Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion free essay sample

Hume Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by Davis Hume is a pretty heavy text full of many arguments each one with multiple sub arguments and countless premises. While reading I often found my self asking â€Å"what the hell does this mean† or â€Å"where does this even connect with the previous statement†. To be honest if it was not for spark notes I would be even more lost for words than I am now. However as I wade through the literary labyrinth which is Hume I discovered multiple themes that have lead me to one final thesis. Since it is impossible to determine true design through a priori argument alone, the only way to be comfortable with your faith (if you chose to have faith) is to basis it on undeterminable introspection, but one should rely more on skepticism than on faith alone. If we philosophize on God we soon realize no end can be accomplished through reason or observance of the empirical world so the only way to reach revelation is to accept our limited capacity of reason and evidence, to accomplish this we must become skeptics. We will write a custom essay sample on Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Just because you are a skeptic doesn’t mean you have to be atheist, Philo argues for skepticism through the whole dialogue by questioning everything Cleanthes and Demea have to say and by making speculative analogical arguments in defiance against those that Cleanthes or Demea make. So in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion I believe Philo makes the best argument against natural religion. To explain the persuasiveness of his arguments against natural religion you must first understand what natural religion is; it is the process of obtaining religious belief through gathering evidence and reasoning from that evidence. Any believer would immediately say you can look around and see that God exists but anyone who really cares about deriving a truth from real evidence would disagree. It is obviously impossible to presuppose anything about a God when everything we are taught about him leads us to believe he is unquestionable, however this doesn’t stand in the way of Philo. I may be just totally confused but it seems that Cleanthes contradicts what he says in previous chapters every time a new chapter arises but then again this is just Philo subtly leading him and testing his logic so that soon gives up on the argument of design, and just except skepticism as the healthier choice. In part IV Demea supposes a God that is perfectly immutable and simple, Cleanthes thinks this means that God had no mind and influence over the universe. Ignoring Cleanthes’ need for an anthropomorphic God, Philo goes on to bring up the persisting argument pertaining to reason; what really is the point of thinking about it? On page 72 Philo mentions the Indian philosopher and his elephant, he says â€Å"If the material world rest upon a similar ideal world, this idea world must rest upon some other and so on†. Philo is restating an idea of his that is recurrent through out the dialogues, when going beyond the mundane system, you only excite an inquisitive humor, which is impossible to ever satisfy. It is as if Philo is trying to get it through the head of Cleanthes that whatever argument of analogy or original cause of an effect that you bring into the discussion, there is just no point. It is a waste of time to stutter on such trivial matters, it is as if Philo would rather being doing something else than arguing. With part V Philo shows how science has broadened our understanding of the empirical world and thus has strengthened the argument against natural religion. Starting on page 76 Philo points out that the cause can only be proportioned to the effect and since our cognizance is limited to our experience and our experience is finite then how can you ascribe anything to God that is not finite. Philo follows this up by blowing Cleanthes’ mind, on page 77 he asks how Cleanthes could produce from his hypothesis a way to prove the unity of the deity. Philo says a great number of men can work together to construct something, so why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world? Philo takes his idea of polytheism and runs with it as a joke and ask why these Gods couldn’t have various sexes as well. This is a pretty awesome part of the book because Demea is freaking out and Philo says that these are Cleanthes’ suppositions because he was the one who lead us onto the idea of a finite God by arguing like effects prove like causes. Cleanthes however shakes this off and tells Philo he is happy that while he imagines such horror he still sticks close to the hypothesis of design. In Part VI Philo tries to back Cleanthes into a corner and tries to force him to renounce his argument by design and admit that our experience is limited, and in no way is a foundation for inferring larger truths. He says that any analogy could be made about God, this is where generation and vegetation come into play. Philo even brings up the idea of the universe being a body and God being the soul. For this to be true the universe would have to have sensory organs like and animal does. I for would like this theory, I could totally imagine different parts of the cosmos acting as sensory organs, but at a very large and undistinguishable scale. However with this analogy we have to assume the world is eternal along with God because if God, the soul is eternal and the universe is the body, then God could not have existed before the universe or body. Because carbon dating had not been discovered in Hume’s time Cleanthes is quick to disregard this argument of analogy by saying the world is young, on the premise that the human race is just now discovering never before seen continents and are transplanting animals and plants in new places. He thinks that if the world has been eternal along side God then all of this would have been done before. If Cleanthes truly believes what he has said then he is a Deist. Once again on page 84 Philo goes back to our narrow scoop of experience and says that there is no way to disprove or prove what I like to call matter recycling, the idea that what is happening now has already happened countless times before, that of course goes along with the idea of God and the universe being eternal, which I completely disagree. Through the whole dialogue Cleanthes struggles to find some way to justify the design argument, while Philo supposes extreme analogies but Cleanthes never seems to realize that all Philo is trying to do is show him that it is impossible to predict order in the universe with our narrowness of evidence. Philo proves to me his persuasiveness by not just his continue bombardment of contradictions or analogies of his own. He has earned my respect because he has remained so chill while never losing the eagerness which propels him toward his goal of proving skepticism the victor. By Part IX it seems that Philo’s way lesson has finally gotten through. Cleanthes and Demea starting on page 98 begin to argue about the cause of a effect where an infinite God is represented by a continuous chain of cause and effects with no end or what is called a necessarily existing thing which is a being that carries the reason of its own existence within itself. To debate this arguments Cleanthes must step further back from his original argument and admit that it is impossible to prove matters of fact with a priori argument. This is where I get excited, Philo broadens the spectrum and touches on what he calls a principle of necessity. This is close to my beliefs in the since that this principle is a law of nature, something like a mathematical rule that could be proven a postori through critical deduction. By part X Demea is setting himself up for a moral let down when he causes Philo to question the morality of God. However at the end of this chapter on page 112 Philo finally reveals his true position on the matter. Philo has already proven the worthlessness of a priori augments pertaining to natural religion while discouraging Cleanthes and horrifying Demea. I admire that I can comprehend and deny the claims of Cleanthes while Philo continuously blows my mind and brings me to not just an epic conclusion but an odd agreement as well. But while Philo proposes such a priori arguments he never ceases to exercise skepticism by constructing a disagreement to the exact analogy he had just theorized. He may assemble alternative views of natural religion but he is such a free thinker that he questions them as well. This gives him the ability to subtly argue against it and is why he is the victor in David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Gibbs