Cleanthes argues
that we can know about God by reasoning from the evidence we find in nature
. Demea argues that although God clearly exists, we cannot know his nature, because God’s nature is beyond the capacity of human understanding.
How does Hume feel about God?
Hume challenges some of the arguments for the existence of God, but repeatedly in his writings,
he affirms God’s existence and speculates about God’s nature
. … At the heart of this belief system is Hume’s affirmation that there is a god, although not a morally good.
Does Demea believe in God?
Demea
represents religious dogmatism
and insists that we cannot come to know the nature of God through reason. Philo, the philosophical skeptic, agrees with Demea that God is incomprehensible but insists that he might be morally corrupt.
What did Hume believe in?
Hume was an Empiricist, meaning he believed
“causes and effects are discoverable not by reason, but by experience”
. He goes on to say that, even with the perspective of the past, humanity cannot dictate future events because thoughts of the past are limited, compared to the possibilities for the future.
How does Hume define religion?
As such,
Hume rejects the truth of any revealed religion
, and further shows that, when corrupted with inappropriate passions, religion has harmful consequences to both morality and society. … Further, he argues, rational arguments cannot lead us to a deity.
Does the design argument prove the existence of God?
This is an argument for the existence of God. It
points to evidence that suggests our world works well
– ie that it was designed in a specific way. The argument follows that if it was designed like this, then someone or something must have designed it.
What is Philos argument?
Philo’s argument implies that
(i)
and (ii) are false, for that the relevant terms are not analogous in the sense of (ii) is the very conclusion of Philo’s argument, and that the meanings of the relevant terms are so different as not to be analogous implies a fortiori that they don’t have the same meaning either.
Why is Hume important today?
Today, philosophers recognize Hume as
a thoroughgoing exponent of philosophical naturalism
, as a precursor of contemporary cognitive science, and as the inspiration for several of the most significant types of ethical theory
How does Hume define cause?
He defines “cause” in the following two ways: (D1)
An object precedent and contiguous to another
, and where all the objects resembling the former are placed in like relations of precedency and contiguity to those objects that resemble the latter.
What was Hume skeptical of?
Part of Hume’s fame and importance owes to his boldly skeptical approach to a range of philosophical subjects. In epistemology, he
questioned common notions of personal identity
, and argued that there is no permanent “self” that continues over time.
Does Descartes believe in God?
According to Descartes, God’s existence is
established by the fact that Descartes has a clear and distinct idea of God
; but the truth of Descartes’s clear and distinct ideas are guaranteed by the fact that God exists and is not a deceiver. Thus, in order to show that God exists, Descartes must assume that God exists.
What did Hume say about miracles?
Accordingly Hume says (Enquiries p. 115ff) that
“no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish
.” We must always decide in favor of the lesser miracle.
What self is for Descartes?
In other words, for Descartes, it is
the mind that makes us humans
. Thus, for Descartes, the “mind” is the “real self”.
What are the cosmological arguments for the existence of God?
A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which
claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe or some totality of objects
.
What is the moral argument for the existence of God?
The
argument from morality
is an argument for the existence of God. Arguments from morality tend to be based on moral normativity or moral order. Arguments from moral normativity observe some aspect of morality and argue that God is the best or only explanation for this, concluding that God must exist.
What is the first cause argument for the existence of God?
The first cause argument is
based around cause and effect
. The idea is that everything that exists has something that caused it, there is nothing in our world that came from nothing. As human beings we are used to seeing cause and effect in our everyday lives, so this argument is easy to relate to.
