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Hume's chief objection to natural theology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 August 2007

M. C. BRADLEY
M. C. BRADLEY
Affiliation:
Scarborough Street, Somerton Park, South Australia5044
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Abstract

In the Dialogues Hume attaches great importance to an objection to the design argument which states, negatively, that from phenomena which embody evil as well as good there can be no analogical inference to the morally perfect deity of traditional theism and, positively, that the proper conclusion as regards moral character is an indifferent designer. The first section of this paper sets out Hume's points, and the next three offer an updating of Hume's objection which will apply to Swinburne's Bayesian form of the design argument. The final section concludes that Hume's objection, suitably developed, holds against most of the main theistic arguments, even in their Bayesian form.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 249 - 270
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

Notes

1 Various different senses that have attached to ‘natural theology’ and ‘natural religion’ are well discussed by Peter Byrne Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion (London: Routledge, 1989), ch. 1. Hume himself uses the term ‘natural theology’ five or six times in the Dialogues, rather more often than he uses ‘natural religion’.

2 Hume is quite clear that the design argument is analogical, e.g. Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Norman Kemp Smith (ed.), 2nd edn (London: Nelson, 1947), 143, 144, 180. (Overall there are well over a dozen places where the analogical character of the argument is referred to. This matters because of points that arise below.) Subsequent quotations from and references to Hume are referenced in the text by Kemp Smith page number.

3 This summary conforms fairly closely to Paley's famous exposition. See William Paley Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature (London, 1802, with various subsequent editions). Personality is argued for in ch. 23, omnipotence and omniscience in ch. 24, and divine goodness in ch. 26.

4 I am assuming here without argument the correctness of Kemp Smith's view of Philo as the main spokesman for Hume (Kemp Smith, 57–75).

5 J. C. A. Gaskin Hume's Philosophy of Religion, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1988), 52–58. The quoted words are from 52.

6 David O'Connor Hume on Religion (London: Routledge, 2001), 163–164, 173–178, 186. O'Connor discusses the hypothesis of indifference at 188–190. For Draper see Paul, Draper ‘Probabilistic arguments from evil’, Religious Studies, 28 (1992), 303–317Google Scholar. Draper also draws on Hume to construct an argument against theism in two papers anthologized in Daniel Howard-Snyder (ed.) The Evidential Argument from Evil (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1996), chs 2 and 9.

7 Keith Yandell Hume's ‘Inexplicable Mystery’ (Philadelphia PA: Temple University Press, 1990). References to HA-N are 254, 257, 271, and to HA-P 268–269. Later in the book (309–314) he discusses the Enquiry, sec. XI, and here gets closer to recognizing HA.

8 Richard Swinburne The Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979, rev. edn, 1991, 2nd edn, 2004). References are given by page number in the text here and in subsequent sections. Reference is also made to Swinburne's more popular exposition of his natural theology, Is There a God? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

9 Richard, Swinburne ‘The argument from design’, Philosophy, 43 (1968), 199–212Google Scholar.

10 A is a consequence of the standard form of Bayes' theorem. For the relevant definition of ‘confirm’, see Swinburne Existence of God, 6. For Swinburne's own summary of the design argument see 166, and 110–112 for a succinct statement of the general method of argument.

11 The official aim in relation to the several traditional arguments, see ibid., 13–14, 17, and see too the summaries of each of the several arguments; in relation in particular to the design argument, 166; good C-inductive, good P-inductive, 6–7; special synoptic argument, ch.14.

12 Cicero De Natura Deorum, many translations, e.g. by H. Rackham in the Loeb Classical Library edition. Book II sets out both forms of the design argument in great detail.

13 The quoted phrase is in Swinburne Is There a God?, 68. The reader who doubts what is said here should consult Existence of God, 153–155. More generally, the following is a selection of places in Existence of God where Swinburne views the traditional arguments as arguments in the usual sense: 6, 8, 9–10, 20, 23, 51, 108. Many other cases can be cited both from Existence of God and Is There a God?

14 Brian Davies An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), ch. 6; Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (eds) A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1999), ch. 43.

15 Davies Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, 62–63, 90–91. Similar points hold (on a much larger scale) of the elaborate cumulative argument given by F. R. Tennant Philosophical Theology, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956).

16 See Norman Kretzmann The Metaphysics of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), ch.7, especially 223–225. There is a useful concise statement of the matter in Quinn and Taliaferro Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 245. The locus classicus for the whole line of thought is Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1936).

17 Libertarian free will (a component of humanly free agency) predicted by theism; Swinburne Existence of God, 117–120, 123, 131, the argument for the reality of such free will, 169–170.

18 His account of prior probability, and especially its connection with simplicity, is an important aspect of Swinburne's procedure. It is stated and amplified in a number of places, but mainly in ch. 3 of Existence of God. I discuss Swinburne's, conception of, and use of simplicity in ‘The fine-tuning argument: the Bayesian version’, Religious Studies, 38 (2002), 375–404Google Scholar; see 388–399 for this point.

19 The present line of thought has had wide currency. It can be seen in Quinn and Taliaferro Companion to Philosophy of Religion, 108 and 339–340, and at various points in Yandell Hume's ‘Inexplicable Mystery’, 309–314. Hume himself uses the word ‘hypothesis’ at least a dozen times in the Dialogues. I will not try here to decide how many of these uses mean more than ‘analogical conclusion’, i.e. how far Hume himself may have gone in the direction of recognizing a difference between ordinary analogical arguments and hypotheses in the HD sense. If he did do that, some revision of the earlier exposition would be necessary.

20 Each argument in the sequence takes as its k the e of the preceding argument; Swinburne Existence of God, 17.

21 R. Carnap Logical Foundations of Probability (Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press, 2nd edn, 1962), 211–213; C. Hempel Aspects of Scientific Explanation (New York NY: The Free Press, 1965), 64–67. Swinburne's own textbook shows no sign of dissent from TEC; see his An Introduction to Confirmation Theory (London: Methuen, 1973), 26–28 and ch. 12, especially 188–189.

22 The topic of background knowledge is discussed in Quentin Smith's review of Swinburne's, Is There a God?, Religious Studies, 34 (1998), 91–102Google Scholar. His discussion (93–96) has some points of contact with what is being said here in its emphasis on the unacknowledged extent of relevant background knowledge.

23 A recent edition, with a valuable introduction and other material, is that by Ezio Vailati (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Clarke's proof of the moral attributes is in sec. XII of the lecture, 83–85 of this edition.

24 J. L. Mackie Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1977), 23–24, 38–42.

25 A recent survey of moral arguments is in Quinn and Taliaferro Companion to Philosophy of Religion, article 44, ‘Moral arguments’. See too J. L. Mackie The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), ch. 6 (moral arguments) and ch. 10 (religious experience). I emphasize that I am treating religious experience as the source of a causal argument, i.e. as interpreted by Mackie at 177–187; Reformed Epistemology and its kin are not in question here. Swinburne's stance on these matters is as follows: (1) he rejects the traditional argument from morality (212–215); (2) he accepts an argument from moral awareness, near kin to what I call an ‘argument from moral consciousness’ (215–218); (3) he advances an argument from religious experience (ch. 13), which, however, differs from the traditional one in not appealing to the unusual or extraordinary character of the experience but rather to general epistemological considerations. But the point made in the text below about the absence of a detachable component applies equally to this version of the argument.

26 There are in fact attempts at using morality as a detachable component, e.g. by Tennant Philosophical Theology, vol. 2, 99–103. I cannot discuss these here, but doubt that much is thereby lost.

27 The Summa Theologiae argument discussed below is ST, Ia. 6. 1. Four further arguments to the same conclusion are given in the Summa Contra Gentiles, I. 37. These four arguments seem to me to be no better than the ST argument though I cannot discuss them here.

28 Paley Natural Theology, ch. 26. Both quotations are from the seventh paragraph of this chapter.

29 See the anthology Scott Macdonald (ed.) Being and Goodness: The Concept of the Good in Metaphysics and Philosophical Theology, (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1991). See too Quinn and Taliaferro Companion to Philosophy of Religion, article 30, ‘Goodness’. Lovejoy's Great Chain of Being is (as always) a source of illumination.

30 My own objection to the cumulative argument is given in ‘The fine-tuning argument’, 399–400.

31 My thanks to my former student Christopher Walsh for useful comments and much further assistance.