PHIL 111 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Theism, Intelligent Designer
27 Feb 2014
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Our work considers the rationality (reasons) of belief in god; the natural history of. Religion looks at the origins (causes) of religion in human nature and society. We will be reading the dialogues concerning natural religion. As the name suggests, the dialogues involve a series of conversations about religion. The conversations are fictional; hume makes up everything that is said. As dialogues, they resemble plato"s famous dialogues. There are three main characters in hume"s dialogues: demea. Not stupid but not subtle, either: cleanthes. A skeptic, often thought of as hume"s mouthpiece. Two possibilities: the existence of god, the nature of god. Demea says the real problem concerns (2): the question is not concerning the being but the nature of god . Philo offers an argument in support of its meaningfulness: our ideas reach no farther than our experience, we have no experience of divine attributes and operations, therefore, we have no idea of divine attributes and operations.
