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Original Title:	Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
ISBN:	0872204022 (ISBN13: 9780872204027)
Edition Language:	English

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

David Hume

Paperback | Pages: 160 pages

Rating: 3.96 | 4877 Users | 153 Reviews

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Title	:	Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Author	:	David Hume
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	2nd Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 160 pages
Published	:	September 1st 1998 by Hackett Publishing Company (first published 1751)
Categories	:	Philosophy. Religion. Nonfiction. Classics. Theology

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All the New Atheists I've come across cite the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, most recently A.C. Grayling in his horrible The God Argument. But I wonder how carefully they read it; more and more often I feel they are metamorphosing into their creationist enemies, diligently mining out-of-context quotes to support their claim that there is no God and they can prove it. Hume would never have said anything so silly, though I doubt he'd be surprised at the way he is now used: he gives the impression of having seen every side of this debate a hundred times. He is not an atheist but a sceptic, an important distinction. His task here is to look critically at the arguments which purportedly demonstrate that the universe displays evidence of having been created by God. He is remarkably convincing when he demonstrates their essential weaknesses.

The main problems are easy to state: we can only ever reason by analogy with things we know, we only know a small part of the universe, and, worst, we only have one example of a universe to reason about. It is impossible under such circumstances to draw firm conclusions about our universe's origins. It is arguable that the universe in some ways resembles a machine; machines are designed and produced through the agency of human minds, hence it is possible, by analogy, that the universe was produced by some Being whose mind resembles ours. Hume has little difficulty in showing that the argument is weak, and that, even if the universe was produced by a purposeful Being, we have no reason to deduce that this Being necessarily resembles us in any important respects.

The New Atheists like to quote passages from the above. Hume also considers related arguments. Machines are not the only complex, ordered things we are familiar with; there are also living creatures, which are produced by reproductive processes. (It is startling to see how close he is to explicitly hypothesizing a version of evolution). As he says, the universe is arguably as much like a living creature as it is like a machine, so once again it is feasible to reason by analogy: living things arise by reproduction, the universe is like a living thing, hence the universe perhaps arose through a process like reproduction. Yet another possibility is that the universe arose through a process of blind chance. Given enough time, its particles will cycle though all possible combinations, and in the end one configuration may arise which causes the production of the complex world of living creatures that we see.

I think Hume would have been amused to see people like Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss claim, in all seriousness, that they know some version of his second or third scenario to be the true account of our universe's origin. He advances these ideas in a spirit of playfulness, to show that there are equally good alternatives to a Divine Watchmaker, but he makes it clear that he trusts them neither more nor less. He can't see any way to resolve the questions given the evidence at our disposal. We now have a great deal more evidence, but the difficulties in principle remain. With only a single universe, it is not obvious how one can use the scientific method, which relies on accumulating evidence from multiple related cases. This point has been made repeatedly in recent years by Lee Smolin, who accuses speculative cosmologists of concocting radical metaphysical fantasies and marketing them as science.

I'd love to see Hume in a panel discussion with Lawrence Krauss and Francis S. Collins. Since that, alas, seems unlikely to happen, read his book. It's short, amusingly written and remarkably sensible.

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Ratings: 3.96 From 4877 Users | 153 Reviews

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Hume's skepticism was the result of more than his strong commitment to the Enlightenment ideal of the supremacy of reason; it was also largely the result of his equally strong commitment to the philosophical principles of British Empiricism. Following in the footsteps of George Berkeley, Hume believed that all factual knowledge derives from experience. In contrast to the rationalists, such as Rene Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche (both influential for Hume), who believed that knowledge of



In these Platonic-like dialogues, Hume uses three characters to lay out three views on religion. In one, God transcends all human attributes and is incomprehensible. In another, God is modeled after humans, focusing on intelligence in a super-human sort of way. The third view, articulated by Philo, takes Humes empiricist approach to argue that we cannot establish the existence or non-existence of God. Philos ambivalence on the issue of God is palpable and in the end he lands on a deist approach:

Featuring a dialogue amongst three philosophers, this volume debates the existence of god, highlighting the varied opinions on the nature and attributes of such...

All that belongs to human understanding, in this deep ignorance and obscurity, is to be sceptical, or at least cautious, and not to admit of any hypothesis whatever, much less of any which issupported by no appearance of probability. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural ReligionReading Mill's Utilitarianism the other day reminded me that it has been ages since I've read Hume. Hume's last little book, for me, is nearly perfect. He combines skepticism with a dark and mischievous humor. He is

Well, its my first Hume book, and I must admit it got easier to digest around chapter 8 or 9. A lot of good stuff to chew on.

Anybody who doesn't appreciate Hume doesn't appreciate philosophy. His dialogues are entertaining and insightful, and they are a good introduction to Hume's style and thought.The dialogues exhibit the typical Humean combination of technically proficient but also commonsensical arguments. Hume methodically dispels the haughty aura of self-declared experts in the ivory tower by appealing to the intuitions and the common sense of ordinary people. (In this there are strong echoes of Plato's