Summary
The Dialogues are a series of discussions
about the rationality of religious belief between the fictional
characters Cleanthes, Philo, and Demea. 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. 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. Philo seems to agree with him. Demea goes on
to explain that God is the First Cause, meaning that the world operates on
a system of cause and effect, so there must be an original cause
to have started the world in motion, and that First Cause is God.
But this still tells us nothing about God’s nature, which Cleanthes
insists we can learn by examining nature. Cleanthes states that
the only rational argument for God’s existence is one based on experience. The
design and order of nature reveal that there must be an intelligent
designer, or creator, whose intelligence resembles our own. Cleanthes
also states that things that are very familiar and present to us
need no reason to establish their truth, such as the knowledge that
food nourishes the body.
Philo disagrees with Cleanthes and argues that just because
the world is ordered, there is no reason to believe that this order
is a result of intelligent design. He explains that the example
of the design of the universe supposes an acceptance of cause and
effect, which in turn supposes that the future will resemble the
past. However, since there is nothing with which to compare our
situation, we cannot assume the necessary connection based on past
experience or other examples. Philo goes further, claiming that
even if God is an intelligent designer, this fact does not explain
why nature has order. Finally, even if the argument from design
were valid, nature does not provide us with any knowledge about
God other than that he designed it.
Philo next turns his attention to God’s possible moral
attributes and whether we can discover these by examining nature.
Together, Demea and Philo explain that the world is filled with
evil. Philo says that if there is so much evil, there cannot be
a God who is completely beneficent, or else he would have eliminated
evil. If he cannot eliminate evil, he cannot be all-powerful. If
he is unaware of the evil, he cannot be all-knowing. If nature itself
provides evidence of God’s nature, then we must conclude that he
doesn’t care about us at all and is therefore morally ambiguous.
Demea leaves the room, upset by these claims.
Although Philo has successfully torn down Cleanthes’ argument from
design, Philo finishes the dialogue by declaring that the ordered
world obviously has some intelligence behind it and that this intelligence
does in fact resemble human intelligence. His real disagreement,
he claims, concerns how strong this resemblance really is. He then
attacks religious dogma as both morally and psychologically harmful.
The most rational position, he says, is a philosophical belief in
some unknowable higher power. Finally, Philo tells Cleanthes that
philosophical skepticism is the only proper route to true Christianity
because it forces us to rely on faith instead of the false connection
between reason and theism.
Analysis
Hume clearly intends to point out that the question of
God’s existence and the supposed religious origin of morals are
in fact two different issues and that a positive stance on the first
issue does not necessarily confirm the second. The true question
is whether enough evidence exists in the world to prove that there
is an infinitely good, wise, and powerful God from which morality
naturally springs. Philo argues that there is not, and his explanation
that the existence of evil poses a problem for this view of God
is worth considering seriously. It seems impossible that an all-good,
all-powerful, and all-knowing God could exist in a world as painful
as ours. However, Cleanthes’ position also seems cogent. We don’t
need to justify the existence of things that are universal truths.
For example, we cannot prove that motion exists without referring
to an example of motion itself. If both man and the universe exhibit
form and order, we may logically consider that a similar intelligence
lies behind both. However, from that claim we could argue that this
intelligence, or God, possesses both good and evil, as man does.
