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Summary Of David Hume's Dialogues All The Way Down

1339 Words6 Pages

Ellie Lawler
Dr. Patrick Gamez
PHIL 20101-09
27 October 2016
Turtles All The Way Down David Hume, a philosopher in the 18th century, wrote Dialogues on Natural Religion, in which three characters who agree on the existence of a God, debate the nature of that God’s existence. The three characters, Cleanthes, Philo, and Demea, have very different ideas on the nature and characteristics of God. Part 4 of the Dialogues focuses on the latter two. Cleanthes believes in an anthropomorphic God and is a proponent of the teleological argument, or that of God as an intelligent designer. Philo asserts that the human mind is incapable of making any assumptions about God as a divine being either through a priori thought or through lived experiences, but …show more content…

In doing this, he is attempting to explain how the universe came to be ordered in the way that it is. He compares the world to a book or a machine, pointing out that these things must be created by a rational mind, and therefore more complex things, such as nature, should also require a rational mind as a creator. He describes this rational mind, God, as an anthropomorphic being, or human-like. This human-like God who intelligently designed the world with an inherent order would be like an architect who designs a building. While this appeared to be a strong argument explaining the order in the world, Philo responded with the idea that an intelligent designer would imply that the universe is no more or less ordered than it would be if there was no God at all. The thoughts and designs pertaining to the building do not construct the building. Furthermore, Philo asserts, “a mental world or universe of ideas requires a cause as much as does a material world or universe of objects” (Hume 37). In other words, the existence of an intelligent designer does not necessarily explain how the world came to exist nor does it explain the cause of the order in the world. There has merely been a shift from the material realm into ideas. To find the cause of the world, we must find the cause of God’s thoughts. In the words of Philo, “How therefore shall we satisfy ourselves concerning the …show more content…

Philo cannot be content with an argument that is potentially flawed, which is why he goes on to say, “Why not stop at the material world? How can we satisfy ourselves without going on in infinitum? And after all, what satisfaction is there in that infinite progression?” (Hume 38). With this, he is saying that if we can prove that God exists and is the cause of the world as we experience it, why wouldn’t we go further back and investigate previous causes? At the same time, he knows that it is impossible to investigate those causes through reason or through experience. Philo is saying that it is not a fulfilling experience to look into something that will never have a definitive

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