Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: The Posthumous Essays of the Immortality of the Soul and of Suicide

Customer Reviews:

Slender paperback stuffed with ideas.......2007-02-06

I bought this book for a class, and although we were only required to read sections of the book I ended up reading the entire thing, including the extra two essays (Immortality of the Soul & Suicide). The entire thing was extremely well-written and thought-provoking, even to a novice philosopher such as myself.

This isn't a book you can fly through. Hume requires the reader to slow down and really think about what is being said. The main section of the book (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) involves four characters, three discussing theories, and one student (technically the narrator) listening and occasionally commenting. By using this dialogue technique, Hume is able to present several sides of each argument in a unique way, and not simply expound his own theories. The method is most effective.

I won't go into depth of what this book discusses, the theory of design, arguments about God's nature and being, the argument from the existence of evil, and whether a posteriori or a priori arguments are best suited for proving God's existence. Overall this book is interesting and exciting, even for a 200 year old publication. Even if you're interested in modern philosophy, this book still offers some interesting theories. And obviously if you're interested in philosophy at all, it's a good book to check out for some history on the subject.

The introduction offers a good deal of information about the essays included in the book as well as Hume himself.

Classic statement of arguments against God's existence.......2006-11-17

While being a theist I do not accept Hume's conclusions, he is no doubt the finest philosophical skeptic in the West since the time of Sextus Empiricus.

Hume, the philosopher who woke Kant from his 'dogmatic slumbers', takes a very empirical approach to reality and philosophy. In Hume's mind, the pretensions of the human mind to certain truth and knowledge do not accord with the way things are. Many things are believed on insufficient evidence or sloppy thinking or for reasons of emotional need rather than on evidence and reason. The task he set himself was in many ways like that of Descartes, except unlike Descartes Hume did not believe that either the methods of science or God (Hume was an atheist) could give us grounds for certain knowledge.

The dialogues on Natural Religion are one of his supreme masterpieces. Published after his death, this dialogue features a conversation between two philosophers about the nature and existence of God and the proofs for his existence. One philosopher is a skeptic, Philo, and the other is a theist, Carneades. Demea the Deist provides a third interlocutor in the dialogue. Carneades states several popular arguments for God's existence in Hume's time, including the teleological argument, moral argument, and argument from design. Philo responds to this arguments, mostly using the argument from evil as well as appeals to the rule of regular law in nature, to refute ideas about miracles, providence, and evidential design from a supreme 'architect.' Hume states the counter-arguments in extremely powerful terms, essentially completely demolishing the position of Carnedes and concluding that at best, only a very weak inference can be made for God's existence from the structure of the world.

Hume's arguments have been recently re-stated by several atheist philosophers, including J.L. Mackie and Daniel Dennett. For Mackie, Hume was right in arguing theism is philosophical nonsense, and for Dennett, God is a redundant hypothesis when the order and beauty of the universe is readily and clearly explained by science, and at best a kind of Spinoza-style pantheism is where the sacred can enter into the cosmos. While I disagree, the adoption of Hume's arguments by many leading philosophers shows both the power, beauty and logical coherence of Hume's position, which should be read carefully by any philosopher who wants to offer a rational proof that God exists.

For me it is not the order but the beauty of the universe which suggests God exists, but perhaps for others this beauty is marred too much by suffering and evil to come to such a conclusion, and Hume would surely agree.

Pretty Dense, Very thought provoking.......2005-04-02

This nearly pamphlet sized book is pretty dense with things to ponder. Hume speaks mostly about how a deity would function as the head of the world. The reviewer is not intent on being cute here. Hume addresses many notions about "God" through a series of dialogues amongst three intellectuals. They are intent on convincing each other of their individual views. Essentially those three have to come to terms with the anthropomorphism associated with the God of Christian belief system. It really is more complicated than that but this is a short review.

In addition to the Dialogues are a short essays on the Immortality of the Soul and the rationality of Suicide. Finally there is a discussion of Miracles. The latter three are well placed with the Dialogues as they address the philosophy of religion in much the same manner but come from Hume rather than the fictional characters of the Dialogue.

This book as short as it is, requires a considerable amount of time to consume. Not only are the concepts that Hume presents detailed and valuable, but the language is particularly arcane and often requires re-reading in order to understand where Hume is going.

A few alternative paths to belief in God .......2005-02-28

The two excellent reviews of this book , one by Kurt Messick and the other by CT Dreyer outline the background to, and the principal content of the work. Hume takes apart the argument from Design as proof of God's Existence, raising objections to the analogy between Machine- design and world- design. I do not believe however that Hume in the work really considers two other major arguments for belief in God. One argument might be called the existensial - personal decision argument , in which the individual out of his own need and will decides for belief in God. This decision can be a rational calculation as Pascal suggests that we should make in order to give our own immortality a chance, or it can be a profound deeply moving conviction something that grows out of our own deepest being and need. Another path to belief in God is through the kinds of mystical experience that thousands of human beings from all cultures have had. William James collects some of these testimonies in 'The Variety of Religious Experience'. Another path is through the path of accepting the Tradition given us by our ancestors.
Now it might be said that these alternative paths to belief in God do not deal with the kind of ' proofs ' Hume is talking about. Hume is really talking about the ' rational way' to God through mind and reason. But I believe that every reader should have these other ways to God in mind , if only not to be devastingly shattered by Hume 's demolition job of the Design Argument.
It is well to remember that there are other ways to God aside from the ones spoken of and questioned here.
I write this as a believer in God who also believes that a very great share of Mankind needs God, needs the belief in God to make their own lives ultimately meaningful. And this when I would also keep in mind the following idea. If the Proof of God were certain and absolute , then there would be no test/ trial / challenge for humanity in its belief in God.
And here I add the idea central in the Jewish tradition, and probably important in others, that God wants our decision for God, our free choice of God, and not a slavish obedience even to an airtight logical principle.

Does God exist?.......2005-02-12

David Hume, a philosopher of the period often classified as British Empiricism, is the intellectual associate of philosophers John Locke and George Berkeley. Born in Edinburgh in 1711, he attended the University of Edinburgh but did not graduate. He went to France during his 20s, and spent time there working on what would become his most famous work, 'An Enquiry into Human Understanding', first published under the title 'Treatise of Human Nature'. However, Hume was a prolific writer, and dealt with many areas of philosophy, including politics and ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. He wrote in the area of history as well, and had a politic career as British ambassador to France and a post as a minister in the government for a few years. His final work, 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', was published posthumously in 1779, although work had begun on it as early as the 1750s.

Hume was very concerned about rationality. Hume was never publicly and explicitly an atheist, but his rational mind, concerned about sensory and intelligible evidence, led him to question and doubt most major systems of religion, including the more general philosophical sense of religion and proofs of the existence of God. The primary arguments in his 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' deal with the Argument from Design, and the Cosmological Argument. There is an assumed distinction here between natural religion and revealed religion, an especially important distinction in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophical structure.

- Natural Religion and Revealed Religion -

Natural religion is the idea that we come to know and understand God (and, consequently, what God wants or expects of us, if anything) simply from nature and our sensory perceptions, as well as our interpretations (emotion and rational) of this kind of understanding. From very early in his writing career, Hume attacked the idea of natural religion and most of its conclusions, drawing a sharp line between what we can actually know and what ends up being fanciful extrapolations based on other-than-rational ideas and evidence. Revealed religion is primary what most religions base themselves upon - the burning bush to Moses, the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances to the Apostles, the Buddha's enlightenment under the tree - these are examples of revelation. While Hume does take on the idea of revealed religion in his other works, this particular text does not concern itself with that topic, and stays in the domain of addressing natural religion.

- The Argument from Design -

Arguments from Design have always had a strong appeal to believers within religious frameworks; they have often been used as tools of evangelism, as attempts to show that beyond the revealed doctrines, the very nature of things points to a creator. In very short order, the Argument from Design in Hume's newly-industrial time might have read like this:

- Machines are designed by beings with intelligence.
- The world and the universe it is in resembles a machine.
- Therefore, the world must have been created by means of intelligent design.

This is an argument by analogy, and is convincing to some, but often more convincing to those already inclined to believe in the existence of God.

- The Cosmological Argument -

The Cosmological Argument is at once both more subtle and more simple. The most simple way of stating it would be that God is the 'first cause' of everything. If everything has to have a cause (even the whole universe), then that first cause must be God. In the twentieth century era of thinking of a universe that began with a Big Bang, it seemed to some that the Cosmological Argument was confirmed.

Hume would have been familiar with Leibniz's more subtle form of the Cosmological Argument, which argues for a world of infinite contingent causes. However, there has to be something outside of this system of infinite causes that produced the series - thus, even in a universe with no set beginning or ending, there would still need to be an overarching cause.

- Hume's Arguments -

Hume argues on many levels. His first criticism of the Argument from Design is that this analogy (as are most arguments from analogy) is faulty and not exact; we have no idea if the universe is like a machine. Even if it was, machines are often designed and built by several designers - why argue for one God rather than several? How do we know that matter and the universe don't have their own, internal self-organising principles?

With regard to the Cosmological Argument, the argument is a little more strained. Hume argues that, in any series of causality, once one knows about each cause, it makes no sense to inquire beyond the sequence of causes to some other effect. This is a very Empirical argument, to be sure, and while perhaps not entirely satisfying, it still has merit in philosophy to this day.

- Hume's Structure -

This is a dialogue, set up in the classical way of people talking with each other about the subjects. Hume draws primarily from Cicero, whose work 'On the Nature of the Gods' uses characters of the same names. However, whereas Cicero was concerned about the nature of the Gods (their attributes, powers, etc.) and not their existence, it is the very existence of God that occupies Hume's thoughts.

Hume, despite many years of work on this text, probably never quite thought it was finished. He left the work to Adam Smith (the noted economist, and friend of Hume in Edinburgh), who also thought the arguments against the existence of God were too strong, and likely too damaging to Hume's overall reputation. The tug-of-war over the publication makes for interesting reading in and of itself.

These are important arguments, worthy of discussion and dialogue in philosophy classes, theology classes, and among others who ponder the existence of God.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Penguin Classics)

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Does God exist?
Is God Knowable By Reason?
A Paradigm of Philosophy
Hume's Posthumous Classic
The sun doesn't rise or set or fall

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Penguin Classics)
David Hume , and Martin Bell
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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God, Freedom, and Evil
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford Philosophical Texts)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
The Evidential Argument from Evil (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)

ASIN: 0140445366

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It Seems Strange To Me, Said Cleanthes, That You, Demea, Who Are So Sincere In The Cause Of Religion, Should Still Maintain The Mysterious, Incomprehensible Nature Of The Deity, And Should Insist So Strenuously That He Has No Manner Of Likeness Or Resemblance To Human Creatures. The Deity, I Can Readily Allow, Possesses Many Powers And Attributes Of Which We Can Have No Comprehension:

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Customer Reviews:

Does God exist?.......2005-09-09

David Hume, a philosopher of the period often classified as British Empiricism, is the intellectual associate of philosophers John Locke and George Berkeley. Born in Edinburgh in 1711, he attended the University of Edinburgh but did not graduate. He went to France during his 20s, and spent time there working on what would become his most famous work, 'An Enquiry into Human Understanding', first published under the title 'Treatise of Human Nature'. However, Hume was a prolific writer, and dealt with many areas of philosophy, including politics and ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. He wrote in the area of history as well, and had a politic career as British ambassador to France and a post as a minister in the government for a few years. His final work, 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', was published posthumously in 1779, although work had begun on it as early as the 1750s.

Hume was very concerned about rationality. Hume was never publicly and explicitly an atheist, but his rational mind, concerned about sensory and intelligible evidence, led him to question and doubt most major systems of religion, including the more general philosophical sense of religion and proofs of the existence of God. The primary arguments in his 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' deal with the Argument from Design, and the Cosmological Argument. There is an assumed distinction here between natural religion and revealed religion, an especially important distinction in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophical structure.

- Natural Religion and Revealed Religion -
Natural religion is the idea that we come to know and understand God (and, consequently, what God wants or expects of us, if anything) simply from nature and our sensory perceptions, as well as our interpretations (emotion and rational) of this kind of understanding. From very early in his writing career, Hume attacked the idea of natural religion and most of its conclusions, drawing a sharp line between what we can actually know and what ends up being fanciful extrapolations based on other-than-rational ideas and evidence. Revealed religion is primary what most religions base themselves upon - the burning bush to Moses, the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances to the Apostles, the Buddha's enlightenment under the tree - these are examples of revelation. While Hume does take on the idea of revealed religion in his other works, this particular text does not concern itself with that topic, and stays in the domain of addressing natural religion.

- The Argument from Design -
Arguments from Design have always had a strong appeal to believers within religious frameworks; they have often been used as tools of evangelism, as attempts to show that beyond the revealed doctrines, the very nature of things points to a creator. In very short order, the Argument from Design in Hume's newly-industrial time might have read like this:

- Machines are designed by beings with intelligence.
- The world and the universe it is in resembles a machine.
- Therefore, the world must have been created by means of intelligent design.

This is an argument by analogy, and is convincing to some, but often more convincing to those already inclined to believe in the existence of God.

- The Cosmological Argument -
The Cosmological Argument is at once both more subtle and more simple. The most simple way of stating it would be that God is the 'first cause' of everything. If everything has to have a cause (even the whole universe), then that first cause must be God. In the twentieth century era of thinking of a universe that began with a Big Bang, it seemed to some that the Cosmological Argument was confirmed.

Hume would have been familiar with Leibniz's more subtle form of the Cosmological Argument, which argues for a world of infinite contingent causes. However, there has to be something outside of this system of infinite causes that produced the series - thus, even in a universe with no set beginning or ending, there would still need to be an overarching cause.

- Hume's Arguments -
Hume argues on many levels. His first criticism of the Argument from Design is that this analogy (as are most arguments from analogy) is faulty and not exact; we have no idea if the universe is like a machine. Even if it was, machines are often designed and built by several designers - why argue for one God rather than several? How do we know that matter and the universe don't have their own, internal self-organising principles?

With regard to the Cosmological Argument, the argument is a little more strained. Hume argues that, in any series of causality, once one knows about each cause, it makes no sense to inquire beyond the sequence of causes to some other effect. This is a very Empirical argument, to be sure, and while perhaps not entirely satisfying, it still has merit in philosophy to this day.

- Hume's Structure -
This is a dialogue, set up in the classical way of people talking with each other about the subjects. Hume draws primarily from Cicero, whose work 'On the Nature of the Gods' uses characters of the same names. However, whereas Cicero was concerned about the nature of the Gods (their attributes, powers, etc.) and not their existence, it is the very existence of God that occupies Hume's thoughts.

Hume, despite many years of work on this text, probably never quite thought it was finished. He left the work to Adam Smith (the noted economist, and friend of Hume in Edinburgh), who also thought the arguments against the existence of God were too strong, and likely too damaging to Hume's overall reputation. The tug-of-war over the publication makes for interesting reading in and of itself.

These are important arguments, worthy of discussion and dialogue in philosophy classes, theology classes, and among others who ponder the existence of God.

Is God Knowable By Reason? .......2005-03-11

David Hume made a reputation by writing on reason and its limits. The main thrust of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is to question whether theological arguments for God that assign Him positive attributes (omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent, etc.) go beyond reason's limits in assigning these attributes. We watch Cleanthes (believer in theological arguments), Demea (believer more on faith) and Philo (disbeliever in theology's efficacy) hash out whether reason and experience alone give us reason to say anything whatever about God.

Hume explores all of the major arguments for God's existence. First, the a posteriori argument is explored; the argument that just as seeing a house gives us reason to assume an architect and builder, seeing the world should give us reason to infer a designer. Hume (through the skeptical voice of Philo) sees much wrong with this argument. Why? Because the reason we infer a builder for a house is because experience has shown us that houses have builders, thus when we see a house, we assume that, like other houses we've seen, this one too has a builder. But experience does not tell us that where there is a world, there is a designer. The leap is extra-experiential. Further, even if we DID infer a designer, why infer just one? Houses have construction crews of multiple people; if we analogize between the house and the world, then why not infer that the world, too, might have infinite creators? (And why infer that the world's creator is omnipotent, if all that is needed to create something is to be more powerful than the thing created - no more, no less?)

Next, we go through the a priori argument - the argument from first cause. Hume (Philo) is quick to point out the obvious flaw with this. If everything needs a cause, then what caused God? If God is said to be eternally existing, then why couldn't the natural world - rather than God - be thought eternal instead? And further, why is a infinite chain of causes and effects so unimaginable, anyhow? (Isn't it just as sensical as an eternal God itself not caused?)

Lastly, Philo brings up the argument from evil. In a nutshell, Philo suggests that while theology sees all the perfections of the world, proclaiming them clear evidence of remarkable design, theologians dismiss or downplay the imperfections. If God is said to all-good Himself, then why did he create humans with such flaws? (one assumes that an all-powerful, all-good God could have avoided those errors).

Still, the main thrust of this book is that Philo, far from challenging whether God exists, challenges theologies capacity to assign ANY characteristics to God by reason and experience alone. Hume does a good job not only in outlaying arguments as to why reason is not capable of knowing a thing about God, but also in making believable dialogues (compared to Plato, whose characters are all made to be one-dimensional foils for "Socrates.") As in so many other areas, Hume was a pioneer in the realm of the philosophy of God. This book furnishes strong proof of that!

A Paradigm of Philosophy.......2004-06-02

With the possible exception of his incalculably influential A Treatise of Human Nature, this, I think, is Hume's finest work. The Dialogues is a paradigm of sustained philosophical argumentation on a single subject, and I can't think of a more inspiring work of philosophy. Another reason to read this book is that Hume is one of the few philosophical figures whose work is worth reading as literature. His prose is, of course, lovely and clear as can be; and the Dialogues is packed with the sort of evocative passages that readers of Hume except to find in his work. Furthermore, he's clearly mastered the dialogue format as a way of writing philosophy. He never turns his interlocutors into ciphers spouting the details of their respective positions. Each character has a forceful and distinct personality, and each of them comes to the debate with a well-defined position and adequate means of defending it. In short, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Most of the Dialogues is devoted to discussion of a posteriori arguments for the existence of God. The main argument considered here is the classical argument from design, which Hume seems to understand as an analogical argument of the following sort: the complexity and order of the universe show that it is similar to artifacts created by human intelligences; similar causes have similar effects; therefore, the universe must have been created by a being with something like a human intelligence; therefore, the universe must have been created by God.

Hume's objections to this argument are legion, and many of the individual objections are both ingenious and forceful. He provides reasons for thinking that the universe isn't all that similar to artifacts created by human beings. He argues, for instance, that at least in some respects, the universe resembles animal or vegetable life more than it resembles artifacts created by human beings. Hume also provides for thinking that, even if we think the universe is similar to a human artifact, we ought to think the universe was created by a being quite unlike God. The relevant empirical evidence, he argues, provides us with no good reason to think that the universe wasn't created by multiple beings (large human artifacts are usually created by multiple beings), or that the being(s) who created it are still alive (human creators die), or that the being(s) who created it were infinite (it's not clear that creating the finite universe would have required infinite power), or that the being(s) who created it were morally perfect (the universe, with all its misery and despair, certainly isn't what one would expect from a perfect being). Furthermore, he proposes certain alternative naturalistic explanations of the existence and nature of the universe; and he claims that it's unclear why an appeal to divine creation is to be preferred to these speculative naturalistic stories of the universe's creation.

As I hope this all-too-brief synopsis suggests, Hume's cumulative case against the argument from design is quite impressive. It is, of course, possible to avoid some of these criticisms in various ways, and his speculative naturalistic explanations leave quite a bit to be desired. But the total case is a philosophical demolition par excellence. Indeed, I'm pretty sure that Hume has shown that the argument from design is more or less worthless as support for anything resembling traditional theism. So, if you're enamored of that argument, I suggest you pick up book and wrestle with the criticisms found here.

Now, this isn't all Hume discusses in the Dialogues. There's a section discussing a priori arguments for the existence of God; it focuses on arguments against a version of the cosmological (i.e. first cause) argument. And Hume's arguments concerning the cosmological argument also rule out any sort of ontological argument, as he claims that no sense can be made of the idea of a necessarily existing being. The book also includes a few some brief discussion of particular issues concerning religion.

Where, in the end, does Hume come down on the issue of theism? It's hard to tell, as it's not clear that any of the particular characters speaks for him. Philo, the character who often appears to be speaking for him, never denies the existence of a deity; he simply denies the ability of human reason to discover anything substantial about what such a being is like. That Hume agrees with this is, I think, the most we can glean from this text about Hume's own religious views. It seems clear that he has no sympathy for organized religion, or for any religious views that purport to describe the nature of God, His intentions, or how and why He created the universe as He did. And the only positive religious claim that is given respectful treatment here is the bare claim that we have reason to think that the cause of the universe as a whole is somewhat similar to a human intelligence.

But does acceptance of this minimal thesis amount to his being a theist? Again, it's very hard to tell. First, of course, one might wonder whether this fairly vague positive view is enough to amount to some form of theism. But let's put that issue to one side. Even if it is enough to support some form of theism, it's often difficult to tell whether Hume means to be advocating such a position here. The problem is that it often seems Hume's explicit advocation of this position amounts to little more than a description of what he thinks is an inevitable human tendency to think this way. Given how our minds actually work, he seems to think, we're bound to think something like this about the origin of the universe. Yet it's somewhat unclear that he thinks forming beliefs in this way is reliable. It may simply be that we have a brute instinct to think in a way that insures we'll see the world as resulting from some human-like intelligence, and it's at least not clear that that isn't a debunking account of the plausibility of theism. (For more support that this is a debunking explanation, see his The Natural History of Religion, where the explanations of various religious beliefs certainly seem to be one's that suggest those beliefs simply aren't plausible.)

Hume's Posthumous Classic.......2003-07-13

This short and artfully written book was published after Hume's death. Hume did not wish to experience the controversy engendered by the arguments advanced in the book. It is likely as well that Hume was concerned also with offending some of the moderate Presbyterian clergy who were his personal friends and had been his partisans in other controversies. This book is primarily an attack on the idea that the exercise of reason and logic provides support for religion, and particularly that application of reason leads to strong evidence for the existence of a beneficient God. This line of thought had become particularly popular among liberal theologians in the first half of the 18th century and was a widely held notion among Enlightenment intellectuals across Europe and North America. This idea is still widely held today and can be seen in the writings of the so-called 'intelligent design' advocates of creationism. Hume's criticisms, then, are not only of historic interest but continue to have relevance to our contemporary lives.

The Dialogues are constructed as a 3 cornered argument between three friends. Demea, a man upholding revealed religion against the idea that reason provides support for the existence of God. Cleanthes, an advocate of natural religion. Philo, a skeptical reasoner who attacks the positions held by Demea and Cleanthes. For those who like Hume's sprightly 18th century style, this is a fun book to read. Hume artfully divides some of his strongest arguments between Cleanthes and Philo, and gives the Dialogues the real sense of a dispute among 3 intelligent friends. Philo is generally taken to represent Hume's positions but Cleanthes articulates some strong arguments and provides some of the best criticisms of Demea's fideism. Much of the book is devoted to attacking the argument from design, which Cleanthes attempts to defend against assaults from Philo and Demea. In many ways, the argument from design is the major idea of those supporting the natural religion approach to existence of God. Hume's critique is thorough and powerful. It even includes an anticipation of Darwin's idea's of selection, though the basis for Hume's critique is primarily epistemological. In the later parts of the book, Hume attacks also the comsological argument for the existence of God, though this discussion is relatively brief and a bit confusing. Hume's analysis is consistent broadly with much of his philosophical work. In many ways, his great theme was the limitations of reason, and this book is an example of his preoccupation with the relatively limited role of reason in establishing certain facts about the universe. He finishes with short criticisms of the idea that religion is needed for a stable and well ordered society and defends the usefullness of skeptical reasoning.

It is important to view the Dialogues as part of a critique of religion that Hume sustained in several works. His Natural History of Religion, the On Miracles section of the Enquiry Concerning Human Understacing, and other essays comprise a broad criticism of religion. Other pillars of religion, such as the existence of miracles and revelation, are criticized in his other work. While Hume denied being an atheist and was apparently disturbed by the dogmatic atheism of French philosophes he met in Paris, he was certainly not religous in any conventional sense.

This is a short and very readable book but the power of its arguments are totally out of proportion to its length.

The sun doesn't rise or set or fall.......2002-02-27

I had a mental love affair with David Hume. I found myself intigued and captivated and frustrated all at once. And, in the end, there was something liberating and alienating. To believe or not to believe--that's something Hume leaves to the reader. Oh, by the way, technically, the sun doesn't rise, nor does it 'set' or fall. The earth spins around its axis--the side that is facing the sun is day; the side facing away from the sun is night. And yet, after reading David Hume, I might even doubt that explanation.

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Hume's Naturalism
Howard Mounce
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0415191254

Book Description

Naturalism refers to the naturalism of the Scottish school of "Common Sense" philosophy. Contrary to popular belief which regards Hume primarily as an empiricist, Mounce regards him as a naturalist, and shows how his philosophy combined both empiricist and naturalist tendencies.

This book provides an overall perspective of Hume's work, and deals specifically with his masterpieces, The Treatise on Human Nature and The Dialogues On Natural Religion. H. O. Mounce's interpretation is clear, and written in an elegant style.

Principal Writings on Religion including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion (Oxford World's Classics)

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A Must, A Classic, etc.
A philosopher thinks about God's existence
Essential Philosophy in a Nice (and Cheap) Edition
The truth that they will never teach you.
The most intelligent book ever written about religion

Principal Writings on Religion including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion (Oxford World's Classics)
David Hume
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford Philosophical Texts)
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
The Nature of the Gods (Oxford World's Classics)
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, 4th Ed.

ASIN: 0192829327

Book Description

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.

Customer Reviews:

A Must, A Classic, etc........2005-09-29

This is a great resource for any theological library. Whether you agree or disagree with what Hume writes, this book is `a must' as you wrestle with faith and epistemic certainty. It is used in many theology and philosophy classes and will aid any reader to become more familiar with a different perspective on the origin of religion, the Enlightenment struggle with reason and faith and the broader conversation of contemporary epistemology.

A philosopher thinks about God's existence.......2005-03-08

Essential Philosophy in a Nice (and Cheap) Edition.......2004-06-06

This is a wonderful collection of Hume's most famous and influential writings on religion. Few books I've encountered include this much first-rate philosophy for the price, and so I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Hume's thinking about religion. It includes the section on miracles from Hume's Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals and the full versions of both The Natural History of Religion and the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion. (Hume's short autobiography, "My Own Life," is also included.) Furthermore, Gaskin has provided some helpful editorial material: there's a useful introductory essay discussing the selections, and he includes explanatory notes that clarify some of Hume's more obscure references.

The central theme of Hume's religious thought is the central theme of his philosophical thought as a whole--namely the extent of our ignorance and the impotence of human reason to discover the things we really want to discover. And, for this reason, his writing on religion provides a good illustration of his general philosophical method: he begins by pointing out the impotence of reason, and then he offers a naturalistic psychological explanation of why we continue to think as we do. Our tendency to believe various religious thesis, he argues, cannot be explained as a justifiable way of thinking about the world that we arrive at through the use of reason. It is, instead, explained by certain general principles governing the operation of human minds. And two major works in this volume illustrate the two components of Hume's philosophical method. In the Dialogues he argues that neither empirical research nor the a priori exercise of reason is likely to reveal that our religious beliefs are justified. In The Natural History he begins the project of explaining why we do in fact believe what we do about religion.

As I said above, the Dialogues pertain to the first part of the method. Most of the Dialogues is devoted to discussion of a posteriori arguments for the existence of God, though there is also a short section on various a priori arguments. The main argument considered here is the classical argument from design, which Hume seems to understand as an analogical argument of the following sort: the complexity and order of the universe show that it is similar to artifacts created by human intelligences; similar causes have similar effects; therefore, the universe must have been created by a being with something like a human intelligence; therefore, the universe must have been created by God.

Hume's objections to this argument are legion, and many of the individual objections are both ingenious and forceful. He provides reasons for thinking that the universe isn't all that similar to artifacts created by human beings. Hume also provides for thinking that, even if we think the universe is similar to a human artifact, we ought to think the universe was created by a being quite unlike God. In addition, he suggests certain speculative naturalistic explanations of the existence and nature of the universe; and he claims that it's unclear why an appeal to divine creation is to be preferred to these speculative naturalistic stories of the universe's creation. Hume's cumulative case against the argument from design is quite impressive. Indeed, I'm pretty sure that Hume has shown that the argument from design is more or less worthless as support for anything resembling traditional theism.

But where, in the end, does Hume come down on the issue of theism? It seems clear that he has no sympathy for organized religion, or for any religious views that purport to describe the nature of God, His intentions, or how and why He created the universe as He did. For any such religious view is going to overstep the bounds within which he thinks human reason can operate. And the only positive religious claim that is given respectful treatment here is the bare claim that we have reason to think that the cause of the universe as a whole is somewhat similar to a human intelligence. But does acceptance of this minimal thesis amount to his being a theist? It's very hard to tell. The problem is that it often seems Hume's explicit advocation of this position amounts to little more than a description of what he thinks is an inevitable human tendency to think this way.

And this is where the second part of his project, the part carried out in The Natural History of Religion, becomes relevant. For The Natural History is the work in which Hume sets out to trace the sources of religious belief to certain natural principles of the human mind. There he argues that the the operation of our minds, along with the conditions in which we find ourselves, leads us to arrive at the sorts of religious beliefs we find to be popular in past and present human societies. Our ignorance about the way the world operates and our apprehensiveness about the ways these unknowns can affect our lives naturally lead human beings to a form of polytheism. We tend to attribute the underlying principles by which the world operates to a large number human-like beings, and this is what polytheistic religion amounts to. But once polytheism is in place our tendency to attribute greater powers and more perfect natures to individual gods leads us to something closer to monotheistic views according to which there is a single wholly perfect being behind all the underlying principles governing the world and behind the existence of the world itself.

It should be clear, then, why it's difficult to pin down just what Hume though about religion. He does think that it's hard for beings like us to deny the general thesis that the universe as a whole was probably created by a human-like intelligence. For given how our minds actually work, he seems to think, we're bound to think something like this about the origin of the universe. Yet it's somewhat unclear that he thinks forming beliefs in this way is reliable. It may simply be that we have a brute instinct to think in a way that insures we'll see the world as resulting from some human-like intelligence, and it's at least not clear that that isn't a debunking account of the plausibility of theism.

The truth that they will never teach you........2003-06-04

Hume is a master, one of the most important philosophers ever. In the Natural History, Hume masterfully shows the natural evolution of religion. From its crude beginings of polytheism to the more refined monotheism, comparing the value systems of each. Monotheism has roots and can be traced to a source. He concludes that any rational mind would aviod the unstable houses of religion altogether.

The most intelligent book ever written about religion.......2002-05-23

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is by far the most fascinating and critical look at religion I have ever read. The work is extremely well thought-out and, in my opinion, unbiased as well. As the editor, J.C.A. Gaskin, points out, Hume, in expressing points of view opposing to his own, portrays these views accurately and succeeds in anticipating his oponents' counter-arguments.

Second to the magnificence of Hume's ideas, the greatest thing about this book (and Hume's work in general) is the complete clarity of his writing and the ease with which the reader can follow the logical progression of his ideas.

I consider Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to be Hume's greatest work. Regardless of your personal beliefs, Hume will make you re-think your views about religion and the universe.

Very highly recommended to all, skeptics and non-skeptics alike.

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
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Adequate Presentation of DCNR

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
David Hume
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Release Date: 2004-12-15

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What should we teach young people about religion? The characters Demea, Cleanthes, and Philo passionately present and defend three sharply different answers to that question. Demea opens the dialogue with a position derived from René Descartes and Father Malebranche. God's nature is a mystery, but God's existence can be proved logically. Cleanthes attacks that view, both because it leads to mysticism and because it attempts the impossible task of trying to establish existence on the basis pure reason, without appeal to sense experience. As an alternative, he offers a proof of both God s existence and God s nature based on the same kind of scientific reasoning established by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Taking a skeptical approach, Philo presents a series of arguments that question any attempt to use reason as a basis for religious faith. He suggests that human beings might be better off without religion. The dialogue ends without agreement among the characters, justifying Hume s choice of literary style for this topic. As Pamphilus, Cleanthes pupil, says in the prologue: Any philosophical question that is so obscure and uncertain that human reason can reach no agreement about it, if it is treated at all, seems to lead us naturally to the style of dialogue and conversation.

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Adequate Presentation of DCNR.......2007-05-11

You're looking for a way to convert your dead time in the car or on the treadmill into serious reading time. You looked up something like "philosophy audio" at Amazon and mostly got Deepak Choptra and a bunch of pious pablum. Very few serious works of philosophy are available on audio. This is one of the few, the material is well suited to the audio format, the production values are good, and all in all it's an adequate presentation of Hume's work. Go ahead and buy it.

However, this release is marred by godawful music in the transitions and whiny-voiced actors doing the dialog. The narrator (as opposed to the characters in the dialog) has a really unappealing voice. Who did the casting?

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Reader's Guide (Reader's Guides)

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Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Reader's Guide (Reader's Guides)
Andrew Pyle
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HUME'S DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION.

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HUME'S DIALOGUES CONCERNING NATURAL RELIGION.

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Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: And Other Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)

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David Hume’s Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, first published in 1779, is one of the most influential works in the philosophy of religion and the most artful instance of philosophical dialogue since the dialogues of Plato. It presents a fictional conversation between a sceptic, an orthodox Christian, and a Newtonian theist concerning evidence for the existence of an intelligent cause of nature based on observable features of the world. This new edition presents it together with several of Hume’s other, shorter writings about religion, and with brief selections from the work of Pierre Bayle, who influenced both Hume’s views on religion and the dialectical style of the Dialogues. The volume is completed by an introduction which sets the Dialogues in its philosophical and historical contexts.

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Hume (Library of Liberal Arts)

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Does God exist?
Great Philosophy in a Great Edition

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: Hume (Library of Liberal Arts)
Norman K. Smith
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Does God exist?.......2005-10-10

David Hume, a philosopher of the period often classified as British Empiricism, is the intellectual associate of philosophers John Locke and George Berkeley. Born in Edinburgh in 1711, he attended the University of Edinburgh but did not graduate. He went to France during his 20s, and spent time there working on what would become his most famous work, 'An Enquiry into Human Understanding', first published under the title 'Treatise of Human Nature'. However, Hume was a prolific writer, and dealt with many areas of philosophy, including politics and ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. He wrote in the area of history as well, and had a politic career as British ambassador to France and a post as a minister in the government for a few years. His final work, 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', was published posthumously in 1779, although work had begun on it as early as the 1750s.

Hume was very concerned about rationality. Hume was never publicly and explicitly an atheist, but his rational mind, concerned about sensory and intelligible evidence, led him to question and doubt most major systems of religion, including the more general philosophical sense of religion and proofs of the existence of God. The primary arguments in his 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' deal with the Argument from Design, and the Cosmological Argument. There is an assumed distinction here between natural religion and revealed religion, an especially important distinction in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophical structure.

- Natural Religion and Revealed Religion -
Natural religion is the idea that we come to know and understand God (and, consequently, what God wants or expects of us, if anything) simply from nature and our sensory perceptions, as well as our interpretations (emotion and rational) of this kind of understanding. From very early in his writing career, Hume attacked the idea of natural religion and most of its conclusions, drawing a sharp line between what we can actually know and what ends up being fanciful extrapolations based on other-than-rational ideas and evidence. Revealed religion is primary what most religions base themselves upon - the burning bush to Moses, the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances to the Apostles, the Buddha's enlightenment under the tree - these are examples of revelation. While Hume does take on the idea of revealed religion in his other works, this particular text does not concern itself with that topic, and stays in the domain of addressing natural religion.

- The Argument from Design -
Arguments from Design have always had a strong appeal to believers within religious frameworks; they have often been used as tools of evangelism, as attempts to show that beyond the revealed doctrines, the very nature of things points to a creator. In very short order, the Argument from Design in Hume's newly-industrial time might have read like this:

- Machines are designed by beings with intelligence.
- The world and the universe it is in resembles a machine.
- Therefore, the world must have been created by means of intelligent design.

This is an argument by analogy, and is convincing to some, but often more convincing to those already inclined to believe in the existence of God.

- The Cosmological Argument -
The Cosmological Argument is at once both more subtle and more simple. The most simple way of stating it would be that God is the 'first cause' of everything. If everything has to have a cause (even the whole universe), then that first cause must be God. In the twentieth century era of thinking of a universe that began with a Big Bang, it seemed to some that the Cosmological Argument was confirmed.

Hume would have been familiar with Leibniz's more subtle form of the Cosmological Argument, which argues for a world of infinite contingent causes. However, there has to be something outside of this system of infinite causes that produced the series - thus, even in a universe with no set beginning or ending, there would still need to be an overarching cause.

- Hume's Arguments -
Hume argues on many levels. His first criticism of the Argument from Design is that this analogy (as are most arguments from analogy) is faulty and not exact; we have no idea if the universe is like a machine. Even if it was, machines are often designed and built by several designers - why argue for one God rather than several? How do we know that matter and the universe don't have their own, internal self-organising principles?

With regard to the Cosmological Argument, the argument is a little more strained. Hume argues that, in any series of causality, once one knows about each cause, it makes no sense to inquire beyond the sequence of causes to some other effect. This is a very Empirical argument, to be sure, and while perhaps not entirely satisfying, it still has merit in philosophy to this day.

- Hume's Structure -
This is a dialogue, set up in the classical way of people talking with each other about the subjects. Hume draws primarily from Cicero, whose work 'On the Nature of the Gods' uses characters of the same names. However, whereas Cicero was concerned about the nature of the Gods (their attributes, powers, etc.) and not their existence, it is the very existence of God that occupies Hume's thoughts.

Hume, despite many years of work on this text, probably never quite thought it was finished. He left the work to Adam Smith (the noted economist, and friend of Hume in Edinburgh), who also thought the arguments against the existence of God were too strong, and likely too damaging to Hume's overall reputation. The tug-of-war over the publication makes for interesting reading in and of itself.

These are important arguments, worthy of discussion and dialogue in philosophy classes, theology classes, and among others who ponder the existence of God.

Great Philosophy in a Great Edition.......2004-06-02

If you can track down this long out-of-print edition of Hume's Dialogues, I suggest doing so. It's far and away the best edition of this philosophical classic of which I'm aware. For this volume, unlike most editions of philosophical classics, includes very extensive editorial material; and that material is written by Norman Kemp Smith, a major twentieth-century Hume scholar. What, exactly, do you get in this edition? Well, you get details about the publication of the text, biographical facts relevant to Hume's religious views, a general account of Hume's religious views, a short essay summarizing the main lines of argument in the Dialogues, a thirty-page dialogue-by-dialogue critical analysis of text, a copy of Hume' short autobiographical essay "My Own Life," and more. Indeed, the editorial material here is longer than the text of the Dialogues itself. It's quite a package.

And, of course, you get the masterful text of the Dialogues along with that wonderful editorial material. With the possible exception of his incalculably influential A Treatise of Human Nature, this, I think, is Hume's finest work. The Dialogues is a paradigm of sustained philosophical argumentation on a single subject, and I can't think of a more inspiring work of philosophy. Furthermore, this is one of the few works of philosophy that is worth reading as literature. Hume's prose is, of course, lovely and clear as can be; and the Dialogues is packed with the sort of evocative passages that readers of Hume except to find in his work. He has, moreover, clearly mastered the dialogue format as a way of writing philosophy. He never turns his interlocutors into ciphers spouting the details of their respective positions. Each character has a forceful and distinct personality, and each of them comes to the debate with a well-defined position and adequate means of defending it.

Where, then, does Hume come down on the issue of theism? It's hard to tell, as it's not clear that any of the particular characters speaks for him. Philo, the character who often appears to be speaking for him, never denies the existence of a deity; he simply denies the ability of human reason to discover anything substantial about what such a being is like. That Hume agrees with this is, I think, the most we can glean from this text about Hume's own religious views. It seems clear that he has no sympathy for organized religion, or for any religious views that purport to describe the nature of God, His intentions, or how and why He created the universe as He did. And the only positive religious claim that is given respectful treatment here is the bare claim that we have reason to think that the cause of the universe as a whole is somewhat similar to a human intelligence.

But does acceptance of this minimal thesis amount to his being a theist? Again, it's very hard to tell. Even if accepting this thesis is enough to support some form of theism, it's often difficult to tell whether Hume means to be advocating such a position here. The problem is that it often seems Hume's explicit advocation of this position amounts to little more than a description of what he thinks is an inevitable human tendency to think this way. Given how our minds actually work, he seems to think, we're bound to think something like this about the origin of the universe. Yet it's somewhat unclear that he thinks forming beliefs in this way is reliable. It may simply be that we have a brute instinct to think in a way that insures we'll see the world as resulting from some human-like intelligence, and it's at least not clear that that isn't a debunking account of the plausibility of theism.

David Hume--Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in Focus (Philosophers in Focus)
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Does God exist?

David Hume--Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in Focus (Philosophers in Focus)

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Does God exist?.......2005-10-05

David Hume, a philosopher of the period often classified as British Empiricism, is the intellectual associate of philosophers John Locke and George Berkeley. Born in Edinburgh in 1711, he attended the University of Edinburgh but did not graduate. He went to France during his 20s, and spent time there working on what would become his most famous work, 'An Enquiry into Human Understanding', first published under the title 'Treatise of Human Nature'. However, Hume was a prolific writer, and dealt with many areas of philosophy, including politics and ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. He wrote in the area of history as well, and had a politic career as British ambassador to France and a post as a minister in the government for a few years. His final work, 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', was published posthumously in 1779, although work had begun on it as early as the 1750s.

Hume was very concerned about rationality. Hume was never publicly and explicitly an atheist, but his rational mind, concerned about sensory and intelligible evidence, led him to question and doubt most major systems of religion, including the more general philosophical sense of religion and proofs of the existence of God. The primary arguments in his 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' deal with the Argument from Design, and the Cosmological Argument. There is an assumed distinction here between natural religion and revealed religion, an especially important distinction in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophical structure.

- Natural Religion and Revealed Religion -
Natural religion is the idea that we come to know and understand God (and, consequently, what God wants or expects of us, if anything) simply from nature and our sensory perceptions, as well as our interpretations (emotion and rational) of this kind of understanding. From very early in his writing career, Hume attacked the idea of natural religion and most of its conclusions, drawing a sharp line between what we can actually know and what ends up being fanciful extrapolations based on other-than-rational ideas and evidence. Revealed religion is primary what most religions base themselves upon - the burning bush to Moses, the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances to the Apostles, the Buddha's enlightenment under the tree - these are examples of revelation. While Hume does take on the idea of revealed religion in his other works, this particular text does not concern itself with that topic, and stays in the domain of addressing natural religion.

- The Argument from Design -
Arguments from Design have always had a strong appeal to believers within religious frameworks; they have often been used as tools of evangelism, as attempts to show that beyond the revealed doctrines, the very nature of things points to a creator. In very short order, the Argument from Design in Hume's newly-industrial time might have read like this:

- Machines are designed by beings with intelligence.
- The world and the universe it is in resembles a machine.
- Therefore, the world must have been created by means of intelligent design.

This is an argument by analogy, and is convincing to some, but often more convincing to those already inclined to believe in the existence of God.

- The Cosmological Argument -
The Cosmological Argument is at once both more subtle and more simple. The most simple way of stating it would be that God is the 'first cause' of everything. If everything has to have a cause (even the whole universe), then that first cause must be God. In the twentieth century era of thinking of a universe that began with a Big Bang, it seemed to some that the Cosmological Argument was confirmed.

Hume would have been familiar with Leibniz's more subtle form of the Cosmological Argument, which argues for a world of infinite contingent causes. However, there has to be something outside of this system of infinite causes that produced the series - thus, even in a universe with no set beginning or ending, there would still need to be an overarching cause.

- Hume's Arguments -
Hume argues on many levels. His first criticism of the Argument from Design is that this analogy (as are most arguments from analogy) is faulty and not exact; we have no idea if the universe is like a machine. Even if it was, machines are often designed and built by several designers - why argue for one God rather than several? How do we know that matter and the universe don't have their own, internal self-organising principles?

With regard to the Cosmological Argument, the argument is a little more strained. Hume argues that, in any series of causality, once one knows about each cause, it makes no sense to inquire beyond the sequence of causes to some other effect. This is a very Empirical argument, to be sure, and while perhaps not entirely satisfying, it still has merit in philosophy to this day.

- Hume's Structure -
This is a dialogue, set up in the classical way of people talking with each other about the subjects. Hume draws primarily from Cicero, whose work 'On the Nature of the Gods' uses characters of the same names. However, whereas Cicero was concerned about the nature of the Gods (their attributes, powers, etc.) and not their existence, it is the very existence of God that occupies Hume's thoughts.

Hume, despite many years of work on this text, probably never quite thought it was finished. He left the work to Adam Smith (the noted economist, and friend of Hume in Edinburgh), who also thought the arguments against the existence of God were too strong, and likely too damaging to Hume's overall reputation. The tug-of-war over the publication makes for interesting reading in and of itself.

These are important arguments, worthy of discussion and dialogue in philosophy classes, theology classes, and among others who ponder the existence of God.

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