God and Natural Order

Abstract

If belief in god can be shown to be an essential natural belief, then something will have been established which is both of enormous importance in understanding Hume’s philosophy of religion as a whole, and of enormous general importance in justifying what could be used as a basis for theistic religion. My contention is that belief in god is not a natural belief. I shall first attempt to establish this by contrast with the opposite thesis urged by R. J. Butler. In doing so I shall argue that for Hume belief in god is a vestigial rational belief which has no religious significance. In the second part of the chapter I shall argue that the propensity to believe in god, which we are half inclined to regard as a natural belief, comes in main part from our feeling (reported in Cleanthes’ ‘irregular’ design argument) that cosmic order originates in an intelligent agent.

The existence of God is not self-evident. For if God impressed us automatically, the Dogmatists would have agreed together regarding his essence, his character, and his place; whereas their interminable disagreement has made him seem to us non-evident and needing demonstration.

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines, III