilist theory of free will proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles, and expounded the is–ought problem.
Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent western philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, theology and other movements and thinkers. In addition, according to philosopher Jerry Fodor, Hume's Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive science". Hume engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Boswell, and Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy). Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumbers".
In light of Hume's central role in the Scottish Enlightenment, and in the history of Western philosophy, Bryan Magee judged him as a philosopher "widely regarded as the greatest who has ever written in the English language." While Hume failed in his attempts to start a university career, he took part in various diplomatic and military missions of the time. He wrote The History of England which became a bestseller, and it became the standard history of England in its day.
His empirical approach places him with John Locke, George Berkeley, and a handful of others at the time as a British Empiricist.
Beginning with his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Hume strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. In opposition to the rationalists who preceded him, most notably René Descartes, he concluded that desire rather than reason governed human behaviour. He also argued against the existence of innate ideas, concluding that humans have knowledge only of things they directly experience. He argued that inductive reasoning and therefore causality cannot be justified rationally. Our assumptions in favour of these result from custom and constant conjunction rather than logic. He concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self, only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self.
Hume's compatibilist theory of free will proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. He was also a sentimentalist who held that ethics are based on feelings rather than abstract moral principles, and expounded the is–ought problem.
Hume has proved extremely influential on subsequent western philosophy, especially on utilitarianism, logical positivism, William James, the philosophy of science, early analytic philosophy, cognitive philosophy, theology and other movements and thinkers. In addition, according to philosopher Jerry Fodor, Hume's Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive science". Hume engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Boswell, and Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy). Immanuel Kant credited Hume with awakening him from "dogmatic slumbers".
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
April 16, 2012
I’m pretty sure I brushed up against Hume in university, but I was too busy getting high and watching Cops to read him properly. Not that I regret watching Cops, which was an education in itself, but I probably should’ve paid more attention to things like—oh, I don’t know—the freaking Western canon. Just for starters.
Once you get past the genteel diction, Hume’s skepticism still seems pretty hardcore, and I can only wonder how it struck his original readers, some of whom must have had their minds well and truly blown (or whatever the contemporary idiom was). Hume has often been conscripted into the atheists’ camp, but as I see it, he was just a no-nonsense agnostic who politely suggested that it was really, really dumb to dogmatize about God. And even dumber to plague and kill each other over an abstract noun about which nothing verifiable can ever be said.
If all of that sounds sweetly reasonable to you, it’s because Hume’s ideas have gradually trickled down to the water table of Western consciousness. Skepticism is like mental fluoride: we’ve all ingested it, whether we wanted to or not. (I’m tempted to squeeze in a metaphor here about the bottled water of fundamentalism, but this paragraph has already exceeded its analogical weight limit).
Once you get past the genteel diction, Hume’s skepticism still seems pretty hardcore, and I can only wonder how it struck his original readers, some of whom must have had their minds well and truly blown (or whatever the contemporary idiom was). Hume has often been conscripted into the atheists’ camp, but as I see it, he was just a no-nonsense agnostic who politely suggested that it was really, really dumb to dogmatize about God. And even dumber to plague and kill each other over an abstract noun about which nothing verifiable can ever be said.
If all of that sounds sweetly reasonable to you, it’s because Hume’s ideas have gradually trickled down to the water table of Western consciousness. Skepticism is like mental fluoride: we’ve all ingested it, whether we wanted to or not. (I’m tempted to squeeze in a metaphor here about the bottled water of fundamentalism, but this paragraph has already exceeded its analogical weight limit).
October 10, 2021
A dreadful copy printed by Amazon. Unnumbered in sections; unmarked and missing sections which should have been there such as "Of Suicide", "Of the Immortality of the Soul" and Richard Popkin's illuminating Introduction. A great disappointment for me.
July 11, 2007
The fact that Hume only published this book after he died says much about how far we have come.
October 8, 2019
These two works by Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume deal with religion. Hume is known for his radical empiricism, i.e. his rejection of anything but experience as the source of our ideas. This view of knowledge, paired with the observation that all our experience is ultimately finite, leads to the conclusion that all our knowledge is inductive: universal claims based on particular experiences. This cannot lead to absolutely certain knowledge, so scepticism is the logical outcome of such an analysis, which is exactly what Hume is famous for. But his scepticism isn’t as radical as his empiricism, since he does acknowledge human necessities – to function properly in everyday life we need to take things for granted and not reflect too much on the epistemological status of our thoughts. In short, base our decisions and actions on probabilities derived from past experience.
In both the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) and The Natural History of Religion (1757), Hume applies his empirical scepticism to the phenomenon of religion.
In the Dialogues, which he started writing around 1750 and only finished shortly before his death in 1776 – and which had to be published posthumously considering the current political climate at the time – Hume scrutinizes the philosophical arguments for the existence of a God and His nature.
The three people in the dialogue are the sceptic Philo, the empiricist Cleanthes and the theologian and mystic Demea.
1. Demea argues on a priori grounds for the existence of a Deity – the cosmological argument – and claims we cannot know anything about the nature of this God. From the existence of the universe, and our own notion of causality, we can infer that the universe has to have a cause. This cause has to be uncaused itself (or self-causing), else we end up with an infinite regress of causes. And even if this is not a problem, the entire infinite sequence of causes has to have a cause. Anyway, reason tells us the universe is caused, hence there is an uncaused cause, hence God exists. Further, we don’t have any experience of Him and our reason is only able to project our own experiences and characteristics on the Deity, anthropomorphising the infinite Being – at best a sign of devotion, but often a sign of ignorance or worse, blasphemy. All we can know about God is given by Him through revelation, further we don’t know anything (i.e. mysticism).
The main objection to the cosmological argument is the selectivity of the religious believer. The universe wants a cause, yet God does not want a cause. As Richard Dawkins once quipped: “Who designed the Designer?” Another objection is the rejection of the believer of the infinite regress of causes. He claims all causes are caused themselves, leading to an infinite regress of causes. After which he claims, even if the infinite regress is granted, the whole sequence of infinite causes needs a cause. But Hume remarks the anthropomorphism in such reasoning: the whole chain of infinite causes is only a whole in our mind, this has no relation whatsoever to the world itself. Lastly, why should there be a first cause? I can always simply claim the opposite without contradicting myself, and hence not violate the principle of non-contradiction. In short: the cosmological argument does not work.
2. Cleanthes, the empiricist, rejects this rational theology and is himself a proponent of natural theology, the stance that Nature is itself an argument for the existence of God and hence should be an object of study for the theologian. Within the universe we see all kinds of things that are characterized by a specific form and function. If we look at plants or animals, we see all kinds of parts that are perfectly fitted together to make the plant or animal perform its functions. Also, the universe itself, with all its heavenly bodies and motions, seems to be perfectly pieced together – almost like a machine, or a clockwork. In our everyday lives, when we see houses, clocks or roads, we infer the intentions and actions of makers. Some people made plans and created those things – bare matter is not able to organize itself into functioning wholes. When we see such objects, we infer minds. By analogy, when we observe all the functionality and purpose in the universe, we infer a mind. Hence there is a mind, outside our universe, which created this machine-like world.
Such claims, called the teleological argument, are ultimately based on arguments from similarity. We observe similar effects and hence infer equal causes. Also, in some things we observe similar known properties and hence infer the similarity of their unknown parts. This, of course, is human projection of custom (two instances regularly occurring the one after the other) onto the universe as a whole. Either we view the universe as machine, and hence infer a reason or mind as maker, or we view the universe as an organism, and hence infer reproduction as causal mechanism. Why we should prefer one over the other is a problem the religious believer is unable to answer. Lastly, if we suppose a mind as the cause of our universe, how is this mind generated? Experience teaches us that all reason or mind is secondary to organic generation, never the reverse. In short: the teleological argument doesn’t work either.
(3) Philo is the sceptic and represents Hume’s philosophical stance. Philo claims we cannot prove the existence of God, and even if we could, we could never say anything about his nature, since He is – by definition – not experienceable. All our knowledge ultimately derives from experience, even things like causality are nothing but custom, which severely limits what we can know and the status of this knowledge. What we can know has to come through experience; and all of this knowledge is uncertain. Since God is not perceivable through sense experience, we cannot say anything about Him – both his existence and his nature. Philo also is the one who came up with all the counter-arguments against Demea and Cleanthes mentioned above.
One of the more interesting parts of the Dialogue is the chapters on the problem of evil. This is the strongest argument against the existence of God, especially against the teleological argument. If this perfect God designed the universe, how come there’s all these kinds of natural and moral evil? The moral evils can be attributed to free will. Although to be honest, I don’t see how ‘God gave us the ability to do wrong’ settles the debate: why do innocent people have to suffer because of my free will? Anyway, the believer is stuck with the natural evils. Famine, disease, disasters, monstrous births, etc.
There are three answers to this problem. (1) This is the best possible world that God could have created, given the restraints of matter and natural laws. This is a view developed by Gottfried Leibniz in his Theodicy (1719) and ridiculed by Voltaire in his Candide, ou l’optimisme (1759). This view was already made problematic in Ancient Greece, where sceptics argued (rightly) that imperfection of the world would belittle the goodness of a perfect Being (since He could have created a better world, if he wanted). But this would mean that this Being isn’t perfect after all. The other way around isn’t an option either: if he’s good, he obviously isn’t all powerful, since there are many improvements even we mortals can think of.
(2) Another answer is the reward theory. We suffer on purpose so we can find salvation in our future life. This would make God some kind of sadistic Being who makes us suffer in order to reward us. Also, it is predicated on a future life of which there is absolutely no evidence – at all.
(3) The final argument, the one which Demea finally adopts after Philo’s sceptic attacks, is the mystical retreat. God is an unknowable, infinite Being, this was proven a priori, and besides this we can’t know anything else about him. This is the most consistent stance for the believer, since all teleological arguments ultimately hinge on the fact that the believer claims he has access to God’s intentions when he created this universe. And how he or she does this cannot be explained. But the mystical retreat is also the end of conversation, since it’s a blatant admission of ignorance – yes there’s evil, and yes I don’t know how to square this with the perfect God, let’s leave it at that.
Suffice it to say that after being backed into a corner about the problem of evil, Demea walks out and the final chapter sees Philo retreat a little on his earlier scepticism and claim that it is most useful and beneficiary for mankind to believe in God, even though we don’t know much about him. Few people are capable of cultivating their reason to behave morally, so the masses need a God as a foundation of morality. Again we see a parallel between Hume and Voltaire. When discussing with a friend, the latter claimed not to believe in a God, but asked his friend not to speak to loudly, else his servants would hear. So it seems both Voltaire and Hume personally rejected Christian theology, yet deemed it best for the vulgar masses to believe in order to behave morally. (Although elitist, one wonders if there’s a kernel of truth in it?)
It is hard to weigh Hume’s intention with these claims - I personally find it difficult to view Hume as an atheist, since scepticism does not sit well with atheism, and fits rather better with agnosticism. But then again, in those times any rejection or doubt about current dogma would be labelled ‘atheism’, so whether Hume was an atheist or agnostic, I think he wanted to show the public he did believe it best for God to exist, without himself taking any stance in the debate. The whole form of dialogue is a perfect way to cover up your own motives.
In The Natural History of Religion (1757), the second work, Hume sets out to explain the origin and development of religion, in particular the rise of polytheism and its transformation to theism.
He begins the essay with the remark that religion never arose as an explanation of the universe, as a creation myth. Most people are simply accustomed to the world and are only busy with daily business (especially in the past). Basically, in the past, people were surviving and living, not asking questions about who designed this universe. For Hume, the cause of religion, especially since it’s so widespread across cultures, has to be a human desire, and he finds it in human fears and expectations.
People are anxious about the future, afraid of many things, and expecting pleasures and pains. To acquire peace of mind, they start to project their own thoughts onto nature. They suppose the existence of beings which are causing all of the events in human life, especially the ones where we have no control. Also, when elders die, later generations will project onto these ancestors the same traits as they already to their spirits. So we see hero worship and animalistic gods go hand in hand – both of them acquiring traits through allegorical reasoning.
So, now we have gods, and through fear and anxiety, people start to flatter them by praising them and increasing their powers. Also, they start to honour these gods in order to make their own tribal gods mightier than the gods of other tribes. According to Hume, this process of flattery and sacrifice has a logical endpoint: an infinite Being. And here we have the transition from polytheism to monotheism – from believing in many imperfect, sometimes humanoid gods to believing in a unified, endless, all powerful Being.
According to Hume, there is a constant flux between polytheism and monotheism. This is, because people sometimes invent demi-gods and honour them – sometimes as hero worship, sometimes as contingency – and this reduces their monotheism to a polytheism, which then gradually builds up again to monotheism.
A huge chunk of the Natural History deals with a comparison between polytheism and monotheism, on a wide scale of variables. Hume claims monotheism is pious, intolerant and prone to persecution, while polytheism is idolatrous, tolerant and prone to sacrifice. Also, monotheism is submissive (cultivating “monkish virtues”), prone to censure and dogmatic, while polytheism is courageous, prone to philosophy and sceptical. As example of the dogmatism as opposed to the scepticism he mentions the historical example of the Jews starting a war with the Romans for not being allowed to mutilate the genitals of their offspring. He also mentions that the dogmatism of monotheists is fake – these people act as if there is no doubt in their own hearts and to reinforce this scheme turn bigot towards their fellow human beings.
Another major difference between monotheism and polytheism is that monotheism starts out reasonable but turns out – on closer inspection – to be quite absurd; polytheism is characterized by the reverse – we laugh at Egyptians worshipping cats, yet it is interesting to observe there is never an overpopulation of cats in Egypt. But Catholics, during their Mass, eat their own Deity, which is “the most absurd and nonsensical”. Also, where monotheism is based on scripture and hence is strict, polytheism is based on tradition (mostly oral) is much more flexible. A final difference between both theisms is the melancholic nature of monotheism as opposed to the easy-going nature of polytheism, as witnessed by the (respective) emphasis on duties and responsibilities, and festivals.
After this diagnosis, Hume concludes that monotheism leads inherently to internal conflict. It emphasizes the fundamental sinful nature of mankind, while the overarching theme is repentance, charity and love. Power and knowledge are seen as sinful (witness Adam and Eve), leading to increasing fear and anxiety (especially when contrasted with the demands of being good), ending in internal conflict.
Although religion clearly isn’t recommended to persons valuing a healthy mind, Hume sees a more potent evil of religion: corruption of morality. Monotheism, with its sickly submission and melancholy mood, turns human beings into solipsists, only occupied with themselves and their own salvation. In this sense, religion can be seen as a social dissolvent. It incentivizes prudential behaviour and destroys the foundation of social life (i.e. emotion and sympathy). Also, the fear of punishment and the afterlife leads to unhealthy amounts of devotion, which is fertile ground for all kinds of crimes. People do things to their fellow beings under the guise of religion, which they wouldn’t do otherwise (e.g. burning women on a stake). Finally, religion serves as an excuse to not cultivate your reason and lead a moderate life – religion serves as easy replacement for virtuous living.
(Final passages in comments)
In both the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) and The Natural History of Religion (1757), Hume applies his empirical scepticism to the phenomenon of religion.
In the Dialogues, which he started writing around 1750 and only finished shortly before his death in 1776 – and which had to be published posthumously considering the current political climate at the time – Hume scrutinizes the philosophical arguments for the existence of a God and His nature.
The three people in the dialogue are the sceptic Philo, the empiricist Cleanthes and the theologian and mystic Demea.
1. Demea argues on a priori grounds for the existence of a Deity – the cosmological argument – and claims we cannot know anything about the nature of this God. From the existence of the universe, and our own notion of causality, we can infer that the universe has to have a cause. This cause has to be uncaused itself (or self-causing), else we end up with an infinite regress of causes. And even if this is not a problem, the entire infinite sequence of causes has to have a cause. Anyway, reason tells us the universe is caused, hence there is an uncaused cause, hence God exists. Further, we don’t have any experience of Him and our reason is only able to project our own experiences and characteristics on the Deity, anthropomorphising the infinite Being – at best a sign of devotion, but often a sign of ignorance or worse, blasphemy. All we can know about God is given by Him through revelation, further we don’t know anything (i.e. mysticism).
The main objection to the cosmological argument is the selectivity of the religious believer. The universe wants a cause, yet God does not want a cause. As Richard Dawkins once quipped: “Who designed the Designer?” Another objection is the rejection of the believer of the infinite regress of causes. He claims all causes are caused themselves, leading to an infinite regress of causes. After which he claims, even if the infinite regress is granted, the whole sequence of infinite causes needs a cause. But Hume remarks the anthropomorphism in such reasoning: the whole chain of infinite causes is only a whole in our mind, this has no relation whatsoever to the world itself. Lastly, why should there be a first cause? I can always simply claim the opposite without contradicting myself, and hence not violate the principle of non-contradiction. In short: the cosmological argument does not work.
2. Cleanthes, the empiricist, rejects this rational theology and is himself a proponent of natural theology, the stance that Nature is itself an argument for the existence of God and hence should be an object of study for the theologian. Within the universe we see all kinds of things that are characterized by a specific form and function. If we look at plants or animals, we see all kinds of parts that are perfectly fitted together to make the plant or animal perform its functions. Also, the universe itself, with all its heavenly bodies and motions, seems to be perfectly pieced together – almost like a machine, or a clockwork. In our everyday lives, when we see houses, clocks or roads, we infer the intentions and actions of makers. Some people made plans and created those things – bare matter is not able to organize itself into functioning wholes. When we see such objects, we infer minds. By analogy, when we observe all the functionality and purpose in the universe, we infer a mind. Hence there is a mind, outside our universe, which created this machine-like world.
Such claims, called the teleological argument, are ultimately based on arguments from similarity. We observe similar effects and hence infer equal causes. Also, in some things we observe similar known properties and hence infer the similarity of their unknown parts. This, of course, is human projection of custom (two instances regularly occurring the one after the other) onto the universe as a whole. Either we view the universe as machine, and hence infer a reason or mind as maker, or we view the universe as an organism, and hence infer reproduction as causal mechanism. Why we should prefer one over the other is a problem the religious believer is unable to answer. Lastly, if we suppose a mind as the cause of our universe, how is this mind generated? Experience teaches us that all reason or mind is secondary to organic generation, never the reverse. In short: the teleological argument doesn’t work either.
(3) Philo is the sceptic and represents Hume’s philosophical stance. Philo claims we cannot prove the existence of God, and even if we could, we could never say anything about his nature, since He is – by definition – not experienceable. All our knowledge ultimately derives from experience, even things like causality are nothing but custom, which severely limits what we can know and the status of this knowledge. What we can know has to come through experience; and all of this knowledge is uncertain. Since God is not perceivable through sense experience, we cannot say anything about Him – both his existence and his nature. Philo also is the one who came up with all the counter-arguments against Demea and Cleanthes mentioned above.
One of the more interesting parts of the Dialogue is the chapters on the problem of evil. This is the strongest argument against the existence of God, especially against the teleological argument. If this perfect God designed the universe, how come there’s all these kinds of natural and moral evil? The moral evils can be attributed to free will. Although to be honest, I don’t see how ‘God gave us the ability to do wrong’ settles the debate: why do innocent people have to suffer because of my free will? Anyway, the believer is stuck with the natural evils. Famine, disease, disasters, monstrous births, etc.
There are three answers to this problem. (1) This is the best possible world that God could have created, given the restraints of matter and natural laws. This is a view developed by Gottfried Leibniz in his Theodicy (1719) and ridiculed by Voltaire in his Candide, ou l’optimisme (1759). This view was already made problematic in Ancient Greece, where sceptics argued (rightly) that imperfection of the world would belittle the goodness of a perfect Being (since He could have created a better world, if he wanted). But this would mean that this Being isn’t perfect after all. The other way around isn’t an option either: if he’s good, he obviously isn’t all powerful, since there are many improvements even we mortals can think of.
(2) Another answer is the reward theory. We suffer on purpose so we can find salvation in our future life. This would make God some kind of sadistic Being who makes us suffer in order to reward us. Also, it is predicated on a future life of which there is absolutely no evidence – at all.
(3) The final argument, the one which Demea finally adopts after Philo’s sceptic attacks, is the mystical retreat. God is an unknowable, infinite Being, this was proven a priori, and besides this we can’t know anything else about him. This is the most consistent stance for the believer, since all teleological arguments ultimately hinge on the fact that the believer claims he has access to God’s intentions when he created this universe. And how he or she does this cannot be explained. But the mystical retreat is also the end of conversation, since it’s a blatant admission of ignorance – yes there’s evil, and yes I don’t know how to square this with the perfect God, let’s leave it at that.
Suffice it to say that after being backed into a corner about the problem of evil, Demea walks out and the final chapter sees Philo retreat a little on his earlier scepticism and claim that it is most useful and beneficiary for mankind to believe in God, even though we don’t know much about him. Few people are capable of cultivating their reason to behave morally, so the masses need a God as a foundation of morality. Again we see a parallel between Hume and Voltaire. When discussing with a friend, the latter claimed not to believe in a God, but asked his friend not to speak to loudly, else his servants would hear. So it seems both Voltaire and Hume personally rejected Christian theology, yet deemed it best for the vulgar masses to believe in order to behave morally. (Although elitist, one wonders if there’s a kernel of truth in it?)
It is hard to weigh Hume’s intention with these claims - I personally find it difficult to view Hume as an atheist, since scepticism does not sit well with atheism, and fits rather better with agnosticism. But then again, in those times any rejection or doubt about current dogma would be labelled ‘atheism’, so whether Hume was an atheist or agnostic, I think he wanted to show the public he did believe it best for God to exist, without himself taking any stance in the debate. The whole form of dialogue is a perfect way to cover up your own motives.
In The Natural History of Religion (1757), the second work, Hume sets out to explain the origin and development of religion, in particular the rise of polytheism and its transformation to theism.
He begins the essay with the remark that religion never arose as an explanation of the universe, as a creation myth. Most people are simply accustomed to the world and are only busy with daily business (especially in the past). Basically, in the past, people were surviving and living, not asking questions about who designed this universe. For Hume, the cause of religion, especially since it’s so widespread across cultures, has to be a human desire, and he finds it in human fears and expectations.
People are anxious about the future, afraid of many things, and expecting pleasures and pains. To acquire peace of mind, they start to project their own thoughts onto nature. They suppose the existence of beings which are causing all of the events in human life, especially the ones where we have no control. Also, when elders die, later generations will project onto these ancestors the same traits as they already to their spirits. So we see hero worship and animalistic gods go hand in hand – both of them acquiring traits through allegorical reasoning.
So, now we have gods, and through fear and anxiety, people start to flatter them by praising them and increasing their powers. Also, they start to honour these gods in order to make their own tribal gods mightier than the gods of other tribes. According to Hume, this process of flattery and sacrifice has a logical endpoint: an infinite Being. And here we have the transition from polytheism to monotheism – from believing in many imperfect, sometimes humanoid gods to believing in a unified, endless, all powerful Being.
According to Hume, there is a constant flux between polytheism and monotheism. This is, because people sometimes invent demi-gods and honour them – sometimes as hero worship, sometimes as contingency – and this reduces their monotheism to a polytheism, which then gradually builds up again to monotheism.
A huge chunk of the Natural History deals with a comparison between polytheism and monotheism, on a wide scale of variables. Hume claims monotheism is pious, intolerant and prone to persecution, while polytheism is idolatrous, tolerant and prone to sacrifice. Also, monotheism is submissive (cultivating “monkish virtues”), prone to censure and dogmatic, while polytheism is courageous, prone to philosophy and sceptical. As example of the dogmatism as opposed to the scepticism he mentions the historical example of the Jews starting a war with the Romans for not being allowed to mutilate the genitals of their offspring. He also mentions that the dogmatism of monotheists is fake – these people act as if there is no doubt in their own hearts and to reinforce this scheme turn bigot towards their fellow human beings.
Another major difference between monotheism and polytheism is that monotheism starts out reasonable but turns out – on closer inspection – to be quite absurd; polytheism is characterized by the reverse – we laugh at Egyptians worshipping cats, yet it is interesting to observe there is never an overpopulation of cats in Egypt. But Catholics, during their Mass, eat their own Deity, which is “the most absurd and nonsensical”. Also, where monotheism is based on scripture and hence is strict, polytheism is based on tradition (mostly oral) is much more flexible. A final difference between both theisms is the melancholic nature of monotheism as opposed to the easy-going nature of polytheism, as witnessed by the (respective) emphasis on duties and responsibilities, and festivals.
After this diagnosis, Hume concludes that monotheism leads inherently to internal conflict. It emphasizes the fundamental sinful nature of mankind, while the overarching theme is repentance, charity and love. Power and knowledge are seen as sinful (witness Adam and Eve), leading to increasing fear and anxiety (especially when contrasted with the demands of being good), ending in internal conflict.
Although religion clearly isn’t recommended to persons valuing a healthy mind, Hume sees a more potent evil of religion: corruption of morality. Monotheism, with its sickly submission and melancholy mood, turns human beings into solipsists, only occupied with themselves and their own salvation. In this sense, religion can be seen as a social dissolvent. It incentivizes prudential behaviour and destroys the foundation of social life (i.e. emotion and sympathy). Also, the fear of punishment and the afterlife leads to unhealthy amounts of devotion, which is fertile ground for all kinds of crimes. People do things to their fellow beings under the guise of religion, which they wouldn’t do otherwise (e.g. burning women on a stake). Finally, religion serves as an excuse to not cultivate your reason and lead a moderate life – religion serves as easy replacement for virtuous living.
(Final passages in comments)
August 10, 2007
I did my thesis on Hume last year and whenever anyone asks me which Hume they should read, this is what I recommend. Both are reasonably easy to read and comprehend; both have held up over the centuries. His other major works are far more difficult, and, at times, more dated, although they were revolutionary in the eighteenth century and have been influential in philosophy since then.
The Dialogs, in particular, makes what is still the most compelling and rational argument against the existence of a supreme, benevolent deity that I have ever read.
If you are a person of faith, I suggest you read this and try your arguments against the arguments Hume makes. You will never have a tougher, smarter, more dispassionate debating partner.
Hume's real stroke of brilliance in the Dialogs is the form itself. By putting these controversial ideas in the mouths of other people, he was able to let the arguments speak for themselves and not explicitely associate himself with one particular opinion.
Hume was a genius and a masterful rhetorician. You will experience him at the height of his powers in this book.
The Dialogs, in particular, makes what is still the most compelling and rational argument against the existence of a supreme, benevolent deity that I have ever read.
If you are a person of faith, I suggest you read this and try your arguments against the arguments Hume makes. You will never have a tougher, smarter, more dispassionate debating partner.
Hume's real stroke of brilliance in the Dialogs is the form itself. By putting these controversial ideas in the mouths of other people, he was able to let the arguments speak for themselves and not explicitely associate himself with one particular opinion.
Hume was a genius and a masterful rhetorician. You will experience him at the height of his powers in this book.
April 3, 2013
You have to read this book. Hume has always been my favorite philosopher of all time, I have a picture of him on my wall, and to me he was the wisest human who ever lived. Here he tackles the question of religion. He does so with such insight, mental veracity and flexibility, and genius. Once you get the handle on the syntax it won't read much differently from a modern text, although the absence of evolution is quite serious, one could feel how it could shape entire conversations. But still he has a fresh outlook and brings up points ignored by modern thinkers. To anyone interested in philosophy, religion, or intellectual awesomeness this is a must read.
The book leaves some questions unanswered. Was Hume an atheist, a deist, or a very lax theist? He speaks of atheism with disregard, and claims he is no deist, but spends the rest of his book poking massive holes into religious logic and severely criticizing it. He does not do less damage to theism than Russell or Dawkins or Hitchens. He seems to accept the argument by design wholeheartedly in "History" but shoots it down in his "Dialogues".
His history of religion is basically this. Fear, lack of understanding, and personification of natural objects leads to polytheism which is a "superstitious atheism". This leads to monotheism, which is right, but then the same polytheistic elements infiltrate and the religion is tainted by superstitions - prophets, saints, miracles, prayers, and such. Polytheists were tolerant, but since monotheists claim they have all the truth they become intolerant. Religion also has a negative influence on people's morality, encouraging rigidness and violence, so in short, religion becomes a superstitious and immoral system (not very flattering, eh)?
I don't know what Hume really believed. I don't think he himself knew it either. But that doesn't matter. By recording his mental struggles, he has taught us about the topic more than any other person could.
One interesting trivia: Hume actually comes up with theory of evolution by accident but then goes on to reject it. How he could have changed if he came after Darwin?
The book leaves some questions unanswered. Was Hume an atheist, a deist, or a very lax theist? He speaks of atheism with disregard, and claims he is no deist, but spends the rest of his book poking massive holes into religious logic and severely criticizing it. He does not do less damage to theism than Russell or Dawkins or Hitchens. He seems to accept the argument by design wholeheartedly in "History" but shoots it down in his "Dialogues".
His history of religion is basically this. Fear, lack of understanding, and personification of natural objects leads to polytheism which is a "superstitious atheism". This leads to monotheism, which is right, but then the same polytheistic elements infiltrate and the religion is tainted by superstitions - prophets, saints, miracles, prayers, and such. Polytheists were tolerant, but since monotheists claim they have all the truth they become intolerant. Religion also has a negative influence on people's morality, encouraging rigidness and violence, so in short, religion becomes a superstitious and immoral system (not very flattering, eh)?
I don't know what Hume really believed. I don't think he himself knew it either. But that doesn't matter. By recording his mental struggles, he has taught us about the topic more than any other person could.
One interesting trivia: Hume actually comes up with theory of evolution by accident but then goes on to reject it. How he could have changed if he came after Darwin?
January 7, 2025
You get the sense that Hume wanted to say much more but given the era in which this was written was pushing the boundaries of heresy and he needs to utilize a dialogue writing style to remain among the living.
“ Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men's dreams:”
Excerpt From
The Natural History of Religion
David Hume
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-n...
This material may be protected by copyright.
“ Examine the religious principles, which have, in fact, prevailed in the world. You will scarcely be persuaded, that they are any thing but sick men's dreams:”
Excerpt From
The Natural History of Religion
David Hume
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-n...
This material may be protected by copyright.
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July 4, 2023The Oxford Hume scholar Peter Millican recommended the Dialogues in a lecture series available on Youtube as being ‘perhaps the finest combination of erudition and wit’ in all philosophical writing. I have to confess any humour contained within went over my head and I found it a very difficult read. The Dialogues are often recommended as an entry point to Hume, but I have found the Enquiry and even the Treatise much more approachable.
Particularly frustrating was that the ideas – often fascinating – aren’t especially challenging to understand in themselves; it’s Hume’s presentation that causes the problem. The characters speak in baroque sentences, their arguments meandering this way and that, so that it takes an effort to uncover their meaning. A chapter from the Enquiry is included in this edition in which Hume’s notional interlocutor performs the role of Epicurus giving a defence in front of a hostile Athenian crowd. Despite sharing the same classical time period and being also an oral exercise, it is strikingly more comprehensible and atmospheric than the Dialogues.
I took a course in the philosophy of religion at university which meant that I knew some of the ideas to look for in the fog of Hume’s presentation and I wonder how much value I would have got otherwise. All that said, I’m not going to give a star-rating to a giant of Western philosophy.
Particularly frustrating was that the ideas – often fascinating – aren’t especially challenging to understand in themselves; it’s Hume’s presentation that causes the problem. The characters speak in baroque sentences, their arguments meandering this way and that, so that it takes an effort to uncover their meaning. A chapter from the Enquiry is included in this edition in which Hume’s notional interlocutor performs the role of Epicurus giving a defence in front of a hostile Athenian crowd. Despite sharing the same classical time period and being also an oral exercise, it is strikingly more comprehensible and atmospheric than the Dialogues.
I took a course in the philosophy of religion at university which meant that I knew some of the ideas to look for in the fog of Hume’s presentation and I wonder how much value I would have got otherwise. All that said, I’m not going to give a star-rating to a giant of Western philosophy.
October 27, 2019
I am a great fan of David Hume, for several reasons. He is an important philosopher whose views have influenced mine. He always comes across as an interesting person. I have sympathy, as a writer, with his plight of having difficulty being successful as an author (although in the end he was very successful even if mostly as a historian rather than a philosopher). He writes wonderfully: it takes a little effort to get into his style, but once you are there it is a pleasure to read.
This volume contains two of his works on religion, one of which was published posthumously although written many years before. It also has a good introduction, a relevant excerpt from one of his other books (section XI of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), plus a short autobiography called My Life, which mostly discusses his work and travails as a writer. It's all good stuff, and I think essential reading for anyone who is interested in Hume as a philosopher, particularly those interested in his philosophy of religion. For anyone who is interested in arguments against many aspects of religion as practised as well, I think that whatever modern books you may have read, some of the best arguments may have originated with Hume.
The only niggle was the "Natural History of Religion", early on in which Hume says "There is a great difference between historical fact and speculative opinions;". Hume read a huge amount and could quote from historical sources, I don't think though we should really consider this book as a history in the modern sense - there is plenty of speculative opinion here. It may well be right, but its not quite history. However, it's an enjoyable journey through the book!
This volume contains two of his works on religion, one of which was published posthumously although written many years before. It also has a good introduction, a relevant excerpt from one of his other books (section XI of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding), plus a short autobiography called My Life, which mostly discusses his work and travails as a writer. It's all good stuff, and I think essential reading for anyone who is interested in Hume as a philosopher, particularly those interested in his philosophy of religion. For anyone who is interested in arguments against many aspects of religion as practised as well, I think that whatever modern books you may have read, some of the best arguments may have originated with Hume.
The only niggle was the "Natural History of Religion", early on in which Hume says "There is a great difference between historical fact and speculative opinions;". Hume read a huge amount and could quote from historical sources, I don't think though we should really consider this book as a history in the modern sense - there is plenty of speculative opinion here. It may well be right, but its not quite history. However, it's an enjoyable journey through the book!
December 26, 2022
Perskaitęs Hume’o veikalus apie religiją likau suglumęs: kai kur jis gina religiją ir niekur neneigia Dievo egzistavimo. Priešingai, nors pateikia nemažai kritikos religiniams papročiams ir doktrinoms, vis dėlto sako, kad jokios religijos neturintys žmonės menkai skiriasi nuo gyvulių.
Net jei laikytume jį ateistu, į religiją Hume’as žiūri kur kas palankiau nei galima pamanyti iš kitų jo veikalų.
Nors ir tikėtina, kad taip rašė dėl vidinės cenzūros, bet ir to neužteko, nes 1761 m. Katalikų Bažnyčia uždraudė VISAS Hume’o knygas. Nesismulkino.
Susidaro įspūdis, kad prieš metafiziką jis nusiteikęs kur kas labiau nei prieš religiją. Metafiziką degina napalmu, o religiją tik apspjaudo, bet po to dar ir paglosto, jei leisite tokį palyginimą.
Labai džiugu, kad Hume’as, pateikdamas natūralistinę religijos ištakų analizę, pats neatsiduoda natūralizmui tiek, kiek pasidavė jo įkvėpto natūralizmo šalininkai, ir lieka ištikimas savajam skepticizmui: „Abejonė, netikrumas, susilaikymas nuo sprendimo, panašu, yra vienintelis mūsų pačių kruopščiausių šios temos tyrinėjimų rezultatas“ (p 199).
Net jei laikytume jį ateistu, į religiją Hume’as žiūri kur kas palankiau nei galima pamanyti iš kitų jo veikalų.
Nors ir tikėtina, kad taip rašė dėl vidinės cenzūros, bet ir to neužteko, nes 1761 m. Katalikų Bažnyčia uždraudė VISAS Hume’o knygas. Nesismulkino.
Susidaro įspūdis, kad prieš metafiziką jis nusiteikęs kur kas labiau nei prieš religiją. Metafiziką degina napalmu, o religiją tik apspjaudo, bet po to dar ir paglosto, jei leisite tokį palyginimą.
Labai džiugu, kad Hume’as, pateikdamas natūralistinę religijos ištakų analizę, pats neatsiduoda natūralizmui tiek, kiek pasidavė jo įkvėpto natūralizmo šalininkai, ir lieka ištikimas savajam skepticizmui: „Abejonė, netikrumas, susilaikymas nuo sprendimo, panašu, yra vienintelis mūsų pačių kruopščiausių šios temos tyrinėjimų rezultatas“ (p 199).
January 9, 2020
What a wonderful start to my foray into the works of Hume this year. Perhaps none of his works hold up as well today as these shorter works dealing with natural religion and theology. His challenges against the origins of belief, the feeble attempts of finding evidence and arguments from nature at the time, miracles, and many other subjects are just as potent today as they were 250 years ago. The back and forth between the relentless sceptic Philo, the philosophically even-handed Cleanthes, and the dogmatic Demea is still some of the most readable and glistening prose ever penned by a philosopher which loses none of its explanatory power in its readability. A wonderful classic that bears repeated reading, about to start my 2nd reading of it in fact. Beautiful philosophical writing on an ever-important subject.
June 28, 2025
A rather early work of comparative theology. His attempt to form an overarching analysis of the world's religions is admirable, and he draws upon deep psychological motivations like the need to feel control when the world is chaotic or the need for leaders to assert unquestioned power. However, some of his perspectives are very biased and his range of knowledge of world cultures is very limited by his centuries-old, Eurocentric position. Worth reading for historical perspective of the birth of a field, not for any real insight.
March 9, 2018
I thought the Natural History of Religion was far more interesting than the Dialogues. However, in the Natural History, I thought Hume was more or less rude concerning the world population.
May 5, 2025
Polytheism was the primary religion of man
Historically, it is a fact that human societies have been idol-worshipping ones. Even if you go to a remote village in Africa, the primary religion there would be polytheism as well. If Monotheism is considered the refined version and correct worldview, then again it makes sense that people had less knowledge and hence were wrong. It would be outlandish to assume that man stumbled on to the correct version at first(with reason), and then it corrupted into polytheism again. If humans had been monotheists from the get go, they would have never become polytheists to begin with.
Man didn't stop and contemplate about the nature of reality when he saw the deer grazing the grass, the falcons soaring in the sky and the fishes swimming about in the lakes. These things are ‘ordinary’ to us and do not arouse any enthusiasm in the human mind(more true for the early man than us). But it is only after seeing something ‘extraordinary’ to us that we think that there must be some ‘God’ behind this. And, if these new things troubled humans or worried them i n any way, you better be sure that humans started worshipping it. Fire, wind, rain, harvest, or anything on which human survival depended was worshipped.
Origins of Polytheism
The primitive religion of uninstructed mankind in Polytheism. Leaving aside the works of nature, if one chooses to contemplate his life around him, he would be led to the conclusion that a bunch of imperfect and limited deities. Tempests and storms seek to wreak havoc on the civilization built by the Sun and the plants, wars seem to favour the country which is afflicted by famine, etc. It seems that these powers are indeed ‘at war’ with each other.
Therefore, for each domain of life, they assigned a separate God, because that was what seemed plausible.
The same continued
Humans ascribe human-like qualities to everything. That is why ‘personification’ is a thing. It just comes naturally to us. ‘If horses could draw, they would draw their god like a horse’.
And so we made these Gods of ours human; except for they are ‘infinitely’ powerful, ‘infinitely’ kind and bleh bleh. This is because this infinite power of theirs is reassuring to us, otherwise its of no practical use. We can never employ this infinite power of theirs, can we?
When things are merry and happy, we never question anything. Happiness does not have to have a meaning. But when suffering knocks on our door, our inquisitive mind cries out woes.’WHY ME, GOD?’ And this is not just a trope for modern religions; Greeks have been exploiting this in their time as well. Weaker people are more religious. Also, women(the weaker sex) tend to be more religious than men.
Deities not considered the originators of the World
The idea that God(s) has created the world and everything around us is a relatively newer one. The Chinese used to beat their idols when their wishes weren’t fulfilled. A nation in Asia used to beat the air to protect their land from foreign Gods.
‘Gods have inflicted many ills on men, and men have inflicted many in return’. - Homer
It was believed that Humans and Gods have a common origin- and not much thought was given into the nature of this origin. Some called it nature: fire, water or whatever was the ruling element then. In fact, the question of our origin was the portfolio of the philosophers. Theology had nothing to do with this, up until recently.
Anaxagoras, a Greek Philosopher, who was a theist in the truest sense, was denounced as an atheist because he didn’t believe in the Gods the Greek worshipped. The Greeks(and many more civilizations like them) believed that even though the Gods are not the creators of the universe, they still ought to be worshipped. And that is because they still have a lot of power and are far more powerful than men; these people held the belief that these Gods can fulfill the needs and wants of men. ‘How could Neptune be as weak as a man? Look at how big and mighty it is! It must be a God!
Various Forms of Polytheism: Hero Worship, Allegory
The tendency of humans to believe in intelligent and invisible powers behind things is equal to the tendency of humans to believe in things they see: hence, they assign intelligence(most often unduly) to the things they see. They believe in abstract things like love and then assign it to this winged-cherub-like figure called cupid, who shoots arrows. Artists and painters will help the common folk visualise them better! And also, we venerate our heroes as Gods- this is again natural of humans to do. And we also give very human-like characteristics to the Gods we make; or atleast, what humans imagine those Gods must be like. For instance, the God of War Ares is violent, cruel and cowardly. This is what human beings collectively think of War. Even if there were a God of War, it is not rational to assume that he must exemplify these traits.
How theism came from Polytheism- the wrong source of theism and its confirmation
Humans love exaggeration and flattery. That is why they raise their Gods(the idols) to higher and higher levels of greatness. Eventually, some Gods just happened to climb the ladder and became supreme Gods. Some God was praised so much that he became the ‘one and only God who is supreme above all’. But then other Gods also follow suit and sometimes challenge this God’s superiority and popularity. Given the nature of humans, this is bound to happen.
Religious authorities and poets raise the Gods to such levels that it becomes incomprehensible for humans to follow it anymore. ‘God’s kingdom is so unimaginably vast that if you sum up all the wisdom humanity has ever had, it won’t even be 1% of God’s wisdom’. ‘Heaven’s trees are so large that it takes 70,000 years for a Persian horse to cross the shadow it leaves’. It would be blasphemous to question these levels of power of a God, so people just went along with it. But then these Gods were raised to such such standards that it became absurd for them to have human-like qualities. ‘God is all-watching, all-powerful, sovereign over everything in the universe but he has a problem with your pants being below your ankles.’ Common people still take this God to be this petty figure who is sovereign over only what concerns human beings and is an agent of nature; just that in his praises and descriptions, they go all out and exhaust all adjectives and praises in their arsenal. Their words speak of infinity but in their hearts resides a village magistrate.
Tolerance of religions
Any practice - no matter how barbaric, might be allowed in polytheistic religions; that is a downside and a good thing as well. As these Gods are in no sense perfect or ultimately divine, they leave a lot of divinity for other Gods as well. Since monotheism is based on the divinity of that one God who is truly sublime and beautiful, it becomes truly evil to worship another. And that has caused a lot of enmity amongst theists for those who do not believe in the one ultimate being. There are no records of polytheists fighting each other for the dominance of their gods- with the exception of Egyptians who worshipped cats and dogs. Yes, polytheism allows terrible things like human and child sacrifice. But compared to the numbers put up by crusaders and inquisitors, the polytheists are indeed no match.
Courage and abasement
When God becomes infinitely superior to man, man feels worthless. And that is what happens to monotheistic faiths. So, the most downtrodden of people, become religious figures - revered for their ‘nobility, humility and asceticism’. On the other hand, in paganism, healthy rivalry between Gods and humans is encouraged. Alexander believed that he was rivals with Hercules. Machiavelli (the political thinker) noted that Christianity, with its emphasis on passive suffering, made people: Weaker, More submissive, Easier to enslave.
Brasidas, a Greek hero, says after a mouse bites him: "Nothing is so weak that it can't defend itself if it has courage."
Bellarmine, a Catholic saint, says: "Let the fleas bite me patiently—they only have this life to enjoy."
Monotheism, when corrupted by superstition and fear, led to humility, passive suffering, and submission.
Reason and Absurdity
Polytheism could not stand the test of time because it has no basis in scripture and is entirely based on the stories that are told. There is some part of the story everyone agrees with, and there will be one part of the story, with which no two people would agree to. Monotheism employs scripture, religion and hard facts to combat this problem. But it is a double edged sword. To prove the central tenets of monotheism, reason might help one win over a votary or two, but to make the masses follow you, you need absurdity. If there weren’t any irrational rules and folktales creeping in a religion, people wouldn’t follow it. And unfortunately(or fortunately) enough for the monotheists, they end up bearing the burden of justifying these absurd rules and tales by reason(it is gratifying)! If religious ideas were too reasonable, they would seem boring or too easy. So religions deliberately cultivate: Mystery, Obscurity, Contradiction, Mind-bending doctrines (so believers can "prove" their faith by accepting what is irrational).
Believing ridiculous things is seen as a kind of pious victory over reason.
And in religious discussions, the more reasonable you are, the more heretic you are labelled as.
But the big irony here is that even the religious people do not have a lot of faith, deep in their hearts. They claim to do so, that is a whole nother matter.
Humans also have a tendency to act as the saviour of the downtrodden. They feel pity for their illogical religion and make it a matter of their pride to save the dignity of their religions, in the crudest sense. In fact, the crusaders defended the most absurd and controversial parts of christianity with the most fervour.
Influence of religions on Morality
Humans have long segregated morality and religion in their hearts. In their hearts, the ‘generally good deeds’ have no bearing with religion. Doing good to some pauper is his general responsibility towards society. It might make God happy; but a myriad of such deeds and no irrational ones makes a man godless, heathen and filled with vice.
Religion has to have absurd deeds and irrational beliefs at its core. Virtue and good morals can never be enough to win over God’s favour; it has to be won over by religious zeal.
This is not because of the nature of religions; but due to the nature of humans. If priests of some religion would one day deliver sermons about how general good deeds and virtue is the backbone of a religion and the only way to win over God’s favour, people would consider attending the sermons the primary way to win over God’s favour. It becomes all the more true as Humans do not associate ‘general morality and virtues’ with God. Hindus take Krishna to be ‘naughty’ who would peep at girls as they took baths. He used to steal things and was a delinquent. Most Greek Gods committed incest or some war crimes. Why is it that we overlook the shortcomings of these Gods, but we apply far stricter rules on ourselves?
Everything is good and bad, at the same time. As good as the theology of monotheism is, worse are the crimes and vices committed by their votaries.
I cannot, but claim to have been incompetent for undertaking the task of unravelling the dialogues concerning religion. They proved to be too dense for my faculty. The language also does not do me any favors. The style and the long sentences are intimidating. Although I will admit that I side with Philo in the debates. The lines, which I see fit to describe the entire chronicle (or at least what I understood) were:
“ All human reasoning about God is limited, fallible, and grounded in human psychology more than in demonstrable truth. All a priori reasoning concerning matters of fact or existence is merely sophistry and illusion” .
Historically, it is a fact that human societies have been idol-worshipping ones. Even if you go to a remote village in Africa, the primary religion there would be polytheism as well. If Monotheism is considered the refined version and correct worldview, then again it makes sense that people had less knowledge and hence were wrong. It would be outlandish to assume that man stumbled on to the correct version at first(with reason), and then it corrupted into polytheism again. If humans had been monotheists from the get go, they would have never become polytheists to begin with.
Man didn't stop and contemplate about the nature of reality when he saw the deer grazing the grass, the falcons soaring in the sky and the fishes swimming about in the lakes. These things are ‘ordinary’ to us and do not arouse any enthusiasm in the human mind(more true for the early man than us). But it is only after seeing something ‘extraordinary’ to us that we think that there must be some ‘God’ behind this. And, if these new things troubled humans or worried them i n any way, you better be sure that humans started worshipping it. Fire, wind, rain, harvest, or anything on which human survival depended was worshipped.
Origins of Polytheism
The primitive religion of uninstructed mankind in Polytheism. Leaving aside the works of nature, if one chooses to contemplate his life around him, he would be led to the conclusion that a bunch of imperfect and limited deities. Tempests and storms seek to wreak havoc on the civilization built by the Sun and the plants, wars seem to favour the country which is afflicted by famine, etc. It seems that these powers are indeed ‘at war’ with each other.
Therefore, for each domain of life, they assigned a separate God, because that was what seemed plausible.
The same continued
Humans ascribe human-like qualities to everything. That is why ‘personification’ is a thing. It just comes naturally to us. ‘If horses could draw, they would draw their god like a horse’.
And so we made these Gods of ours human; except for they are ‘infinitely’ powerful, ‘infinitely’ kind and bleh bleh. This is because this infinite power of theirs is reassuring to us, otherwise its of no practical use. We can never employ this infinite power of theirs, can we?
When things are merry and happy, we never question anything. Happiness does not have to have a meaning. But when suffering knocks on our door, our inquisitive mind cries out woes.’WHY ME, GOD?’ And this is not just a trope for modern religions; Greeks have been exploiting this in their time as well. Weaker people are more religious. Also, women(the weaker sex) tend to be more religious than men.
Deities not considered the originators of the World
The idea that God(s) has created the world and everything around us is a relatively newer one. The Chinese used to beat their idols when their wishes weren’t fulfilled. A nation in Asia used to beat the air to protect their land from foreign Gods.
‘Gods have inflicted many ills on men, and men have inflicted many in return’. - Homer
It was believed that Humans and Gods have a common origin- and not much thought was given into the nature of this origin. Some called it nature: fire, water or whatever was the ruling element then. In fact, the question of our origin was the portfolio of the philosophers. Theology had nothing to do with this, up until recently.
Anaxagoras, a Greek Philosopher, who was a theist in the truest sense, was denounced as an atheist because he didn’t believe in the Gods the Greek worshipped. The Greeks(and many more civilizations like them) believed that even though the Gods are not the creators of the universe, they still ought to be worshipped. And that is because they still have a lot of power and are far more powerful than men; these people held the belief that these Gods can fulfill the needs and wants of men. ‘How could Neptune be as weak as a man? Look at how big and mighty it is! It must be a God!
Various Forms of Polytheism: Hero Worship, Allegory
The tendency of humans to believe in intelligent and invisible powers behind things is equal to the tendency of humans to believe in things they see: hence, they assign intelligence(most often unduly) to the things they see. They believe in abstract things like love and then assign it to this winged-cherub-like figure called cupid, who shoots arrows. Artists and painters will help the common folk visualise them better! And also, we venerate our heroes as Gods- this is again natural of humans to do. And we also give very human-like characteristics to the Gods we make; or atleast, what humans imagine those Gods must be like. For instance, the God of War Ares is violent, cruel and cowardly. This is what human beings collectively think of War. Even if there were a God of War, it is not rational to assume that he must exemplify these traits.
How theism came from Polytheism- the wrong source of theism and its confirmation
Humans love exaggeration and flattery. That is why they raise their Gods(the idols) to higher and higher levels of greatness. Eventually, some Gods just happened to climb the ladder and became supreme Gods. Some God was praised so much that he became the ‘one and only God who is supreme above all’. But then other Gods also follow suit and sometimes challenge this God’s superiority and popularity. Given the nature of humans, this is bound to happen.
Religious authorities and poets raise the Gods to such levels that it becomes incomprehensible for humans to follow it anymore. ‘God’s kingdom is so unimaginably vast that if you sum up all the wisdom humanity has ever had, it won’t even be 1% of God’s wisdom’. ‘Heaven’s trees are so large that it takes 70,000 years for a Persian horse to cross the shadow it leaves’. It would be blasphemous to question these levels of power of a God, so people just went along with it. But then these Gods were raised to such such standards that it became absurd for them to have human-like qualities. ‘God is all-watching, all-powerful, sovereign over everything in the universe but he has a problem with your pants being below your ankles.’ Common people still take this God to be this petty figure who is sovereign over only what concerns human beings and is an agent of nature; just that in his praises and descriptions, they go all out and exhaust all adjectives and praises in their arsenal. Their words speak of infinity but in their hearts resides a village magistrate.
Tolerance of religions
Any practice - no matter how barbaric, might be allowed in polytheistic religions; that is a downside and a good thing as well. As these Gods are in no sense perfect or ultimately divine, they leave a lot of divinity for other Gods as well. Since monotheism is based on the divinity of that one God who is truly sublime and beautiful, it becomes truly evil to worship another. And that has caused a lot of enmity amongst theists for those who do not believe in the one ultimate being. There are no records of polytheists fighting each other for the dominance of their gods- with the exception of Egyptians who worshipped cats and dogs. Yes, polytheism allows terrible things like human and child sacrifice. But compared to the numbers put up by crusaders and inquisitors, the polytheists are indeed no match.
Courage and abasement
When God becomes infinitely superior to man, man feels worthless. And that is what happens to monotheistic faiths. So, the most downtrodden of people, become religious figures - revered for their ‘nobility, humility and asceticism’. On the other hand, in paganism, healthy rivalry between Gods and humans is encouraged. Alexander believed that he was rivals with Hercules. Machiavelli (the political thinker) noted that Christianity, with its emphasis on passive suffering, made people: Weaker, More submissive, Easier to enslave.
Brasidas, a Greek hero, says after a mouse bites him: "Nothing is so weak that it can't defend itself if it has courage."
Bellarmine, a Catholic saint, says: "Let the fleas bite me patiently—they only have this life to enjoy."
Monotheism, when corrupted by superstition and fear, led to humility, passive suffering, and submission.
Reason and Absurdity
Polytheism could not stand the test of time because it has no basis in scripture and is entirely based on the stories that are told. There is some part of the story everyone agrees with, and there will be one part of the story, with which no two people would agree to. Monotheism employs scripture, religion and hard facts to combat this problem. But it is a double edged sword. To prove the central tenets of monotheism, reason might help one win over a votary or two, but to make the masses follow you, you need absurdity. If there weren’t any irrational rules and folktales creeping in a religion, people wouldn’t follow it. And unfortunately(or fortunately) enough for the monotheists, they end up bearing the burden of justifying these absurd rules and tales by reason(it is gratifying)! If religious ideas were too reasonable, they would seem boring or too easy. So religions deliberately cultivate: Mystery, Obscurity, Contradiction, Mind-bending doctrines (so believers can "prove" their faith by accepting what is irrational).
Believing ridiculous things is seen as a kind of pious victory over reason.
And in religious discussions, the more reasonable you are, the more heretic you are labelled as.
But the big irony here is that even the religious people do not have a lot of faith, deep in their hearts. They claim to do so, that is a whole nother matter.
Humans also have a tendency to act as the saviour of the downtrodden. They feel pity for their illogical religion and make it a matter of their pride to save the dignity of their religions, in the crudest sense. In fact, the crusaders defended the most absurd and controversial parts of christianity with the most fervour.
Influence of religions on Morality
Humans have long segregated morality and religion in their hearts. In their hearts, the ‘generally good deeds’ have no bearing with religion. Doing good to some pauper is his general responsibility towards society. It might make God happy; but a myriad of such deeds and no irrational ones makes a man godless, heathen and filled with vice.
Religion has to have absurd deeds and irrational beliefs at its core. Virtue and good morals can never be enough to win over God’s favour; it has to be won over by religious zeal.
This is not because of the nature of religions; but due to the nature of humans. If priests of some religion would one day deliver sermons about how general good deeds and virtue is the backbone of a religion and the only way to win over God’s favour, people would consider attending the sermons the primary way to win over God’s favour. It becomes all the more true as Humans do not associate ‘general morality and virtues’ with God. Hindus take Krishna to be ‘naughty’ who would peep at girls as they took baths. He used to steal things and was a delinquent. Most Greek Gods committed incest or some war crimes. Why is it that we overlook the shortcomings of these Gods, but we apply far stricter rules on ourselves?
Everything is good and bad, at the same time. As good as the theology of monotheism is, worse are the crimes and vices committed by their votaries.
I cannot, but claim to have been incompetent for undertaking the task of unravelling the dialogues concerning religion. They proved to be too dense for my faculty. The language also does not do me any favors. The style and the long sentences are intimidating. Although I will admit that I side with Philo in the debates. The lines, which I see fit to describe the entire chronicle (or at least what I understood) were:
“ All human reasoning about God is limited, fallible, and grounded in human psychology more than in demonstrable truth. All a priori reasoning concerning matters of fact or existence is merely sophistry and illusion” .
September 29, 2024
These extracts from the writings of David Hume concentrate on his views on religious belief. The Dialogues are clearly inspired by the writings of Plato in that, at least ostensibly, they are arranged as a discussion between three people of differing views. The Natural History Of Religion, on the other hand, is a more conventional analysis of several aspects of belief.
As ever, David Hume comes across as a logical positivist of the eighteenth century. For him, it seems that there are three possible positions to take on any natural phenomenon, belief or custom. First, something may be known. Where science has trod, where theory has been discussed and where findings have been demonstrated and then reproduced, Hume will admit no deviation of interpretation. Everything else is folly. Secondly, something may be widely assumed but as yet it remains unproven. Though he regularly alludes to such phenomena, he actually rarely analyses consequences of taking a particular standpoint, or pronounces on whether such things, perhaps at a later date, might become known. Throughout his pronouncements on such topics, he reveals himself to be as unquestioning of his assumed culture as anyone who espouses religion. An illustration of this tendency would be his regular reference to “savages”, people who don’t really qualify as human beings. These beings tend to live in Africa, in “jungles” or even in Asia. These are, of course, my own tongue-in-cheek words. He does not question the labels he uses, or their existence as such. But he repeats the position and clearly sees no reason to question it, despite the fact that it is not a “known” fact, in terms of there existing any kind of proof – or, for that matter, even evidence.
The third category in Hume’s thought relates to things that are unknown. Not only do these phenomena exist outside his concept of science in that they cannot be tested, but also, they defy description in a way that human beings can comprehend them. It is in this third category, the unknown, that human beings find fertile ground for their pronouncements of religion.
What is known is adequately described by this passage: “if the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to describe to it any qualities beyond what our precise the requisite to produce the effect: nor can we, by any rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause, and other effects from it, beyond those by which alone it is known to us.” Here the process of scientific inference is raised to the status of a rational god, perhaps. But it is rational…
What is assumed but not proven is illustrated by this assertion: “I am sensible, that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life, and moderation the only source of tranquility and happiness. I never balance between the virtuous and the vicious course of life; but I’m sensible, that, to a well-disposed mind, every advantage is on the side of the former.” The assertion exists because he believes it, and can cite evidence, but he does not have proof. But equally he does not admit belief, believing that at some point the quality may be tested and proven, perhaps.
What is unknown, outside of human inference facilitated by a scientific method, then becomes explained by speculation, or invention. Human beings hold up a mirror to the universe, and in its see themselves and interpret phenomena beyond their understanding as mere aspects of themselves. “…there is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities with which they are familiar acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, arm is in the clouds; and buy a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe, malice, or goodwill to everything, that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of […] poetry; where trees, mountains and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature, acquire sentiment and passion. although these poetical figures and expressions gain not on the belief, they may serve, at least, to prove a certain tendency in the imagination, without which they could neither be beautiful nor natural… philosophers cannot entirely exempt themselves from this natural frailty, but have often described it to inanimate matter the horror of a vacuum […] and sympathies, and other affections of human nature. The absurdity is not less, while we cast our eyes upwards; and transferring, as is to usual, human passions, and infirmities to the deity, representing him as a jealous as jealous and revengeful, capricious and partial, and, in short, a wicked and foolish man, in every respect, but his superior power and authority.”
Personally, I have often wondered why, given our knowledge of the universe and our place within it, why the religious continue to use personal pronouns and human labels to refer to gods. “He, Father, Lord” are common: “it” and “thing” are not. In a reconstructed terminology, “The Lord is my Shepherd” would thus become “It is a thing”. Without the completely human dimension, the phrase becomes meaningless. With the human dimension raised to a status of essential, the phrase no longer describes anything that might not be earth-bound.
Hume expands on this elsewhere: “…the great source of our mistake in this subject, and of the unbounded license of conjecture, which we indulge, is, that we consider ourselves, as in the place of the Supreme Being, and conclude, that he will, on every occasion, observe the same conduct […] in his situation, would have embraced as reasonable and eligible. But, besides that the ordinary course of nature may convince us that almost everything is regulated by principles and maxims very different from ours, besides this, I say, it must evidently appear contrary to all rules of analogy to reason, from the intentions and projects of men, to those of Being so different, and so much superior.” He also equates the tendency to adopt religious believe to ignorance: “…it seems certain, that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some groveling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch the conception to that perfect Being, will be stowed order on the whole frame of nature.” He does however admit that there are possibilities for the committed: “A little philosophy, says Lord Bacon, makes men atheists: a great deal reconciles them to religion.”
Dialogues and Natural History of Religion are a superb illustration of what drove David Hume towards his eighteenth-century version of logical positivism. They come here with copious notes, where the numerous classical illusions are clarified, and where the author’s references to contemporary writers and texts, now forgotten, are referenced.
I do, however, find the format of the Dialogues gets in the way of the argument. I realize that Hume wanted to emulate the form of such writings as Plato’s Symposium, but here the structure becomes an imposition on the reader. There is no obvious stylistic difference between the three characters involved in this argument, so it is often confusing for the reader. This apart, the essays are a wonderfully enlightening read, even though they may present what, for some, may be a tough encounter with reality.
As ever, David Hume comes across as a logical positivist of the eighteenth century. For him, it seems that there are three possible positions to take on any natural phenomenon, belief or custom. First, something may be known. Where science has trod, where theory has been discussed and where findings have been demonstrated and then reproduced, Hume will admit no deviation of interpretation. Everything else is folly. Secondly, something may be widely assumed but as yet it remains unproven. Though he regularly alludes to such phenomena, he actually rarely analyses consequences of taking a particular standpoint, or pronounces on whether such things, perhaps at a later date, might become known. Throughout his pronouncements on such topics, he reveals himself to be as unquestioning of his assumed culture as anyone who espouses religion. An illustration of this tendency would be his regular reference to “savages”, people who don’t really qualify as human beings. These beings tend to live in Africa, in “jungles” or even in Asia. These are, of course, my own tongue-in-cheek words. He does not question the labels he uses, or their existence as such. But he repeats the position and clearly sees no reason to question it, despite the fact that it is not a “known” fact, in terms of there existing any kind of proof – or, for that matter, even evidence.
The third category in Hume’s thought relates to things that are unknown. Not only do these phenomena exist outside his concept of science in that they cannot be tested, but also, they defy description in a way that human beings can comprehend them. It is in this third category, the unknown, that human beings find fertile ground for their pronouncements of religion.
What is known is adequately described by this passage: “if the cause be known only by the effect, we never ought to describe to it any qualities beyond what our precise the requisite to produce the effect: nor can we, by any rules of just reasoning, return back from the cause, and other effects from it, beyond those by which alone it is known to us.” Here the process of scientific inference is raised to the status of a rational god, perhaps. But it is rational…
What is assumed but not proven is illustrated by this assertion: “I am sensible, that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is the chief joy of human life, and moderation the only source of tranquility and happiness. I never balance between the virtuous and the vicious course of life; but I’m sensible, that, to a well-disposed mind, every advantage is on the side of the former.” The assertion exists because he believes it, and can cite evidence, but he does not have proof. But equally he does not admit belief, believing that at some point the quality may be tested and proven, perhaps.
What is unknown, outside of human inference facilitated by a scientific method, then becomes explained by speculation, or invention. Human beings hold up a mirror to the universe, and in its see themselves and interpret phenomena beyond their understanding as mere aspects of themselves. “…there is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualities with which they are familiar acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, arm is in the clouds; and buy a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe, malice, or goodwill to everything, that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of […] poetry; where trees, mountains and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature, acquire sentiment and passion. although these poetical figures and expressions gain not on the belief, they may serve, at least, to prove a certain tendency in the imagination, without which they could neither be beautiful nor natural… philosophers cannot entirely exempt themselves from this natural frailty, but have often described it to inanimate matter the horror of a vacuum […] and sympathies, and other affections of human nature. The absurdity is not less, while we cast our eyes upwards; and transferring, as is to usual, human passions, and infirmities to the deity, representing him as a jealous as jealous and revengeful, capricious and partial, and, in short, a wicked and foolish man, in every respect, but his superior power and authority.”
Personally, I have often wondered why, given our knowledge of the universe and our place within it, why the religious continue to use personal pronouns and human labels to refer to gods. “He, Father, Lord” are common: “it” and “thing” are not. In a reconstructed terminology, “The Lord is my Shepherd” would thus become “It is a thing”. Without the completely human dimension, the phrase becomes meaningless. With the human dimension raised to a status of essential, the phrase no longer describes anything that might not be earth-bound.
Hume expands on this elsewhere: “…the great source of our mistake in this subject, and of the unbounded license of conjecture, which we indulge, is, that we consider ourselves, as in the place of the Supreme Being, and conclude, that he will, on every occasion, observe the same conduct […] in his situation, would have embraced as reasonable and eligible. But, besides that the ordinary course of nature may convince us that almost everything is regulated by principles and maxims very different from ours, besides this, I say, it must evidently appear contrary to all rules of analogy to reason, from the intentions and projects of men, to those of Being so different, and so much superior.” He also equates the tendency to adopt religious believe to ignorance: “…it seems certain, that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some groveling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch the conception to that perfect Being, will be stowed order on the whole frame of nature.” He does however admit that there are possibilities for the committed: “A little philosophy, says Lord Bacon, makes men atheists: a great deal reconciles them to religion.”
Dialogues and Natural History of Religion are a superb illustration of what drove David Hume towards his eighteenth-century version of logical positivism. They come here with copious notes, where the numerous classical illusions are clarified, and where the author’s references to contemporary writers and texts, now forgotten, are referenced.
I do, however, find the format of the Dialogues gets in the way of the argument. I realize that Hume wanted to emulate the form of such writings as Plato’s Symposium, but here the structure becomes an imposition on the reader. There is no obvious stylistic difference between the three characters involved in this argument, so it is often confusing for the reader. This apart, the essays are a wonderfully enlightening read, even though they may present what, for some, may be a tough encounter with reality.
November 21, 2015
I get the feeling that I missed a lot. Constant interruptions kept me feeling like the train of Hume's thought left without me. Maybe I'll read it again some day.
March 5, 2019
HUME SLAPS YOU IN THE FACE WITH COMMONPLACE ARGUMENTS ACCESSIBLE TO THE MODERN MAN.
April 9, 2020
The Dialogues often come across (perhaps as intended) as a thinly veiled attempt to disguise Hume's own radically sceptical opinions on Christianity, and the three-character structure can be difficult to follow even with close reading. Hume's own supposed presence as mute observer to the conversation is awkward at times, especially towards the end, when Demea departs, leaving Philo and Cleanthes to speak intimately as if they were alone (there's material for a slashfic here, honest...) The arguments themselves are elegantly constructed and often dizzyingly effective, notwithstanding Philo's "retraction" in the final sections.
The Natural History is limited in places by its author's prejudices, none too surprising coming from an eighteenth-century man of privilege who, as far as I can tell, never set foot outside Europe, and ostensibly spoke to very few women. The text's strengths lie in its (now-expected) willingness to (coyly) explore challenges to all aspects of the Christian faith, and in its dazzling evidence of the depths to which Hume plumbed the literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Once again, the OWC editorial material is extensive and highly relevant.
The Natural History is limited in places by its author's prejudices, none too surprising coming from an eighteenth-century man of privilege who, as far as I can tell, never set foot outside Europe, and ostensibly spoke to very few women. The text's strengths lie in its (now-expected) willingness to (coyly) explore challenges to all aspects of the Christian faith, and in its dazzling evidence of the depths to which Hume plumbed the literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Once again, the OWC editorial material is extensive and highly relevant.
November 21, 2021
This was an interesting read but frustrating. My chief irritation was that Humes’ Dialogues pit all the arguments for God against each other when they can work together. He has his three dialogue partners systematically dismantle arguments from design, cosmological arguments, and arguments from religious belief and experience, due to the fact that they push against each other. The partners vehemently argue either apophatic mysticism or anthropomorphic design, when there’s a third way.
It was also frustrating that many of his arguments depend on a strong empiricism which seems to me to be plain faulty reasoning.
Lastly, it was disappointing when finally a legitimate argument against theism, namely the problem of evil, was brought up, the most orthodox of the conversation partners, Demea, just walks out, implying theists have no good answer to the problem of evil. This event felt like a straw man and felt a little lazy.
The Natural History of Religion was interesting to read, but I do not have much to comment on it other than it had a few funny jokes about transubstantiation.
It was also frustrating that many of his arguments depend on a strong empiricism which seems to me to be plain faulty reasoning.
Lastly, it was disappointing when finally a legitimate argument against theism, namely the problem of evil, was brought up, the most orthodox of the conversation partners, Demea, just walks out, implying theists have no good answer to the problem of evil. This event felt like a straw man and felt a little lazy.
The Natural History of Religion was interesting to read, but I do not have much to comment on it other than it had a few funny jokes about transubstantiation.
Read
April 14, 2025I love dialogues as a form of philisophical writing way more than straight essays, so this was right up my alley. My copy has expanded to twice its initial size from me dogearring just about every page. There is so much to unpack. I liked that they established early an agreement between the three speakers that God existed, and they were just going to debate his nature. It kept the debate focused.
I enjoyed learning about a priori and a postiori. I liked the menace of Philo, and how he would attack any opinion, just for the fun of it. I have a bunch of thoughts about this which I am sure I'll be writing about soon. Great, great, great book.
The Natural History of Religion essay was far less impactful.
I enjoyed learning about a priori and a postiori. I liked the menace of Philo, and how he would attack any opinion, just for the fun of it. I have a bunch of thoughts about this which I am sure I'll be writing about soon. Great, great, great book.
The Natural History of Religion essay was far less impactful.
July 15, 2022
Hume gets five stars, of course, but I dock this volume one star due to the failure to include Hume's essay "On Miracles" (Section X of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding). Without it a reader does not have the complete body of Hume's most important commentary on religion. The explanation offered--that the essay is readily available elsewhere--makes no sense, as that is true of all the material in this book and is rendered particularly nonsensical by the fact that Section XI of the Enquiry IS included.
Professor Gaskins' 26 page introduction is excellent.
Professor Gaskins' 26 page introduction is excellent.
June 22, 2025
I'm out of practice in reading philosophical treatises. As such, I found this book to be particularly dense, even though I enjoyed the discourse and content. I wound up finding some companion literature that helped explain the terser/more obscure parts in simpler terms, and that helped significantly.
Dang, in re-reading that paragraph, it seems I've stated that I'm too simple to grok the fullness of the text as-written. Even so, it's definitely worth reading, either like I did (with help) or as a smarter version of a person than I am. :-)
Dang, in re-reading that paragraph, it seems I've stated that I'm too simple to grok the fullness of the text as-written. Even so, it's definitely worth reading, either like I did (with help) or as a smarter version of a person than I am. :-)
Want to read
December 28, 2010Off this review:
Whereas Hume is very sceptical about the degree to which anything can be rationally understood at all, isn’t he? Including why or if the sun will rise tomorrow—to say nothing of the nature of God.
Yes, the difficulty of demonstrating rationally anything much about God is the focus of my second book, which is Hume’s "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion". This was published almost a hundred years after Spinoza’s "Tractatus"—again, it was published posthumously, because even in the relatively free-thinking atmosphere of late 18th century Edinburgh, Hume’s critique of religion was highly unacceptable. His friends urged him not only to give up the idea of having it published in his lifetime, but even of having it published after his death, because they thought that it would condemn all this other works to the dustbin of history. Nobody would read them, because they would write Hume off as a wicked unbeliever. But Hume insisted and took steps to ensure that the "Dialogues" would be published after his death, and he was right to have done so, because his works are now far from ignored. This one is probably the most read of all his books, and I think it’s arguably the masterpiece of English language philosophy.
That’s a terrific claim. Can you explain why?
The secret of its success is the way in which powerful and original arguments are woven into an elegant dialogue between three thinkers. The dialogue form is hard to pull off in philosophy, and Hume is one of the very few since Plato to be able to manage it. His announced topic here is “natural religion”. This is contrasted with “revealed religion”, and it means the sort of religious conclusions one can arrive at by reason rather than revelation. So for example, if somebody says “I know that Jesus wants me to do this, because he came to me in a vision,” or “because that’s my reading of scripture,” then that counts as revealed religion. On the other hand, if someone were to say that he is going to behave in a certain way, or that he believes in God, because of certain rational arguments, then that is natural religion. The part of natural religion that Hume focuses on in the "Dialogues" is something that is often called “the argument from design”, which is an argument for the existence of God that starts from the way the world works and is structured. The suggestion here is that the best explanation for what we observe is the existence of a designer—a god who made us. And this is of course a very familiar argument, with an intelligent, divine designer still offered by many people as a necessary supplement to science, as something that is still required by the evidence of complexity and apparent order in the universe. What Hume does in his "Dialogues" is to undermine that line of thinking in a brilliant series of arguments that I don’t think have ever been bettered, let alone answered. They are more profound, I think, than the Darwinian critique of intelligent design. Hume, certainly would have endorsed natural selection if he had known about it. But it’s not enough to read Darwin and Dawkins. You have to read Hume as well to understand the flaws in the theistic argument from design.
And what is it particularly that Hume offers that goes to the heart of the matter?
One of the key ideas is the limitations of arguing by analogy in this context, which is the way the argument from design usually works. Take, for example, a watch found lying in a forest. You might say to yourself: this watch cannot have come together by chance. Somebody must have designed it and made it. Then, by analogy, you might reason: surely nature wouldn’t work as it does unless there were a designer who made it. Now one of the many things that Hume points out is wrong with this kind of analogy is that even if you accept the analogy in principle, it still wouldn’t get you to the sort of God we’re after, but only to a superior intelligence who had made the world and the creatures in it. This intelligence wouldn’t necessarily be everlasting, omnipotent, or omniscient…
And would himself require a designer…
Well that’s one of the clinchers. If you’re going to ask where everything comes from and who designed it, you really do have to ask the same of God. So if you put forward God as the explanation for nature, you’re also going to have to ask who made God.
Yes, a devastating argument. And the finishing touch, isn’t it, is that if a designer requires no designer then why does nature require a designer? What is the need for God at all? Which brings us back to Spinoza, effectively collapsing the difference between God and nature.
Yes. And one of the most striking things that distinguishes these Dialogues from contemporary anti-religious books like, for example, Dawkins’s "The God Delusion" or Hitchens’s "God is Not Great", is that none of Hume’s characters ever actually puts himself forward as an atheist or agnostic. Even Philo, whose views are closest to Hume’s own, pretends to be a believer. Hume’s technique is to pretend that he is the true defender of religion, that he is just trying to strengthen religion by shaving off the weaker bits. Now the thing is that when you have read and sympathised with all of Hume’s writings on religion, you realize that he has in fact shaved away everything. But that is why he manages to be so persuasive. He takes the reader very gently.
Whereas Hume is very sceptical about the degree to which anything can be rationally understood at all, isn’t he? Including why or if the sun will rise tomorrow—to say nothing of the nature of God.
Yes, the difficulty of demonstrating rationally anything much about God is the focus of my second book, which is Hume’s "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion". This was published almost a hundred years after Spinoza’s "Tractatus"—again, it was published posthumously, because even in the relatively free-thinking atmosphere of late 18th century Edinburgh, Hume’s critique of religion was highly unacceptable. His friends urged him not only to give up the idea of having it published in his lifetime, but even of having it published after his death, because they thought that it would condemn all this other works to the dustbin of history. Nobody would read them, because they would write Hume off as a wicked unbeliever. But Hume insisted and took steps to ensure that the "Dialogues" would be published after his death, and he was right to have done so, because his works are now far from ignored. This one is probably the most read of all his books, and I think it’s arguably the masterpiece of English language philosophy.
That’s a terrific claim. Can you explain why?
The secret of its success is the way in which powerful and original arguments are woven into an elegant dialogue between three thinkers. The dialogue form is hard to pull off in philosophy, and Hume is one of the very few since Plato to be able to manage it. His announced topic here is “natural religion”. This is contrasted with “revealed religion”, and it means the sort of religious conclusions one can arrive at by reason rather than revelation. So for example, if somebody says “I know that Jesus wants me to do this, because he came to me in a vision,” or “because that’s my reading of scripture,” then that counts as revealed religion. On the other hand, if someone were to say that he is going to behave in a certain way, or that he believes in God, because of certain rational arguments, then that is natural religion. The part of natural religion that Hume focuses on in the "Dialogues" is something that is often called “the argument from design”, which is an argument for the existence of God that starts from the way the world works and is structured. The suggestion here is that the best explanation for what we observe is the existence of a designer—a god who made us. And this is of course a very familiar argument, with an intelligent, divine designer still offered by many people as a necessary supplement to science, as something that is still required by the evidence of complexity and apparent order in the universe. What Hume does in his "Dialogues" is to undermine that line of thinking in a brilliant series of arguments that I don’t think have ever been bettered, let alone answered. They are more profound, I think, than the Darwinian critique of intelligent design. Hume, certainly would have endorsed natural selection if he had known about it. But it’s not enough to read Darwin and Dawkins. You have to read Hume as well to understand the flaws in the theistic argument from design.
And what is it particularly that Hume offers that goes to the heart of the matter?
One of the key ideas is the limitations of arguing by analogy in this context, which is the way the argument from design usually works. Take, for example, a watch found lying in a forest. You might say to yourself: this watch cannot have come together by chance. Somebody must have designed it and made it. Then, by analogy, you might reason: surely nature wouldn’t work as it does unless there were a designer who made it. Now one of the many things that Hume points out is wrong with this kind of analogy is that even if you accept the analogy in principle, it still wouldn’t get you to the sort of God we’re after, but only to a superior intelligence who had made the world and the creatures in it. This intelligence wouldn’t necessarily be everlasting, omnipotent, or omniscient…
And would himself require a designer…
Well that’s one of the clinchers. If you’re going to ask where everything comes from and who designed it, you really do have to ask the same of God. So if you put forward God as the explanation for nature, you’re also going to have to ask who made God.
Yes, a devastating argument. And the finishing touch, isn’t it, is that if a designer requires no designer then why does nature require a designer? What is the need for God at all? Which brings us back to Spinoza, effectively collapsing the difference between God and nature.
Yes. And one of the most striking things that distinguishes these Dialogues from contemporary anti-religious books like, for example, Dawkins’s "The God Delusion" or Hitchens’s "God is Not Great", is that none of Hume’s characters ever actually puts himself forward as an atheist or agnostic. Even Philo, whose views are closest to Hume’s own, pretends to be a believer. Hume’s technique is to pretend that he is the true defender of religion, that he is just trying to strengthen religion by shaving off the weaker bits. Now the thing is that when you have read and sympathised with all of Hume’s writings on religion, you realize that he has in fact shaved away everything. But that is why he manages to be so persuasive. He takes the reader very gently.
November 24, 2018
This book is a dialogue stressing the arguments about the existence of God....the first cause argument, the arguments using analogy, the faith argument, the experience (a priori) argument, arguments using reason. Also, the there is discussion about whether or not institutional or natural religion justifiably represents God.
June 30, 2020
Thought provoking and easier to follow than I feared it might be, but a chunk in the middle dragged a little. My copy didn't seem to be particulaly well printed, there were several places where half a word was just not there. The editer added am explanatory note to back up Hume's archaic sexism at one point which was both needless, and also rankled.
April 6, 2024
It took me a while to get comfortable with Hume's style, but I was glad I made the effort. His artfully constructed arguments (artful construction being something of necessity at the time for someone with heterodox thoughts on religion) were edifying and a pleasure to read (after the aforementioned acclimation to his prose).
March 3, 2020
Very engrossing material. I was surprised, though perhaps I should not have been, that the arguments put forth in this volume regarding the nature of religion are the same ones you can find posted to YouTube weekly. Some things never change.
August 6, 2018
An interesting dialectic exploring the existence and nature of god.
July 1, 2020
Very well written and includes a great introduction by Robertson. Hume speculated about the origins of Theism, Polytheism, and Idolatry - his observations are quite ahead of time
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