Abstract
In the preceding two chapters we have reviewed Hume’s discussion of the principal arguments used within natural theology to support the God hypothesis. It became apparent that Hume’s rejection of the traditional a priori arguments is completely uncompromising: he believes that they are utterly worthless. His final assessment of the design argument, however, proved less easy to determine. In the course of the Dialogues and the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding Hume articulates some powerful criticisms of the design argument. And it is tempting to suppose that Hume’s own assessment of the argument is that the objections to it are so compelling that it fails to confer any positive credibility on the God hypothesis or even the less ambitious Mindedness Hypothesis. Nevertheless, Hume carefully refrains from explicitly delivering such a verdict on the design argument. So it remains necessary to exercise caution in treating Hume’s writings as amounting to a total repudiation of this line of reasoning.
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Notes
- 1.
See 1772a, 10.4/111–2.
- 2.
Cf. Schopenhauer: ‘instead of this [a harmonious world] we see only momentary gratification, fleeting pleasure conditioned by wants, much and long suffering, constant struggle … everything a hunter and everything hunted, pressure, want, need and anxiety, shrieking and howling; and this goes on … until once again the crust of the planet breaks’ (1979, 2.354). Schopenhauer was influenced by Hume and proposed to his publisher a translation of Hume’s writings on religion. In the preface he wrote: ‘A future age will understand why I am trying, by means of a new translation, to draw my own age’s attention to the present work of the excellent David Hume’. The publisher turned down the project. (Safranski 1991, 275)
- 3.
See also J. S. Mill: ‘If there are any marks at all of special design in creation, one of the things most evidently designed is that a large proportion of all animals should pass their existence in tormenting and devouring other animals. They have been lavishly fitted out with the instruments necessary for that purpose … If a tenth part of the pains which have been expended in finding benevolent adaptations in all nature had been employed in collecting evidence to blacken the character of the Creator, what scope for comment would not have been found in the entire existence of the lower animals, divided with scarcely an exception into devourers and devoured, and prey to a thousand ills from which they are denied the faculties necessary for protecting themselves!’ (1958, 39–40); and Darwin, in a letter to the botanist, Asa Gray: ‘I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.’ (1993, 224)
- 4.
‘Are God and Nature then at strife,/That Nature lends such evil dreams?/So careful of the type she seems,/So careless of the single life;’ (Tennyson 1849, 314).
- 5.
This quotation is taken from a poem written by Charles Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus.
- 6.
According to the Christian religion, the pain of childbirth is something that is deliberately inflicted on women by God as revenge for Eve’s original sin in the Garden of Eden. Such sin will be further discussed in Chap. 11.
- 7.
Demea goes as far as to say that ‘except authors of particular sciences, such as chemistry or botany, who have no occasion to treat of human life, there scarce is one of those innumerable writers, from whom the sense of human misery has not, in some passage or other, extorted a complaint and confession of it’ (1779, 10.194).
- 8.
‘Pathetic’ is used here with its traditional meaning of arousing pity.
- 9.
The Lisbon Earthquake was a devastating disaster that killed 200,000 people. It did much to precipitate Enlightenment thought on the problem of evil, not least because the disaster occurred on a church holiday.
- 10.
In an ‘early fragment on evil’ Hume discusses the relative frequency and intensity of the pleasures and pains to which we are prey, concluding that it is not clear which generally predominates. ‘Pains and Pleasures seem to be scatter’d indifferently thro Life, as Heat and Cold, Moist and Dry are disperst thro the Universe; if the one prevails a little above the other, this is what will naturally happen in any Mixture of Principles, where an exact Equality is not expressly intended. On every Occasion, Nature seems to employ either’ (M.A. Stewart 1994, 168).
- 11.
Cicero cites this as an example used by Diagoras to argue against the existence of a providential god (1951, 375–7).
- 12.
Contemporary discussions of the problem of evil distinguish between theodicies and defences. Theodicies try to explain the occurrence of evil in the world; defences merely attempt to show that evil and the existence of God are not logically incompatible.
- 13.
More will be said about this in Sect. 8.5 below.
- 14.
Nelson Algren, in his novel Walk on the Wild Side, gestures towards the inadequacy of such a reponse: ‘“Wait for the priest,” said somebody else in such a tone that Dove assumed that the priest, when he came, would explain, in low, simple tones, how a child so small could love a doll so much that she had not feared even a freight train’s wheels’ (1956, 44).
- 15.
Cf. Voltaire (1759, 61): ‘“I find that everything in our world is amiss, that nobody knows his place or his responsibility, or what he’s doing or what he should do, and that, except for supper parties, which are quite jolly and where people seem to get on reasonably well, the rest of the time is spent in pointless quarrelling: Jansenists with Molinists, lawyers with churchmen, men of letters with men of letters, courtiers with courtiers, financiers with the general public, wives with husbands, relatives with relatives. It’s one battle after another.” Candide answered him: “I’ve seen worse ones. But a wise man, who has since had the misfortune to be hanged, told me that that’s all fine. Those are just the shadows in a beautiful painting.” “Your hanged man was having people on,” said Martin. “What you call shadows are horrible stains.” “It’s human beings who make the stains,” said Candide. “They can’t help it.”’
- 16.
Hick thinks it very important that the greater goods response should be seen in this light. Almost a page is spent making it clear that the holocaust was evil (1966, 361–2). Hume would claim that only a religious apologist would need to spell this out. Of course it is—only one’s bizarre religious views might suggest otherwise.
- 17.
Kent is of course begging the question here: perhaps there is no balance of justice and resolution to the problem of innocent suffering.
- 18.
All quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James version.
- 19.
See Holden (2010) for extended discussion of the claim that we cannot feel moral sentiments towards God (‘The Argument from Sentimentalism’, ibid., 49–114) and that God cannot be seen as himself feeling moral sentiments (‘The Argument from Motivation’, ibid., 115–43). These arguments lead to the conclusion ‘that Hume positively rejects the existence of a god with moral attributes: that he is (what we might call) a moral atheist’ (ibid., 2).
- 20.
Flew considers this question: ‘Someone tells us that God loves us as a father loves his children. We are reassured. But then we see a child dying of inoperable cancer of the throat. His earthly father is driven frantic in his efforts to help, but his heavenly father reveals no obvious sign of concern. Some qualification is made—“God’s love is not a merely human love” or it is “an inscrutable love”, perhaps … we are reassured again. But then perhaps we ask: What is this assurance of God’s (appropriately qualified) love worth? What is this apparent guarantee really a guarantee against?’ (Flew et al. 1971, 15).
- 21.
‘That he should so easily fill a gap in his theodicy by appealing to a mythological idea, on the ground that it is logically possible, emphasizes again the remoteness of Plantinga’s concern from all questions of plausibility and probability’ (Hick 1966, 369).
- 22.
See also Adams (1977, 110): ‘If President Kennedy had not been shot, would he have bombed North Vietnam? God only knows. Or does He? Does even He know what Kennedy would have done?’
- 23.
See, for example, Flew 1961, 160–2.
- 24.
Holden (2010, 153) argues that Hume merely ‘temporarily suspend[s]’ the logical objection while he makes an independent point concerning inference. Hume, it is claimed, ‘finds the logical objection perfectly irrefutable’.
- 25.
Hume had read Candide: in a letter he informs Adam Smith that ‘Voltaire has lately publishd a small work calld Candide, ou L’optimisme. It is full of Sprightliness & Impiety, & is indeed a Satyre upon Providence, under Pretext of criticizing the Leibnitian System’ (1954, 53). Hume and Voltaire were also in occasional correspondence; Voltaire, writing to Hume from Paris, laments that ‘the abetters of superstition clip our wings and hinder us from soaring’ (1968, 11499R). And Hume is flattered that ‘[in this country [France], they call me his Voltaire’s] pupil’ (1932, I, 226).
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Bailey, A., O’Brien, D. (2014). The Problem of Evil. In: Hume's Critique of Religion: 'Sick Men's Dreams'. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 72. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6615-0_8
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