David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Setting:
Hume 1711-1776
3 Characters
Demea - dogmatist
Philo - skeptic
Cleanthes - philosopher
The Argument from Design
One Great Machine
Machines, like the world, have intelligence and design. Machines are created by intelligent beings and therefore by analogy the world also must have an intelligent designer.
Philo Argument 1: Cleanthes assumes that he knows the world because he knows a tiny sliver of it. (Problem of induction)
Philo Argument 2: "Like effects prove like causes"
1) if effect is not infinite then the cause is not infinite = God is finite
2) imperfections in creation = imperfect cause = God is imperfect
1) many gods
2) trial and error: perhaps this world is only the "first rude essay of some infant Deity."
B) organism analogy - "perhaps God is like the soul of the world and like a tree produces seeds that scatter into the surrounding chaos and form new worlds. Or perhaps comets are like eggs that hatch new world."
3) Demea’s incredulity and Philo’s explanation
First Mover
Motion could simply be inherent to matter. We do not need to appeal to a necessary outside force to get motion.
The Problem of Evil
1) Pain vs Pleasure
2) Laws apply equally to both the just and unjust
3) Distribution of attributes
a) must be trade-offs
b) the Creator could just as easily have given us an abundance of attributes (speed of a gazelle, brains of a human, and the strength of an elephant)
4) Distribution of goods
Christian Responses
a) Plantinga’s response - Trade-offs, Compromises, and the Max Plan:
"The designer aims at a cognitive system that delivers truth, but he also has other constraints he means or needs to work within… There are an enormous number of different situations arising within the cognitive environment for which the system is designed; and it might be impossible, given the constraints, to handle them all in the most desirable way…You will end up with a system that works well in the vast majority of circumstances; but in few circumstances it produces false beliefs."
b) my response
Is Philo an Absolute skeptic?
Cleanthes to Philo: "Will you go out of the door or the window?"
Philo: "To whatever length any one may push his speculative principles of skepticism, he must act, I own, and live, and converse like other men; and for this conduct he is not obliged to give any other reason than the absolute necessity he lies under of so doing...But when we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present state of things...into the creation and formation of the universe...the existence and properties of spirits; the power and operations of one universal spirit...We are like foreigners in a strange country...We know not how far we ought to trust our vulgar methods of reasoning in such a subject (Baird 413)".