David Hume’s Objections

Theism Atheism Agnosticism

• The positive assertion that God
does exist.
• The positive assertion that God
does not exist.
• The position that holds both the
assertion and the denial of
religious doctrines to be
unfounded on sufficient
evidence
Hume on Metaphysics
• “The alleged truths of metaphysical and theological speculation are
neither logically necessary; nor derived from experience, nor testable in
experience. If Hume is correct, therefore, they are not knowledge at all;
they lie wholly beyond the sphere of the competence of the human mind.”
• “When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc
must we make? If we take in our hand any volume, — of divinity or school
metaphysics, for instance—let us ask, does it contain any abstract
reasoning concerning quantity and number [relations of ideas]? No. Does
it contain any experimental [i.e., empirical] reasoning concerning matter of
fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain
nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
Reason and Faith
“This doctrine of the reasonableness of Christianity is what Hume most insistently
denied. Those who had undertaken to defend Christianity by the principles of
reason, he said, are its “ dangerous friends or disguised enemies,” for “ our most
holy religion is founded on faith, not on reason; and it is a sure method of
exposing it to put it to such a trial [of reason] as it is by no means fitted to endure.
To say that it is founded on faith and not on reason was, in the climate of opinion
at that time, almost the same as to say that it was founded on nothing at all.”
Why?
• Hume was in agreement with the view that the only way to real knowledge was
through reasoning on given facts, and not through pure reason and least of all
through inspiration, revelation, or blind acts of faith.
3 common evidences cited by believers
1. Miracles
2. Design
3. Common consent of mankind
On Miracles
• Laws of nature – a statement of the highest probability we have been
able to ascertain
• Miracles – a violation of the laws of nature
- an event inexplicable by any law of nature discovered or
yet to be discovered
• Hume’s rule for weighing the evidence of miracles: “No testimony is
sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind
that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it
endeavors to establish.”
On Miracles
1. “There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient
number of men of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning, as
to secure us against all delusion in themselves; of such undoubted integrity as
to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others; of such
credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in
case of their being detected in any falsehood, and at the same time attesting
facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the
world as to render detection unavoidable.”
2. Hume believed that the acceptance of miracles is a poor foundation for
religion. (Human ignorance and hand of god)
3. Miracles Prevent us from making use of better evidence for the existence of
God. (the presence of design and order in the world) (order vs intervention)
On The Argument from Design
1. The analogy it draws between the world and God, on the one hand,
and a machine and its builder, on the other, is no better than
analogies between the world and a work of art or a ship or a house
or a biological offspring
2. We know far too little of nature as a whole to reason, with any
assurance, from the part of it we do know to the whole.
3. All arguments which begin with the grandness of the universe end
in a paltry conception of the deity – an anthropomorphism.
On The Argument from Design
4. There is evil in the world.
5. The immense variety of analogies possible from the infinite variety of
things in the world contributes nothing to the conception of ONE God.
Hume’s Final Verdict on Design
“It makes sense to think that the world arose from something like
design, that the designer may have some remote resemblance to the
human mind, but he resembles man intellectually more than morally.
Nevertheless, such inferences are far too uncertain to carry any
religious weight; they do not have the certitude”
Conclusion
How are we to go about our beliefs?
“The proper attitude for the thinker, therefore, is one of cool reserve, of cautiously
fitting his beliefs to the narrow shape of the evidence, of not trying to squeeze more out
of the evidence than can be honestly got. If there is to be comfort and certitude in
religious sentiment, it cannot come from an impartial examination of the evidence. “ To
be a philosophical Skeptic is, in a man of letters, the first and essential step towards
being a sound, believing Christian,” he concluded, because if a man is not a skeptic, if he
holds, on the contrary, that reason working on the data of experience can establish true
answers to religious questions, these answers will not be the answers required by
Christian theology. The only honest attitude for the Christian, therefore, is one of faith,
not one of claiming to base orthodox belief upon reason.”
- This does not mean that Hume favors faith above reason; it means only that if you
insist upon being religious, you cannot appeal to reason to back up your faith.