Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Hume, David
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 261513
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language: en
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rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: dialogue.txt
subject: nature
subject: hume
subject: religion
subject: leanthes
subject: reason
subject: based
subject: edition
subject: dialogues
subject: electronically
subject: compared
subject: commercial
subject: david
subject: concerning
subject: natural
subject: western
subject: philosophy
type: text
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sort title: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
full text: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion David Hume 1779 * * * * Copyright 1997, James Fieser (jfieser@utm.edu). See end note for details on copyright and editing conventions. This e-text is based on the 1779 edition of Hume's Dialogues and was electronically compared to a commercial e-text of the Dialogues. Visual comparisons were also made to other recent printed editions. Spelling has been modernized according to British spelling conventions; punctuation has not been modernized. Small capitalization has been consistently applied to proper names. See end note for details on copyright.1 * * * * EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION James Fieser Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ranks among the greatest writings in the history of Western philosophy. The work addresses the sensitive issue of the knowledge we have of God through reason alone, and, in the process, Hume presents arguments which undermine the classic proofs for God's existence. The arguments in the Dialogues assume an important 18th century distinction between natural religion and revealed religion. Natural religion involves knowledge of God drawn from nature, solely by the use of reasoning. Often this involves drawing conclusions about the natural design we see in the universe. Revealed religion, on the other hand, involves religious knowledge derived from revelation, specifically divinely inspired texts such as the Bible. From his earliest writings, Hume attacked both of these alleged avenues of religious truth. In the Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), published when he was 27, Hume attacks natural religion arguing that our ideas reach no farther than our experience; since we have no experience of divine attributes and operations, then we can have no conception of divine attributes. In his infamous essay on miracles from An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume goes a step further and attacks revealed religion. He argues that it is never reasonable to believe in violations of natural laws, such…