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David Hume
Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion
David Hume
British Empiricist and skeptic concerned with the possibility of rational religious beliefs
Hume wrote the Dialogues over a twenty-five year period.
The work was largely completed in 1751 while living in Edinburgh.
However, because of his fear of the strong religious forces in Britain, he held off
publication until after his death in 1776.
Speakers in Dialogue
There are three speakers in the Dialogues.
Demea, the orthodox believer
Cleanthes, the empirical theist
Philo, the philosophical skeptic
Though Philo is surely the character whose views most closely mirror Hume's own, no
one character seems to represent Hume's thoughts entirely.
Agenda of the Work
The book is primarily concerned with the possibility of natural religionthat is, of the
possibility of religious belief based on reason rather than on revelation.
Hume's primary target in the Dialogues is the empirical theist who believes that there
is enough evidence in nature to ground a reasonable belief that God has any
particular attributes (i.e. goodness, wisdom, etc.).
Goal of the Dialogues
Hume's intention in the Dialogues is to demonstrate that religious belief has no
rational basis.
Characteristics of the Speakers
Demea
Cleanthes
Philo
Demea
Demea, the traditional, orthodox Christian seems to be ambivalent toward the idea of
reason-based faith.
He is not wholly against the idea, but he is not wholly comfortable with it either.
Furthermore, he is convinced that if there is any possible ground for faith in reason, it
is not through the sort of empirical reasoning that Cleanthes urges.
Instead, any rational grounding for faith is going to come from the certain and stable
a priori arguments that use pure reason to come to indubitable conclusions.
He seems to truly sympathize with fideism, which asserts that religious belief cannot
be grounded in reason, but must be grounded in pure and irrational faith.
Cleanthes
Cleanthes is an empirical theist; that is, he believes that it is possible to come to an
understanding of God's existence and nature by inferring it from the natural world.
In other words, he thinks that by looking at the world, we can gather evidence that
will allow us to justifiably draw conclusions about what God is really like.
He is the only one who clearly and adamantly believes in the possibility of natural
religion (that is, in the possibility of grounding religious belief in reason).
Philo
Philo is the only character who shows no tendency toward natural religion.
Philo, a philosophical skeptic, is adamant in his claim that reason cannot get us to an

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Philo, a philosophical skeptic, is adamant in his claim that reason cannot get us to an
understanding of God's nature.
It is Philo's arguments against Cleanthes' empirical theism that comprise the main
theme of the Dialogues.
Part II
In this section there are some important arguments:
Philo's argument for God's existence
Cleanthes argument from design
Each of Philo's objections to this argument
Philos Argument
The conclusion is actually very weak and also irreligious.
The conclusion is only that there is some first cause of the universe and that we can
call this initial cause "God".
Just saying that there is some first cause of the universe, though, is not in itself a
religious claim.
This first cause might be some singular event that required no cause, and not an
intelligent being.
Argument from Design
The argument is meant to be an inductive inference, helped along by an argument by
analogy.
1) In my experience, whenever I have encountered a machine, that machine was
made by a human intelligence. Therefore, 2) all machines are made by human
intelligence. 3) The universe is analogous to a machine. 4) Therefore, the universe
must have been made by something which is similar to a human intelligence.
Philos Objections
Four objections
Analogy not good
Part vs. Whole
Nature of Order
Unique Effect
Improper Analogy
He claims that the analogy is no good.
He claims that the universe and a machine are not similar in the way that the red and
blue fires are similar, and for this reason, an argument by analogy is not valid.
Part vs. Whole
Philo's second objection is that the analogy does not work because it is between a
whole and a part of that whole.
A machine is a part of the universe, and it makes no sense to assume that one part of
the universe is analogous to the whole of the universe just because we have no
experience of the other parts.
Nature of Order
Philo's third objection is that not all order is the result of design.
Thus, it is possible that the universe is not analogous to a machine even though it is
ordered
It might be analogous to some other form of order and not to a human-made
structure.
Unique Effect
Philo's last objection is that the origin of the universe is a unique effect.

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That it is unique would make inductive reasoning impotent to discuss it, for induction
would require that we had witnessed several creations of several universes and knew
that God had created each universe.
Part III
Cleanthes responds to Philos Objections
Argument from Design is offered
Skepticism, far from demolishing his argument, only strengthens it.
A true skeptic is only supposed to reject obscure, remote arguments, not plain
common sense.
Cleathes asserts that common sense is on the side of intelligent design.
Part IV
Cleathes, the empirical theist, and Demea, the fideist continue to debate the pros and
cons of the design argument, specifically as it relates to knowing by analogy.
Philo breaks in with a wholly new approach.
Philos Contribution
He says that if the universe has an intelligent designer, the order of the universe is no
more explicable than it would be if there were no God.
That is, for God's thoughts to order the universe, there must be a high degree of
order in God's thoughts.
If order requires an explanation, then we have only replaced one question, "why is
there order in the universe?" with another, "why is there order in God's thoughts?"
Order does not belong more essentially to thought than to matter.

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