In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion David Hume addresses some of the arguments surrounding the subject of God that were prevalent during his time. Hume uses three characters who encompass various standpoints and posit various arguments concerning the nature of God.
Demea represents fideism, the belief or view that the nature of God exceeds human comprehension and therefore, theorizing about the nature of God is futile. “Finite, weak, and blind creatures, we ought to humble ourselves in his august presence” (13). Demea also claims that God is self-evident and therefore, discussing the existence of God would be a fruitless endeavor. “No man; no man, at least of common sense, I am persuaded, ever entertained a serious doubt with regard to a truth so certain and self-evident. The question is not concerning the being but nature of God”(13). Representing the Orthodoxy, Demea finds it reasonable to support his claims with nothing more than a testimony from Father Melebranche.
Within Melebranche’s testimony we find the concept of anthropomorphism: the act of ascribing human characteristics to non-human beings such as animals or deities.
“But in the same manner as we ought not to imagine, even supposing him corporeal, that he is clothed with a human body, as the Anthropomorphites asserted, under color that that figure was the most perfect of any so neither ought we imagine that the spirit of God has human ideas or bears any resemblance to our spirit, under color that we know nothing more perfect than a human mind.” (14)
The fideist argument hinges on the assertion that human comprehension is limited and the nature of God exceeds this limit. This argument bears a commonality with the skeptical/atheistic argument posited by Philo, though this resemblance is only on the surface. Philo expresses agreement with Melebranche’s assertion of anthropomorphism
“But as all perfection is entirely relative, we ought never to imagine that we comprehend the attributes of this divine being, or to suppose that his perfections have any analogy or likeness to the perfections of a human creature.” (14)
Demea and Philo both assert that the precise nature of God is unknowable, yet their agreement is on the surface only. Demea, while maintaining that one cannot know the precise nature of God, still claims that God exist. Philo, while agreeing with Demea In that the nature of God is unknowable, goes further to assert that the existence of God, too, is unknowable.
Cleanthes, representing empirical theism, posits the argument from design. In response to Demea’s fideism and Philo’s skepticism, Cleanthes asserts that the world and every part of it is “one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines” (15). He then asserts that nature operates in a way that is similar to what one would expect from a machine designed by human deliberation, yet exceeds anything that could be produced by human design. He concludes that, because nature resembles a machine in it’s complexity, that there must have been a supreme being capable of designing it which has a mind similar to the human mind, but far more powerful. The argument put forth by Cleanthes is an a posteriori argument, which establishes his character as an empirical theist.
Philo states, in reply to Cleanthes, that our uncertainty about the origins of the universe is so extensive that one could postulate any number of possible situations. Furthermore, one who postulated any one situation over the others could not provide a sufficient reason as to why he/she did so (17). What this means in more objective terms is: the idea of God as the creator of the universe is one idea among an infinite possibility of ideas which, due to their ambiguous foundations which rest outside of anything observable or testable, are all equal in probability. This is to say that the idea that the Abrahamic God created the universe has no more evidence, and no more reason to be believed than the idea that a Flying Spaghetti Monster created the universe. Both of these ideas are equal in that there is absolutely no evidence for, or against them. Philo ends this argument with the conclusion that “experience alone can point out to him the true cause of any phenomenon” (17). This is to say that we can only make truth claims regarding what can be experienced through our senses, and therefore, observed and tested first hand.
Philo then addresses the reasoning of Cleanthes. He first asserts that Cleanthes is mistaken in his usage of analogy as scientific inquiry. “But observe with what extreme caution all just reasoners proceed in the transferring of experiments to similar cases. Unless cases be exactly similar, they repose no perfect confidence in applying their past observation to any particular phenomenon” (18). Philo is addressing the leap made by Cleanthes when he takes the “operations of one part of nature upon another for the foundation of our judgment concerning the origin of the whole” (19). To illustrate Philo’s objection to Cleanthes’ use of analogy, we can observe the argument postulated by Cleanthes in a broken down form:
-Things in nature are complex.
-Machines are complex.
-Machines are created by designers.
-Therefore, nature was created by a designer.
We can go one step further and replace the subject matter with variables, while maintaining the logical structure of the syllogism:
-p is x
-q is x
-q entails y
-Therefore, p entails y
Now that the argument postulated by Cleanthes is in it’s most basic form, we can observe how it may lead to an absurd conclusion when there is too much separation in the similarity of the subject matter:
-All humans are mammals
-All dogs are mammals
-All dogs are born in litters
-Therefore, all humans are born in litters.
In Part IV of the dialogues, Philo asserts that there is a problem of infinite regression within the concept of God. This is the question of “who created God?”. The problem lies in a series of unwarranted assumptions. The first assumption is that the universe was created. From that assumption, theists assume to know what created the universe and proceed to ascribe to that creator characteristics and faculties. The last assumption, that Philo addresses, is that God is the first cause and does not need explanation. The most reasonable standpoint, as Philo suggested, is to concede to uncertainty when it comes to the origin of the universe.
Hume, David. Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. Ed. Dorothy Coleman. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.