Essay Comparing Hume And Candide

As propagators of using reason and proof to evaluate the world around them, both Hume and Voltaire criticize the ideas that people create to rationalize the observable effects in the world. Their purpose is not to oppose or condemn religion or God, but to bring to light the flawed logic in our efforts of explanation, pointing out the absurdity of certain attempts at explanation as observed in Hume’s An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Voltaire’s Candide. Hume and Voltaire’s criticisms of such are similar in that they attack not religion directly, but the means by which it is justified. Both authors comment on the use of illogical explanations and insufficient reasoning, and the futility of rational speculation in explaining the design

In section 10 of An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume argues that it is impossible to rationalize God’s existence with miracles, since we can only proportion our beliefs to the evidence, through “experience and observation” (Hume, p. 578). Even if a great many people testify to the occurrence of a miracle, it does not justify believing in it. Miracles, by definition, do not exist in the common world and is “a violation of the laws of nature” (Hume, p. 579). We should regain our skepticism and treat secondhand testimonies as less reliable than personal experience. People try to rationalize the Christian religion, from miracles to the existence of God where there is no evidence. Hume raises the question: As rational beings, we already do not believe based solely on word of mouth; how then should we be justifying these things by reason when even its first believers believed through testimony? The only evidence there is is in the design of the world; everything else can only be inferred or