1.
Hume
draws a distinction between religions as community
myths that embody collective customs and morals, from religions as systems ofmetaphysical belief (“offspring
of philosophy”). He’ll attack the latter – through the double distancing device
of `quoting’ his `friend’ who’s pretending to be Epicuris (an ancient
philosopher whom Hume admired).
2.
This
double distancing may cause you some difficulty in following what’s really going on here. What’s going on is: Hume
is giving an argument for atheism. The fact that he never directly comes out and says so in one or two sentences is not because he doesn’t want the point to
be clear. Rather, he wants to make it impossible for anyone in the popular
press to be able to extract what would then have been a sensational quotation
(i.e., a sound-bite). One couldn’t establish that this is an argument for
atheism except by quoting or paraphrasing the entire argument. That makes this
an extraordinary literary performance.
Of course, we will be
reviewing the whole argument.
3.
Hume,
writing half a century before Darwin, begins his discussion by accepting the argument from design. This is the view
that the supposed `order of nature’ is evidence for intelligence in its
creation.
4.
The
argument from design (like all good arguments, according to Hume) infers a
cause from its customary effects. In such arguments, Hume points out, one may
only infer such properties in the cause as are necessary to bring about the effect. Thus, for example, if your dog
becomes pregnant you can infer that some male
dog did the deed, but not that any particular
male is responsible (at least, until you see the puppies).
5.
Therefore,
all that the argument from design
allows us to infer, Hume reasons, is the existence of a designer with sufficient
power to create nature, and nothing more.
Thus none of God’s standard properties according to Christians – infinity,
omnipotence, omniscience, goodness etc., or even his caring what people do –
have any basis for assignment. One can’t even conclude that there’s just one god.
6.
Nor
can one infer any of the further consequences
– beyond design itself – that a god with these properties might be supposed to
establish – e.g., creation of people in his image, or moral codes, or a system
of rewards and punishments for people.
7.
Hume
raises the following objection: Can’t we, in fact, sometimes infer additional
consequences once we’ve identified causes? His example is: If I find one
footprint on a beach, I infer that a person left it; and then from that I infer
that another footprint was left, even if it has since been washed away.
8.
The
answer to this objection is that we can only infer further effects from a cause
when we’ve learned, by experience, general associations with causes of that
type. (So, in the context of the example, we know that people can’t fly off of
and onto beaches, but must get across them by putting one foot before the
other.) However, in the case of gods there is no further experience of them beyond the effects that justify the
argument from design; therefore, no further
effects can be inferred.
9.
In
the final paragraph of the section, Hume cautiously takes back his initial
acceptance of the argument from design.
He reasons as follows: We can infer the existence of a certain kind of thing only be seeing it regularly conjoined with some other kind of thing. But this condition isn’t
satisfied in the case of the argument from design, because there’s just one world, and the inference is to a
single, unique, god, not to a god as an instance of a general conjunction.
10.
Hume
thus concludes (very coyly, again to avoid being easily quotable) that there is
no reason to believe in any god at all.
11.
How
might an orthodox Christian or Muslim or Jew respond to this? They could argue
that the argument from design isn’t their main basis for belief in God;
instead, this basis is testimony about the actions and words of prophets (or,
in the case of Christians, a part of God’s own person in the form of Christ).
However, this reply will crash directly into Hume’s previous argument, against
belief in testimony about miracles.