David Hume (April 26, 1711 - August 25, 1776), the Scottish philosopher of Empiricism, rejected the idea that the human mind was conceived and designed by God, choosing to instead believe in a Naturalistic world view. In his work Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (which was not published until after his death for fear of reprisal and persecution from the Christian community) Hume argues that human beings would never, by physical evidence and reason, conclude that God exists.
David Hume's Infant, Inferior or Superannuated Deity
Hume writes, "Suppose that a person with a very limited intelligence were brought into the world and assured that it was the workmanship of a sublime and benevolent Being; he might, perhaps, be surprised at finding it so full of vice and misery and disorder; but would never retract his former belief, if founded on any very solid argument; since such a limited intelligence must be sensible of his own blindness and ignorance and must allow that there may be many solutions of those phenomena which will forever escape his comprehension. But suppose that this creature is not antecedently convinced of a supreme intelligence, benevolent and powerful, but is left to gather such a belief from the appearance of things. Will he find reason to conclude the world was the work of such a powerful, wise and benevolent deity?"
The writer, Peg Tittle, comments, "Hume suggests, given the 'contrivance or economy of the animal creation, by which pains, as well as pleasures, are employed to excite all creatures to action' (746), 'the conducting of the world by general laws (747), 'the frugality with which all powers and faculties are distributed to every particular being' (748), and 'the inaccurate workmanship of all the springs and principles of the great machine of nature' (749) -- all of which give rise to the miseries of natural evil -- it may be far more reasonable to conclude that the world is 'the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance' (720), or 'the work of some dependent, inferior deity and...the object of derision to his superiors' (720), or 'the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity and ever since his death, has run on'"(720).
Believing, as he did, in Empiricism (the view that experience is the only source of knowledge) Hume held that the Christian God was a myth whose existence could not be proved by anything within the realm of the human condition. All that we know, Hume said, we know by experience and God, being by definition beyond the pale of human conception, could exist no more than could so-called miracles. Miracles, defined as supernatural events, events which are then above or outside the realm of the natural world, cannot exist since the natural world, governed by natural laws, is all we can know by experience. By definition, then, that which exists beyond what we know does exist cannot exist as it cannot be apprehended in any empirical fashion and, therefore, cannot be proved save to posit, "This individual claims that God exists."
It can be understood that there are humans who believe in the existence of God but not that there is, in fact, a God to be believed in. Or so says David Hume. It was argued by the 20th century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer (who died in 1945 in the Flossenburg Concentration Camp) that a God who could be proved would be no more than an idol. God himself has been mute on giving an authoritative answer to this unanswerable question since it was first asked and, although there have been many who have gladly tried to answer it for him, no one has yet to hear the final word on the subject.
Sources:
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David Hume, 1779
What If: Collected Thought Experiments in Philosophy, Peg Tittle, 2005
A Testament To Freedom, Dietrich Bonhoffer, ed. Kelly and Nelson, 1990
Joshua Mark - Joshua J. Mark is a freelance writer, specializing in history, literature, religion and philosophy, who has been working and publishing ...
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