Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Mind Map #4: Hume's Arguments Against Design by Emmet Winter - Coggle…
Mind Map #4: Hume's Arguments Against Design by Emmet Winter
Hume is an empiricist, relies on experience to know things
Struggles to believe in miracles, as following tangible data can not lead one to understand them
Like causes, like effects
Infinity vs. temporality
Philo: I looked at the universe and saw it was finite (pp. 35-6)
Perfection vs. imperfection
Philo: I looked at the universe and saw it was imperfect (pp. 35-6)
Spirituality vs. corporeality
Philo: I looked at the universe and saw it was corporeal (pp. 35-6)
Analogy
Cleanthes uses the analogy of a "great machine" to understand the universe, Demea criticizes his lack of use of reason to support this claim, and Philo dismantles this by pointing out that the God side of his analogy is greatly lacking in evidence (pp. 15-16)
Anthropomorphism
Projection of corporeal attributes onto God
Philo feels that anthropomorphism in relation to God is dangerous, "Wisdom, thought, design, knowledge—these we justly ascribe to him because these words are conceptions by which we can express our adoration of him (p. 14)"
Demea, as a Deist, thinks that we as humans cannot perceive God (p. 13)
Theodicy (defense of God)
Philo and Demea: How can God exist if He permits humans to suffer and evil to perpetuate? (p. 60)
Cleanthes answers by asserting that the good does, in fact, outweigh the bad and because of this we can have faith in and love God (pp. 64-5)
Morality
Demea takes what Cleanthes considers a pessimistic approach to quantifying how much good and evil there is in the world (arguing that there is much more, and greater, evil)
Demea argues that suffering is quintessential to the human experience (p. 58) and argues the Deist perspective that man is above the rest of nature because we are able to dominate those beings that are stronger than us and therefore should be our predators (pp. 59-60)
Philo counters this with the point that humans are our own greatest enemy, and that we create antagonists in our heads that torment us (p. 60)
Three characters
Demea
A Deist, believes that we can know God exists, but not much more beyond that
Philo
Most aligned with Hume's personal perspective on religion, disagrees in the anthropomorphism (humanization) of God
Cleanthes
Is close to what we would consider an orthodox Christian, accepts that God exists as a universal truth. Believes that "like effects prove like causes" is the principal argument for God's existence