In this paper, I will argue that Philo offers better arguments for explanation of God’s existence than Demea and Cleanthes. During Hume’s days, the 1700s, science was not very advance and many philosophical arguments were based off of empirical observations. This paper contains information regarding how the argument between the three panned out and contains my thoughts on the conversation. While I do not have all the answers on these matters, I will provide my views and arguments in hopes of presenting a different perspective.
In Hume’s writing, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, he writes about an imaginary conversation between three people Demea, Cleanthes, and Philo. Demea is very orthodox and believes in God but is skeptical about investigations. He believes that God is a perfect being but other than that, humans know nothing else; to imagine anything else is heresy. Demas thinks that with limited human knowledge, one can only make weak arguments about God and these arguments may lead to false ideas and even skepticism. He questions science and philosophy but believes in theology. Unlike Demea, Cleanthes believes in theology on top of believing in science and philosophy. Cleanthes is a pragmatic skeptic who believes in experimenting and investigating till an answer is discovered. He acknowledges that humans have limited knowledge yet he believes that this and skepticism is not enough to test our beliefs and thus not be a serious issue. Like Cleanthes and Demea, Philo also believes in God and offers his own arguments. Philo offers skepticism towards both Demea’s and Cleanthes’ arguments though he agrees with Demea in that God is incomprehensible. He Is the biggest skeptic of the three. He believes that God does exist but he may have not created the world. In the dialogues, Cleanthes key argument is that like cause produce like effects and thus only God, the perfect being, could have created the beautiful universe with all its art, order, good, beauty, etc. Philo criticizes Cleanthes’ a posteriori analogy in saying that his analogy is way too broad; it is very difficult to determine the cause for one event and to contribute one cause to the entire universe is baseless. I agree with Philo is saying that, jumping to the conclusion of God creating the universe because of like causes, is preposterous. Going off of Cleanthes’ argument of like causes producing like effects, many other things could have contributed to the creation of the universe. Simple things like plants and animal evolving can contribute to the universe’s design and plus, Cleanthes has limited knowledge of the universe and thus how can he conclude that the entire universe is God’s creation when he has only seen part of it? After arguing against Cleanthes proposition, Philo continues on and introduces the old Epicurean hypothesis. …show more content…
This says that every effect from the universe results from chance events. If we believe that matter is finite, like contemporary physics, and that God is infinite, Philo concludes that there has to be infinite parallel universes with infinite differences. This idea scares both Cleanthes and Demea.
Demea offers his own input on Philo’s theory of matter motion in that it would require something to start it and thus only God could have done this. Philo responds by saying that just because there is a wonderful system of matter, does not mean that an intelligent being had to have put it into effect. Matter could have easily begun within itself. Following this, Philo switches to examining God nature. After arguing about God’s natural attributes, Philo beings to examine the idea of God’s moral attributes like his benevolence and omnipotence. Philo proceeds to explain the four evils of the world which could not have be things created by a benevolent being like God. The first evil is pain. Why is pain so much worse than pleasure and in general, humans and animals can operate without having to endure pain. The second evil is that the world is constrained by general laws. Why does God not circumvent the general laws to promote the good and resolve bad outcomes? The third evil is that humans and animals have very limited power and God could have increased the faculties