David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Schuhart

I’m currently committed to achieving ultimate enlightenment by reading every book in my local Library’s religion section so long as it has the word ‘Short’ or ‘Introduction’ in the title. I take the existence of a series of books entitled ‘A Very Short Introduction’ as evidence that I’m not alone in this economical approach to the eternal spiritual quest.

Anyway, the slimness of David Hume’s “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” meant it passed the test. A damn good read, if you like that old-fashioned Platonic dialogue kind of thing. What struck me more about it was how the topics could have been taken from some of the threads you see here and on the Christianity forum. There’s even a dialogue arguing over whether the proof of God’s existence is that the ‘design’ found in nature could only have been put there by an intelligence. The example of the human eye being too complex to simply exist is even used – as we’ve seen in debates today.

I think something remarkable about Hume is the fact he’s able to argue against the Design argument even though the book was published (posthumously) in 1779 – eighty years before Darwin published the Origin of Species. I wondered what book Hume might have written if he’d had the benefit of the last two hundred years of scientific discovery. (That’s a subtle dig at Dawkins, in case it passes unnoticed.)

What’s the ultimate conclusion? What I took from the book was that if God is beyond human understanding, then he’s beyond human understanding and we’re better off trying to figure out what we can understand. There are limits to our understanding in other areas, but we can make reasonable stabs at improving knowledge. Cause and effect cannot be definitively proven. But there’s a nice little comment where one of the debaters asked the sceptic if his doubts about cause and effect mean that he will leave the room by the window, as there’s no reason to believe that gravity will do him any harm. All answers may be subject to probability, in the final analysis. But the probability of some answers being wrong is remote.

Zillah

What means did he employ to counter the design argument without evolution to lean on?

Schuhart

He spends some time simply pointing out that the world, taken as a whole, more closely displays the attributes of a natural organism than a machine. Hence, it simply displays an unconscious replication of life without thought of the consequences, rather than a machine planned and made by a Designer.

But I think his key point is all we can know is that nature has order, in the sense that eyes can see, birds fly and things fall if dropped. It is not safe to assume that order comes from a Designer, as order might be just an intrinsic attribute of the material world. He’s very strong on that idea that once you fill the hole with a Designer, you have to ask who Designed him ad infinitum.

That’s not to exhaust his thoughts – but those are the points that struck me as particularly worthwhile.

BrianCalgary

Schuhart wrote:

What’s the ultimate conclusion? What I took from the book was that if God is beyond human understanding, then he’s beyond human understanding and we’re better off trying to figure out what we can understand. There are limits to our understanding in other areas, but we can make reasonable stabs at improving knowledge. Cause and effect cannot be definitively proven. But there’s a nice little comment where one of the debaters asked the sceptic if his doubts about cause and effect mean that he will leave the room by the window, as there’s no reason to believe that gravity will do him any harm. All answers may be subject to probability, in the final analysis. But the probability of some answers being wrong is remote.

So, if God is beyond human understanding, do we make the statement that there isn't one, do we strive to determine what a god would be like if indeed there was one, or do we ascertain that if there was a god he would try to communicate and if so how?

Schuhart

If God is beyond human understanding then we can make no determination as to whether he exists or not. But that’s not the only implication.

Let us assume for the purpose of discussion that there is a God. We are here, and have no real way of knowing what he wants, why he made us or even if we matter that much to him. Any attempt we make to determine what that God is or what he might want to say to us can only come from human imagination. So we create the God we wish was there, rather than the God that there is any evidence of. Its a little like that old joke about God making us in his image, and us repaying the compliment.

For my own part, when I picture God I use that image of Hilaire Belloc’s benign but forgetful Padre Eterno, struggling to remember why he created the Earth as he tries to make sense of the peculiar antics of its inhabitants.

Zillah

BrianCalgary wrote:

So, if God is beyond human understanding, do we make the statement that there isn't one, do we strive to determine what a god would be like if indeed there was one, or do we ascertain that if there was a god he would try to communicate and if so how?

If we take it that God is beyond human understanding then attempts to understand him or his motives are an exercise in redundancy at best, and dangerously divisive at worst.

BrianCalgary

Zillah wrote:

If we take it that God is beyond human understanding then attempts to understand him or his motives are an exercise in redundancy at best, and dangerously divisive at worst.

Unless he communicates to us so that we better understand him and his motives, and our role in the universe.

Zillah

/me stares blankly for a moment.


Did you not understand the initial premise of "beyond human understanding"...? Any supposed attempts on his part are actually human foolishness.

Scofflaw

BrianCalgary wrote:

Unless he communicates to us so that we better understand him and his motives, and our role in the universe.

Or, to put it another way - how would you know that God was communicating? How could you?

cordially,
Scofflaw

stevejazzx

Schuhart wrote:

What’s the ultimate conclusion? What I took from the book was that if God is beyond human understanding, then he’s beyond human understanding and we’re better off trying to figure out what we can understand.

What would make more sense to me is:

If God is behind human understanding then he is beyond human understanding::)

....but getting back to idea that God - as creator and master of the universe - might be so infinitetly complex that any atempt to undersand him might be an exercise in futility. I don't agree, after all isn't God suppose to be a supreme being? Therefore the natural conclusion is that he will be beyond our understanding from the start. So we enter into a 'following' of him on this very condition. Just because his stature is so immense and seperated from our own doesn't mean that there should be an automatic disassociation between us and him. We don't apply this logic elsewhere do we? It puts a limit on human comprehension that the thoerist cannot possibly know. For example should we tell a scientit to stop investigating time travel because it's so hypothetical? He might say that that is the the beauty of it. After all even if God himself is beyond our understanding can't we still worship/follow the aspects of our belief based on God, his spirit and Docrine for example. Even if the argument is that these reamaning aspects are too easily corruptable by humans becasue of their intrinsic lack of understanding of God himself that still doesn't hold up because that is like saying that there should be no belief in God because of the risk or even our succeptibility in misinterpreting his message or idea. Again we don't apply this logic elsewhere. We are constantly investigating things we cannot yet grasp and this is the very nature of science.
We cannot apply qualities to a diety even if those qualities are trying to say that the deity in question is irreducibly complex and beyond our understanding becasue the application of such qualities no matter how vague they might be (for e.g. saying he to is too complicated for us to ever understand) would require us to have some sort of meausurement, control which we clearly do not have.
The christain God has supposedly given his followers free will to make of him what they will. So in terms of what the bible says on such matters the argument for non belief based on our inability to convieve his compexity is inept as it is already covered by the condition of 'free will' a flexibility given to us humans to chose our belief. There is no religous condition that states that we must believe and understand God on some supreme spirtual level or nothing at all. In fact the opposite is true: the biblical texts (at least those of the new testament anyway) encourage any sort of understanding in God, whether it is sophiscated or not and certainly doesn't demand anything more or less.
This argument for non belief seems to be IMO just clever wordplay essentially trying to snooker the opponent by claiming that God, as a divine being, has some sort of defaulting grand complexity and is therefore always going to be outside our understanding and therefore warrants no further investigation/worship/following. Ironically the success of this statement actually relies on both parties acknowledging that there is in fact a God in existance to begin with, which of course is an instantaneous victory for the believer.

joe_chicken

If God is beyond human understanding then we can make no determination as to whether he exists or not.

This is exactly the problem I have with atheism.

Cue the invisible pink dragons...

Zombrex

joe_chicken wrote:

This is exactly the problem I have with atheism.

Well if it is true then atheism is the only logical belief (or lack of belief)

Atheism says basically that anything humans have ever come up with with relation to "God" is wrong and not real. There is no "God" because God is a construct of the human imagination. That concept does not exist. If there is something out there then it isn't anything we have ever thought of because we don't have the ability to think of it. It isn't "God"

I'm an atheist. But I don't have any great objection to saying that it is possible some form of intelligence created the universe. I have absolutely no way of knowing either way, and in the absence of any evidence I would tend to say that there is no reason to think an intelligence created the universe or the idea that an intelligence didn't create the universe. I see no need to bias my view point just because it would be more interesting if intelligence did create the universe, so my personal wants on the matter would have no effect on if it is true or not.

But even if an intelligence did create the universe it isn't "God"

We (humanity) made "God" up, we did it to explain the universe in terms that we understood , ie human terms.

God thinks and acts like a human, despite the fact that this is rather paradoxical assertion. God has emotions, like humans. God wants things, like humans. God gets upset or angry about things, like humans. God does things, like humans. God loves things like humans.

God, as created by our ancestors, is basically a powerful human. The Abrahamic religions even explain this by saying he created us like him. He isn't like us, we are like him.

All that, at the end of the day, is utter nonsense. The concept of "God" as defined by humans is nonsense. The human idea has so many paradoxes I could write a book on them. The idea that we can define that "something", if it in fact exists, as "God" is nonsense.

The reason we do it is purely for ourselves, to bring some kind of comfort and order to what we see as unanswered questions. "God" becomes the answer to all things that trouble us. Need love? Its ok "God" will love you. Scared of death? Its ok, God will give you eternal life. Not sure what is right or wrong? Its ok God will tell you morals. Confused as to why your brother got killed in that car accident? Its ok, God has a plan for us all. Not sure how humans could develop? Its ok, God made us for a purpose.

I often think that someone becomes an atheists when they realise that just because they want something to happen or true doesn't mean it will or is.

Just because we want God to exist doesn't mean he does.

Once a person frees themselves from that way of thinking about the world, they are free to, in an non-bias fashion, examine the question of God. And, as it turns out, it is nonsense

Schuhart

stevejazzx wrote:

After all even if God himself is beyond our understanding can't we still worship/follow the aspects of our belief based on God, his spirit and Docrine for example.

I think the point is that any ‘specification’ of God that you draw up is inevitably from a human point of view. Hence, if you ascribe creation of the universe to God, you assume this ‘creator’ role to be what defines God or at least is a significant feature of the divine phenomenon because that’s what’s important to us. For all we know, the universe might be just God’s fart.

I cannot think of any way of narrowing that gap, and part-knowing God – but do feel free to try.

stevejazzx wrote:

So in terms of what the bible says on such matters the argument for non belief based on our inability to convieve his compexity is inept as it is already covered by the condition of 'free will' a flexibility given to us humans to chose our belief.

Not really. The argument removes any status whatsoever from holy books, by questioning how they can in any sense be seen as definitive statements from God.

stevejazzx wrote:

Ironically the success of this statement actually relies on both parties acknowledging that there is in fact a God in existance to begin with, which of course is an instantaneous victory for the believer.

I’m not sure that’s true. What the argument is essentially saying is that the various visions of God contained in religions don’t make sense. From the atheist perspective, what the argument is doing is effectively broadening the definition of God until it ceases to have meaning.

joe_chicken wrote:

This is exactly the problem I have with atheism.

Cue the invisible pink dragons...

I’m not clear on the point here. Are you saying you that God is more or less likely than an invisible pink dragon? If so, on what basis? And how is this a problem with atheism?

joe_chicken

Schuhart wrote:

Are you saying you that God is more or less likely than an invisible pink dragon?

Nope.
I was merely anticipating the invisible-pink-dragon argument.

stevejazzx

Schuhart wrote:

I think the point is that any ‘specification’ of God that you draw up is inevitably from a human point of view. Hence, if you ascribe creation of the universe to God, you assume this ‘creator’ role to be what defines God or at least is a significant feature of the divine phenomenon because that’s what’s important to us. For all we know, the universe might be just God’s fart.

But this is a technicality using Gods complexity against him. Essentially a word game. I think the religous believe in a biblical God and don't see the sense in attributing such heavy philosophical notions onto him. Anyways it's a guess either way, if we go along with your assumption above that we cannot know the relevance of the universe to god then why pick one side i.e non belief. It's the old adage isn't it 'both are equally improbable'.

schuart wrote:

I cannot think of any way of narrowing that gap, and part-knowing God – but do feel free to try.

But just because the doctrine of religous belief and genesis might be flawed based on fallable imperfect humanity doesn't undo the central thesis of belief niether does it undo the creator as he is not responible for our understanding after he has given us 'free will'. So our relationship with him is based on fatih and not clarity so by defintion of the conditions he has set down (albeit recorded through mankind) we are never suppose to understand God in terms of his existence or power. The concept of belief depends not on his liklihood of existing and not on the state in which he exists but rather the personable relationship a believer has with him.

schuart wrote:

Not really. The argument removes any status whatsoever from holy books, by questioning how they can in any sense be seen as definitive statements from God.

That is an entirely new propostion which question if he exists in the first place. A more worthwhile proposition I might add.

schuart wrote:

I’m not sure that’s true. What the argument is essentially saying is that the various visions of God contained in religions don’t make sense. From the atheist perspective, what the argument is doing is effectively broadening the definition of God until it ceases to have meaning.

It is too easy to remedy a non existence out of a clever speculation i.e if he is beyond us well then he is well and truly beyond us i.e doesn't exist, never existed. That is the long way about it and the only evidence on offer is philoshical word play about supposed limit or lack thereof of human comprehension and creativity.

joe_chicken

Wicknight wrote:

Just because we want God to exist doesn't mean he does.

Can you not also see the flip side to that argument, that just because we want God to exist, it doesn't necessarily mean he is a fabrication.

It's unlikely. But just because it's unlikely, doesn't mean it's not true.

Wicknight wrote:

Once a person frees themselves from that way of thinking about the world, they are free to, in an non-bias fashion, examine the question of God. And, as it turns out, it is nonsense

So what you're saying is; once you've decided that there is no God, then you can prove that there is no God?

Schuhart

stevejazzx wrote:

But just because the doctrine of religous belief and genesis might be flawed based on fallable imperfect humanity doesn't undo the central thesis of belief

That’s true, but gaining acceptance from someone that the various holy books are just creations of imperfect humanity is a significant step. I think (speculating) that this is why scriptural fundamentalists insist on the literal word being held to be true. They know what happens once they let in a little light.

stevejazzx wrote:

That is an entirely new propostion which question if he exists in the first place.

I’d see it more as a consequence. I think the highlighting of the tenuous link between the existence of the universe and this or that being the divine word is useful, and more than word play.

stevejazzx wrote:

That is the long way about it and the only evidence on offer is philoshical word play about supposed limit or lack thereof of human comprehension and creativity.

I’d feel the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If it’s possible to derive useful things about the nature of God from first principles, then it should be possible for a theist to point to such a work. However, any work presented to date, while sometimes containing clever and intricate reasoning, really boil down to wishful thinking.

I don’t think describing God as beyond understanding is just defeatism. I also think it’s a proposition that, if untrue, can be easily refuted by displaying all the useful things we know about God and all the useful things we know about time travel, and considering which is the longer list.

stevejazzx

Schuhart wrote:

I don’t think describing God as beyond understanding is just defeatism. I also think it’s a proposition that, if untrue, can be easily refuted by displaying all the useful things we know about God and all the useful things we know about time travel, and considering which is the longer list.

The list form time travel may be longer and even more useful but we can't equate the list for God to zero, can we? If we can't we're left with the same predicament. I just can't see what we're achieving with the 'beyond our understanding' comment. It's like a guess based on trhe complexity of everything without specifying anything in particular, a generalisation.

Schuhart

stevejazzx wrote:

I just can't see what we're achieving with the 'beyond our understanding' comment. It's like a guess based on trhe complexity of everything without specifying anything in particular, a generalisation.

I’m no expert on physics, as will be readily apparent if we go deeply into this. But I’d guess an enquiry into the nature of time travel would relate in some way to what we know of the phenomenon, taking into account that relativity stuff about time working differently for the twins travelling in different spacecrafts. I’m not suggesting any statements made about time travel would be final, authoritative and never to be improved upon. But I would expect them to be based on some kind of study of a phenomenon that we know exists and which can be shown consistent with such facts as we have.

On the other hand, I don’t see how an enquiry into God can be anything other that creating a worm’s eye view of a deity. How can such an enquiry proceed? Presumably we start by putting God in the ‘gap’. We don’t know why the Universe is here, or what immediately preceded it. So we say God created it, without being able to assign a reason for that. We assume him to be eternal, because otherwise we end up with that rather pointless series of creators heading off to infinity.

Then we wonder if this eternal creator has some relationship with us, or whether we’re just pond life. Seeing as how we gone this far, we might as well say he does. So our enquiry gives us an eternal creator who wants a relationship with us. Only it doesn’t, because all we’ve done is defined the God we hope is there. What useful discussion can be had to narrow the field as to whether that God created the universe with a purpose in mind, or wanted to have a relationship with us? Where is the scope to have even a partial understanding?

I think we have to recall that God and religion were first invented in a context where people had no alternative explanation for what the Sun was and why it rose in the morning other than some greater being must have made it so. The need for that ‘materially proximate’ God is gone, but the habit of mind persists.

I honestly don’t mean this view of what a God enquiry consist of to be a straw man. If you think it’s an unfair treatment, I honestly welcome a view as to how a useful enquiry might proceed.

stevejazzx

Schuhart wrote:

I’m no expert on physics, as will be readily apparent if we go deeply into this. But I’d guess an enquiry into the nature of time travel would relate in some way to what we know of the phenomenon, taking into account that relativity stuff about time working differently for the twins travelling in different spacecrafts. I’m not suggesting any statements made about time travel would be final, authoritative and never to be improved upon. But I would expect them to be based on some kind of study of a phenomenon that we know exists and which can be shown consistent with such facts as we have.

On the other hand, I don’t see how an enquiry into God can be anything other that creating a worm’s eye view of a deity. How can such an enquiry proceed? Presumably we start by putting God in the ‘gap’. We don’t know why the Universe is here, or what immediately preceded it. So we say God created it, without being able to assign a reason for that. We assume him to be eternal, because otherwise we end up with that rather pointless series of creators heading off to infinity.

Then we wonder if this eternal creator has some relationship with us, or whether we’re just pond life. Seeing as how we gone this far, we might as well say he does. So our enquiry gives us an eternal creator who wants a relationship with us. Only it doesn’t, because all we’ve done is defined the God we hope is there. What useful discussion can be had to narrow the field as to whether that God created the universe with a purpose in mind, or wanted to have a relationship with us? Where is the scope to have even a partial understanding?

I think we have to recall that God and religion were first invented in a context where people had no alternative explanation for what the Sun was and why it rose in the morning other than some greater being must have made it so. The need for that ‘materially proximate’ God is gone, but the habit of mind persists.

I honestly don’t mean this view of what a God enquiry consist of to be a straw man. If you think it’s an unfair treatment, I honestly welcome a view as to how a useful enquiry might proceed.

I agree with all that, as I am an athiest myself. Primitive people recorded their fears and called it religon. But we're a little bit off the initial point.
I was arguing the religous position based on the proposition:
'If god is beyond our understanding then he is beyond our understanding'
I don't think this makes sense. First off things which are truly beyond our understanding are never contemplated by us because we never know of them because they are truly beyond us. Secondly the God of the bible is a personable being with an indefinable relationship with those who wish to follow him. If we are attmepting to disprove God I don't think we can do it by rendering him 'impossible' relative to our position in the galaxy. Certainly it helps to look at the age of the universe but the biblical god is siad to operate outside time and outside of the scientific laws that we have created/discovered. This produces a stalemate if we use the 'if god is beyond us then he is beyond us' argument as reliogus people simply say that that is part of his mystery.

If we say he was invented through fear and supersition or look at how old the earth alone is - 4 and a half billion years - the bible is only a few thousand years old, look at the evolution it explains where we came from, look at all the other religons, look at tribes, they're all worshipping a god of sorts...are they all right or all wrong? This is direct modern evidence that negates a divine creator, it doesn't need a tagline.

joe_chicken

stevejazzx wrote:

First off things which are truly beyond our understanding are never contemplated by us

Things that are truly outside our experience we don't contemplate, but we're always trying to understand things that are beyond our understanding.

It's impossible to know whether these things truly are outside our understanding until we understand them.

Until we have a unified theory of everything (something, I think just as unlikely as a god) I'm keeping my options open.

Zombrex

joe_chicken wrote:

It's unlikely. But just because it's unlikely, doesn't mean it's not true.

No, but then that isn't the reason that God unlikely. There are lots of reasons why God is unlikely, reasons that are ignored because people want God to exist.

joe_chicken wrote:

So what you're saying is; once you've decided that there is no God, then you can prove that there is no God?

No I'm saying that once you realise that just because you want God to exist doesn't mean he will then you lose the mental block to all the reasons why God doesn't exist and become an atheist.