Program / Course 14: Arguments for the Existence of God / Lesson 5.2
What you will learn
- Identify the three speakers of the Dialogues and the positions they voice.
- State Hume’s main objections to the design argument.
- Explain what the argument could show even if the objections are set aside.
- Describe the debate about which character speaks for Hume.
The big idea
David Hume (1711 to 1776) wrote the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion over many years and had it published after his death in 1779. In it three characters debate the design argument. Cleanthes defends it as an argument from analogy, Philo attacks it, and Demea represents a traditional faith suspicious of reasoning about God. Hume’s objections are still discussed: the analogy is weak, the universe is unique, the argument yields a limited conclusion, and the world contains evil. Scholars disagree about how far Hume intended Philo’s view as his own.
Key terms
- Dialogue
- A work in the form of a conversation between characters, which allows an author to present several views without stating his own.
- Analogy
- A comparison arguing that because two things are alike in some respects, they are probably alike in another.
- Experimental theism
- A name for the view of Cleanthes that God’s existence can be argued from experience of order, as with scientific inference.
- Epicurean hypothesis
- The ancient idea, raised by Philo, that the universe is the result of a finite number of particles combining at random over an unlimited time.
- Infinite regress of designers
- The objection that if the order of the world requires a designer, the designer’s order requires another designer, and so on.
- Skeptic
- One who doubts claims to knowledge, here Philo, who tests the limits of reason.
- Posthumous
- Published after the author’s death.
Background
Hume was a Scottish philosopher and historian. He was widely known in his day as an unbeliever, though he insisted he was a skeptic. He worked on the Dialogues from about 1750 and left instructions for its publication after his death. Friends advised him not to publish in his lifetime, partly for fear of the reaction. His nephew published it in 1779.
The Dialogues are modeled on the dialogues of Cicero. Cleanthes argues that the world is like a great machine and so has a mind as its cause. Philo, the skeptic, tests the analogy. Demea argues that God is incomprehensible and that reason should not claim to know him. A young student, Pamphilus, narrates. The style makes it hard to know what Hume himself believed, and scholars have debated this for two centuries.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Cleanthes’s argument
Cleanthes says: look round the world and you see one great machine made of smaller machines, all adjusted to one another with an accuracy that exceeds human art. Since effects resemble one another, people infer that their causes resemble each other too, and the cause of nature must resemble a human mind, though on a larger scale. This is the design argument as an analogy from human artifacts.
Step 2: The analogy is weak
Philo replies that the world is unlike a house or a ship in important ways. It may be more like an animal or a plant, which generate their own order. If so, the cause of order might be generation or growth and not design. The more the two things differ, the weaker the inference. The argument, at best, offers a probability that is low.
Step 3: One universe
People infer causes from experience of many cases of the same kind, such as many houses and many builders. But people have experience of only one universe, so they cannot say what causes universes. Defenders reply that people often make inferences about unique things, as when a physicist studies the origin of the solar system, and that the argument can be assessed without needing repeated cases.
Step 4: Limited conclusions and regress
Even if the argument works, Philo says, it shows only a cause proportioned to the effect. The world is finite and imperfect. The cause might be an immature deity, a committee of gods, or a lesser being. The argument would not lead to a single, infinitely good and powerful God. He also asks what designed the designer. If a mind needs an explanation, so does the divine mind. Cleanthes answers that the order of mind is itself the kind of thing that is a source of order, and a regress must stop somewhere.
Step 5: Evil and the Epicurean hypothesis
In Part 10 and 11, Philo and Demea discuss the evil in the world, which Philo says makes it hard to infer a perfectly good cause. In Part 8 Philo suggests that a finite number of particles combining at random for infinite time would eventually produce a stable order, so order does not require a mind. Modern physics has changed this picture, but the point that apparent order may arise without design has remained important.
Step 6: What did Hume intend?
In Part 12, Philo makes a surprising concession that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence. Scholars differ. Some take this as Hume’s own view, a minimal, almost empty theism. Others think the concession is ironic or merely tactical. Because Hume wrote a dialogue and not a treatise, the question will likely remain open.
- Is the universe more like a machine or more like an animal?
- Can a person reason about the cause of a unique thing?
- What would a cause proportioned to the effect be like?
- Is Cleanthes right that a regress must stop somewhere?
- Why did Hume choose the form of a dialogue?
- Which speaker do you find most convincing, and why?
Examples
A vegetable universe
Philo suggests that the world might be more like a vegetable than a clock. A tree produces order by growth and seed, with no designer present. If the universe resembled a tree, the cause of its order might be of the same kind. Cleanthes says that the analogy to artifacts remains stronger.
The immature maker
Philo proposes that this world might be the first crude attempt of an infant deity, later abandoned. The suggestion is meant to show that the evidence of design could fit many different pictures of the cause, not only the God of traditional religion.
A talking voice in the clouds
Cleanthes imagines a voice from the sky speaking to all nations in a language each could understand. People would then conclude, he says, that the voice had an intelligent source, and the order of nature is similar but constant. Critics say the cases differ, since the voice is unlike natural processes.
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic philosophers note that Hume’s target is a design argument from analogy, as in Paley’s predecessors, and not Aquinas’s fifth way. They hold that Hume’s objections do not touch an argument from final causes. Hume’s wider empiricism is seen as a limit on what reason can claim.
Orthodox
Orthodox writers would agree with Demea that God is beyond comprehension and that human analogy falls short, though they do not share his reasons. They hold that creation reveals God without giving a ground for inference of his nature.
Protestant
The Scottish context was Presbyterian, and Hume’s work pressed Protestant thinkers to consider what role reasoning from nature can play. Some, such as Thomas Reid, answered Hume. Others took his criticisms as a reason to rest faith on revelation.
Scholarly views
Philosophers such as Paul Draper and Richard Swinburne have debated whether Hume’s objections succeed. Swinburne holds that a probabilistic form of the argument survives. Draper holds that natural selection supports a stronger objection. Opinions on Hume’s own view range from atheist to mitigated skeptic.
Skeptical views
Skeptics find Hume’s objections largely decisive against the analogy from artifacts. They stress that reasoning about the whole universe from a part exceeds the limits of experience.
Why it matters
Hume’s Dialogues is the classic critique of natural theology and is still read by defenders and critics alike. Reading it shows how to criticize an argument that you suspect does not work, and how to defend it by restating the argument in a stronger form.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Hume was an atheist who refuted God’s existence.
Correction: Hume criticized the arguments. Whether he was an atheist or a skeptic is debated, and he did not claim to prove that there is no God.
Misunderstanding: Cleanthes is the loser of the dialogue.
Correction: Hume lets Cleanthes score points, and many readers think he is also given the last word. Readers disagree about who wins.
Misunderstanding: Hume’s objections refute every design argument.
Correction: They target the argument from analogy. Arguments from fine-tuning or from probability are built differently and are discussed on their own merits.
Misunderstanding: Philo’s view is Hume’s view.
Correction: Hume does not say. Scholars give reasons to identify Hume with Philo, but there is no agreement.
Knowledge check
Who are the three main speakers in the Dialogues?
Cleanthes defends the design argument from analogy with human artifacts. Philo, a skeptic, attacks it. Demea defends a traditional faith that stresses God’s incomprehensibility and distrusts natural theology. Pamphilus, a student, narrates in a letter. The form leaves open which speaker Hume himself agrees with.
State two of Philo’s objections to the design argument.
He says the analogy between the world and a machine is weak, since the world might be more like an organism that generates order itself. He also says there is experience of only one universe, so its cause cannot be inferred as the cause of a house. He adds that the cause would at best be proportioned to the effect, not infinite.
What is the Epicurean hypothesis?
It is the suggestion that a finite number of particles, combining at random over unlimited time, would eventually produce stable ordered arrangements. So order does not by itself require a designer. The point is not that this is true, but that apparent order has other possible explanations. Darwin later offered a far stronger one.
Why is it hard to know what Hume himself believed?
He wrote a dialogue, where different characters voice different views, and he did not say which speaks for him. Philo seems closest, but Part 12 contains a concession that some read as sincere and others as ironic. Hume’s other writings also give mixed signals. Scholars have not reached agreement.
Think it through
- Does Philo’s point about only one universe trouble you?
- Is it fair to say an argument fails because its conclusion would be smaller than hoped?
- What do you make of Part 12?
- Would a world with less evil make the argument stronger?
Independent assignment
Three voices
In your own notebook, write 350 to 500 words. Summarize the views of Cleanthes, Philo and Demea in one paragraph each, as their supporters would accept. Then write a paragraph saying which voice seems closest to your own thinking, and what Hume’s text gives that voice. Do not send this to anyone.
Further study
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Hume on Religion Read the section on the Dialogues and the design argument.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Teleological Arguments for God’s Existence Read for Hume’s place in the history of the design argument.
- Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God Read how a defender answers Hume’s objections.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Problem of Evil Read for the problem Hume raises in Parts 10 and 11.
- Job 11 Verse 7 asks whether you can find out God by searching.
- Isaiah 55 Verses 8 and 9 speak of God’s thoughts and ways being higher.