Using Hume

I highly recommend the web site edge.org. Although many of the posters are antireligious, the collective intellect present in this space is amazing.

This year, the owner of edge.org asked, "What have you changed your mind about? Why?"

One post that particularly intrigued me was by Frank Wilczek.

Here is the direct link to his answer:
http://www.edge.org/q2008/q08_11.html#wilczek

I was particularly interested in the following sentence: "David Hume already set out the main arguments for religious skepticism in the early eighteenth century." After reading Dr. Wilczek's thoughtful post, I decided to read some Hume myself.

What I found most intriguing is that Hume himself does not deny the possibility of a God. He makes a strong case that the God of the Bible is not consistent with observable reality.

I now quote David Hume directly from Philosophy: History and Problems, edited by Samuel Enoch Stumpf.

"If a very limited intelligence whom we shall suppose utterly unacquainted with the universe were assured that it were the production of a very good, wise, and powerful Being, however finite, he would, from his conjectures, form beforehand a different notion of it from what we find it to be by experience; nor would he ever imagine, merely from these attributes of the cause of which he is informed, that the effect could be so full of vice and misery and disorder, as it appears in this life. Supposing now that this person were brought into the world, still assured that it was the workmanship of such a sublime and benevolent Being, he might, perhaps, be surprised at the disappointment, but would never retract his former belief if founded on any very solid argument, since such a limited intelligence must be sensible of his own blindness and ignorance, and must allow that there may be many solutions of those phenomena which will forever escape his comprehension. But supposing, which is the real case with regard to man, that this creature is not antecedently convinced of a supreme intelligence, benevolent and powerful, but is left to gather such a belief from appearances of things--this entirely alters the case, nor will he ever find any reason for such a conclusion....

"In short, I repeat the question: Is the world, considered in general and as it appears to us in this life, different from what a man or such a limited being would, beforehand, expect from a very powerful, wise, and benevolent Deity? It must be strange to assert the contrary....

"The first circumstance which introduces evil is that contrivance or economy of the animal creation by which pains, as well as pleasures, are employed to excite all creatures to action, and make them vigilant in the great work of self-preservation. Now pleasure alone, in its various degrees, seems to human understanding sufficient for this purpose....

"But a capacity for pain would not alone produce pain were it not for the second circumstance, viz., the conducting of the world by general laws; ... might not the Deity exterminate all ill, wherever it were to be found, and produce all good, without any preparation or long progress of causes and effects?

"...but this ill would be very rare were it not for the third circumstance which I proposed to mention, viz., the great frugality with which all powers and faculties are distributed to every particular being. So well adjusted are the organs and capacities of all animals, and so well fitted to their preservation, that, as far as history or tradition reaches, there appears not to be any single species which has yet been extinguished in the universe....

"The fourth circumstance whence arises the misery and ill of the universe is the inaccurate workmanship of all the springs and principles of the great machine of nature."

These extended quotes are taken from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published 1779.

My key reply is that if a human must conclude the existence of God from observable phenomena, then it is reasonable to conclude that no God exists. But Christians do claim a priori that God exists. We also claim the historical accuracy of the Bible.

This is a silly thought, but if humans ever invent time travel, we will be able to place the Resurrection within the realm of the observable and disprovable.

In fact, if we can exit space-time and observe creation directly, and not simply a mathematical model, then we will have another disprovable hypothesis: God created all things.