MysteriousFaith

Book Review: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

David Hume’s book, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is considered by many a classic in the annals of gracious but firm denials of certain apologetics for theism. The arguments Hume’s book is most concerned with are those that advocate a particular deistic morality or characteristic that can be gleaned from creation. I am unfamiliar with Hume’s other work; however, in this posthumously published book, Hume’s arguments appear to not be designed to argue against the idea of God itself, but instead to argue that reason is not a helpful vehicle for belief in the God of a particular monotheism. It is quite possible that Hume’s other work more explicitly denies the idea of God altogether; but, I believe this book was intended to speak specifically to the idea that the universe stands as evidence of a Creator God, the primary claim being put forward by Deists of his day. We should remember that in his day, Hume’s deists argued that it was only necessary to believe about God that which reason could prove. If the reason for a particular belief could be shown to be illogical, it could and should be discarded.

In what is a piercing insight from the first page of Martin Bell’s introduction to this book, he comments on James Boswell who, in July 1776, went to see David Hume as he lay dying. In the words of Bell,

“Boswell found the interview disturbing: I was like a man in sudden danger eagerly seeking his defensive arms; and I could not but be assailed by momentary doubts while I had actually before me a man of such strong abilities and extensive inquiry dying in the persuasion of being annihilated. But I maintained my faith. I told him that I believed the Christian religion as I believed history. Said he, ‘You do not believe it as you believe the Revolution.’” (page 1)

Such stoicism, wit and insight were gifts to some privileged men during this time in history, a time when ideas were deemed dangerous enough to be damned and as such, powerful enough to foment revolution. To wrestle with Hume’s writing is to be touched by piercing wisdom, a wisdom that would serve as the motivation for men like Thomas Jefferson to bind their view firmly to the world around them, arguing for laws based on reason and not those that can be claimed to be revealed in Divinely inspired Holy Scripture. When reading Dialogues, one has the sense of reading a formative book those who toil over will find serves as essential motivation for an ordered understanding of responsibility and a grounded, if limited, sense of personal being.

I sensed in this book’s gracious and fair treatment of Christian and Deistic ideas a willingness to participate in real dialogue but more importantly, to take our eyes off those ideas that are unknowable in the hopes that whatever mental faculties are dedicated to life’s unanswerable questions could be redirected towards more pressing problems in the here-and-now. Only a biographer of Hume, which I most certainly am not, would be able to fully validate my suspicion that Hume recognized the great challenges and empowering responsibilities that would come in the next several hundred years and saw the need to limit those areas that religion is allowed to speak towards because its contribution would not be positive and to give primacy to reason and it alone. It should not be forgotten that Hume wrote about religion in an era where to speak one’s mind so freely came with what could be quite dire circumstances; Hume saw revolutions in England and France, understanding with rare insight that ideas can be dangerous.

One of the primary arguments Hume deals with is the classic defense of God as the original creative act of the universe, also known as a priori. This argument is often referred to as the cosmological argument which proposes that anything in existence must have a cause of existence. Hume’s response, seen most simply, is that to apply this to the concept of God is not helpful because it contradicts itself: by saying that all that the known universe has a cause we can not believe in a being who is Himself causeless. One response to this is that God is outside the universe and is the “uncaused cause” which, while seeming to present a reasonable alternative to the closed door of Hume’s logic in fact presents a problem to Christian theology. Christian theology argues that we all have some part of God in us, going so far as to present Jesus as fully God and fully man. Never mind that the latter concept is contradictory in the fullest sense of the word, but the problem as Hume would put it is that “nothing which is a member of the series can cause the whole. Consequently, it has no cause for its existence, which contradicts the premise that whatever exists has a cause for its existence.” (page 18) I did not find this argument helpful in its implications as to the question of God; however, I did understand its point with respect to what we can say we actually know about the character of God. This is a point fundamentalists of all religious persuasions agree on, and one they are right about: if we assume an argument for God’s existence is the a priori one, we have to put Him fully outside of His creation. By doing this we put Him outside those moral boundaries we acknowledge as necessary to proper living. By default, the theophany of Samuel where he instructs Saul to commit infanticide is right not because it is by any sense of the word “moral”, but because a being wholly outside our morality commands it – it is right because “He” says so. This is an implication to the a priori argument which is not seen by most who advocate the uncaused cause argument and which Hume is able to draw out.

As Hume’s Dialogues continues, it touches on the question of whether or not the design of the universe can serve as evidence of their being a Creator God. One of the downfalls of the intelligent design argument (Bell points out that this argument is “an ancient one; it is found, for example, in the Natural Theology of Raymond Sebond, written around 1430.” [Page 20]) is that we must look selectively at the world around us in order to see the design of a creator, and certainly we must read enormous meaning where none is in evidence if we are to believe that this design is benevolent:

“Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.” (Page 23)

Here Hume captures one of the classic arguments of atheism, so much evil as being evidence of, if anything, a malevolent God. Interestingly enough, in this matter fundamentalist theists and atheists are actually quite close in their beliefs: both acknowledge the severe disrepair of the world surrounding them, but one argues that such disrepair is evidence of their not being a God, while the other takes the observation and bends it backwards onto themselves, seeing such a fallen Creation as the failure of man. Both believe that if God can exist, He must be able to do something about the evil in the world and either choose not to, or be unable to. A fundamentalist chooses to believe He can not while an atheist chooses to believe He is unable to because He is not real.

Theism attaches intelligent design to the disrepair of the world through the concept of a literal fall – the idea that an original design still perceptible to man (more so through the lens of modern science) - has been corrupted because man circumvented God’s original perfect creative act in the universe. The problem with this, as Darwin would put into evidence, is that evolution contradicts the idea of a literal Adam and Eve while at the same time putting into a state of complete disrepair the idea of an originally ordered universe succumbing to “sin” and then becoming somehow fallen. Evolution is a biological process that brings forth increasingly complex forms of life adapted to those inputs the environment has to offer. Life can not exist without death in the world science has given us; this is a crucial realization today’s theisms who accommodate evolution struggle to acknowledge.

In what has been an intense realization for me, the last month has held within it several experiences of friends who want me to explain why it is these ideas matter to me. One friend went so far as to ask, “Why is asking these questions about God so important to you Ben?” Another said quite candidly that to disbelieve in his Christian faith would be to give his life no meaning. Taken together, I have had the painful realization that for others the only means by which they can pursue meaningful transformation of their personal lives is if they do so through religious experience. My story is marked by deep pain and anxiety wrought at the hands of religious ideas and people; while I have been greatly helped in recovering from this pain by new friends and teachers whose perspective on religious matters is the very definition of graciousness, in the process of healing I have discovered my love for that which is philosophically practical and my distaste for that which is theological extrapolation. My appreciation for Hume’s Dialogues is rooted in this distaste, for it is in his writing that I find a mind eager to accept the limits of knowledge and to not use poorly formed arguments as evidence beyond that which they actually can prove.

Among the many other arguments Hume presents (his discussion on the anthropomorphic qualities of religions being worth thinking about), few are as important as his presentation of the role reason plays in religious faith. No vehicle is more quickly used to provide evidence for various religious claims than reason. Reason is allowed a limited place in religion; it is used when arguing for evidence of supernatural events, but not when the implications to said supernatural events require doctrines that are self-contradictory.

“If we distrust human reason, we have now no other principle to lead us into religion. Thus, skeptics in one age, dogmatists in another; whichever system best suits the purpose of these reverend gentlemen, in giving them an ascent over mankind, they are sure to make it their favorite principle and established tenet.” (Page 50)

The light which leads us, namely that of reason, is either sufficient for our purposes in this world or it is not. Religion requires that in many cases where reason is not sufficient, we fall back onto revelation as that which trumps reason: something is true simply because it was said to be true, not because it makes any actual sense. The putty in this mix is faith – a concept that is said to support claims not in evidence and to unite ideas at odds with themselves. But, as Hume rightly points out, if we abdicate reason and embrace faith we do so at the cost of those foundational bricks we laid out, those parts of the foundation that were predicated on reason. Reason either is the standard by which we navigate reality or it is selective and if it is selective, we must acknowledge the implications to choosing when and where to be reasonable. It is in such a realization we should be able to see most clearly the enormous danger that can take place when we choose faith instead of choosing reason.

Let me end with a mixed quote from Bell’s introduction and Hume’s Dialogues:

“But it is critical, in Hume’s eyes, that this minimal conclusion – that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence – is strictly a philosophical conclusion. It belongs to what Philo calls ‘the philosophical and rational kind’ of religion, and, as such, has no practical consequences whatever for how we ought to live our lives. And, of course, no sane man will think it worth the spilling of a single drop of blood. Hume consistently argued that where men and women hold religious beliefs as certain truths, regard all who do not share them as in error and seek to enforce religious practices, the consequences are always pernicious. But a purely theoretical examination of natural religion is, by its very inability to achieve results of any consequence, itself an antidote to the dogmatism and passion of popular religion … ‘For as superstition arises naturally and easily from the popular opinions of mankind, it seizes more strongly on the mind, and is often able to disturb us in the conduct of our lives and actions. Philosophy on the contrary, if just, can present us only with mild and moderate sentiments; and if false and extravagant, its opinions are merely the objects of a cold and general speculation, and seldom go so far as to interrupt the course of our natural propensities … Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.’” (Page 30)

Said differently - said contemporarily - we might rephrase Bell and Hume’s words as follows: Be wary of those ideas that have, at their roots, unknowable belief statements. There are consequences to beliefs that can not be tested, one of which is the appeal to authority over reason. When reason is abdicated, the result will always be the anarchy of the individual, soon giving way to the totalitarianism of he who can provide safety. Only reason can safely guide us.

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• August 8, 2005

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