Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [Paperback]

David Hume (Author), Albert Anderson; Lieselotte Anderson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 15, 2004

What should we teach young people about religion? The characters Demea, Cleanthes, and Philo passionately present and defend three sharply different answers to that question. Demea opens the dialogue with a position derived from René Descartes and Father Malebranche. God's nature is a mystery, but God's existence can be proved logically. Cleanthes attacks that view, both because it leads to mysticism and because it attempts the impossible task of trying to establish existence on the basis pure reason, without appeal to sense experience. As an alternative, he offers a proof of both God s existence and God s nature based on the same kind of scientific reasoning established by Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Taking a skeptical approach, Philo presents a series of arguments that question any attempt to use reason as a basis for religious faith. He suggests that human beings might be better off without religion. The dialogue ends without agreement among the characters, justifying Hume s choice of literary style for this topic. As Pamphilus, Cleanthes pupil, says in the prologue: Any philosophical question that is so obscure and uncertain that human reason can reach no agreement about it, if it is treated at all, seems to lead us naturally to the style of dialogue and conversation.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion had not yet been published when he died in 1776. Even though the manuscript was mostly written during the 1750s, it did not appear until 1779. The subject itself was too delicate and controversial, and Hume's dialectical examination of religious knowledge was especially provocative.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Cleanthes: . . . "No matter how corrupt religion may be, it is still better than no religion at all. The doctrine of life after death is so strong and necessary as an assurance for morals that we should never abandon or neglect it. If finite and temporary rewards and punishments have so great an effect as we find every day, think of how much more can be expected from rewards that are infinite and eternal!"

Philo: "If superstition is so beneficial to society, then how does it happen that history abounds with accounts of its pernicious consequences for public affairs? Factions, civil wars, persecutions, subversion of governments, oppression, and slavery are dismal consequences that always accompany the dominance of religion over people’s minds. If the religious spirit is ever mentioned in any historical narrative, we are sure to find details of the miseries that go along with it. No period of time is happier or more prosperous than those in which the spirit of religion is never seen or heard." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 171 pages
• Publisher: Agora Publications, Inc. (December 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1887250360
• ISBN-13: 978-1887250368
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,864,665 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Adequate Presentation of DCNR, May 10, 2007

By 

Linda Katehi (Anytown USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (The World of the Mind) (Audio CD)

You're looking for a way to convert your dead time in the car or on the treadmill into serious reading time. You looked up something like "philosophy audio" at Amazon and mostly got Deepak Choptra and a bunch of pious pablum. Very few serious works of philosophy are available on audio. This is one of the few, the material is well suited to the audio format, the production values are good, and all in all it's an adequate presentation of Hume's work. Go ahead and buy it.

However, this release is marred by godawful music in the transitions and whiny-voiced actors doing the dialog. The narrator (as opposed to the characters in the dialog) has a really unappealing voice. Who did the casting?

4.0 out of 5 stars applies to anything that is like going to church, May 20, 2011

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (Paperback)

I am looking at the paperback, which allows me to weigh each word in considering the ways in which I consider myself far too free for a binding relationship with anyone else. Sometimes I am even amazed that I can post things like this on the internet. David Hume was dying when he realized how much he wanted this book to be published. His friend Adam Smith did not want to be responsible for publication.

Matters are hardly settled on the internet because every web page has its own operating assumptions. People who sign up for services can read a list of restrictions that commonly include limitations on intimidation or the use of copyrighted material. There are Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by David Hume that discuss matters in a way that seeks to unite study and society. Our heritage includes orthodoxy and skepticism, but activities have been carried out by people who have become careless as they join others in profane liberty, equality, fraternity, and frequently think about getting a vasectomy to avoid producing the purest of bastards.

President Ford had been to Poland before he told the nation in 1976 during a TV debate with Jimmy Carter that Poland was a free country. In a global mix of relationships that could alter at any time, it is tricky to specify at which place a person may truly be a slave to someone else or free. Most Americans had observed global superpower conflicts in the nature of mutual denunciation societies, as Hume says of religions:

Each disputant triumphs in his turn,
while he carries on an offensive war,
and exposes the absurdities, barbarities,
and pernicious tenets of his antagonist.
But all of them,
on the whole,
prepare a complete triumph for the skeptic,
who tells them that no system ought ever to be embraced
with regard to such subjects:
for this plain reason
that no absurdity ought ever to be assented to
with regard to any subject.
A total suspense of judgment
is here our only reasonable resource.

Being slave or free is also a question of how much people will be willing to do for $14 trillion after the money has been spent.