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David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

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Natural Religion describes a religious belief that the basis of public evidence can prove; facts about causation and concepts of God are mere examples. This religious belief is available to the believer and unbeliever alike. Hume uses defensive foundations for all the sciences including ethics, physics, and politics to convey objective ethical truths. He is swayed by human being’s mental state and its relations, believing it is the only secure knowledge we obtain. Contrary to that, he thinks there are no knowledge of inner workings of the physical world and its laws, God, absolute moral ‘truth’, and our own ‘real selves’. Philo’s arguments in “Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” against the argument from design demonstrate a decisive use of skepticism that challenges not only the complexities of a …show more content…

Here, Philo attempts to show that the occurrence of argument does not signify how it is supposed to be. Machines have objectives and are made by someone intelligent. Thus when the universe is being compared to a machine, it reveals that the universe must have been created by an intellectual creator as well. As the argument of design states the world must have been created with resemblance to human intelligence, Philo’s argument states that the universe was created by God and in addition, it states that the omnipotent perform likewise to human beings. Anthropomorphism explains that God is like a human being but only more perfect. This analogy by Hume appeared weak to Philo. But he connects the universe, an entire existing entity, and the machine being just a unit in the universe. Philo’s analogy displays the limitations on human experience in it. He does not know what is beyond what he knows and must settle for something of relevance to his train of thought thereby using a machine in connection to the

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