The Big Problem with Religious Arguments
Summary
TLDRIn this thought-provoking video, the script explores David Hume's skeptical approach to theism and atheism through his 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion'. It delves into the limits of human reason in understanding the divine, the constraints of knowledge and truth, and the metaphysically possible. The video challenges viewers to reconsider the certainty of their beliefs about God's existence and nature, emphasizing the value of skepticism in theological and philosophical debates.
Takeaways
- 😀 David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion explores the limits of human knowledge about the divine, advocating a skeptical approach to theism and atheism.
- 🤔 Hume challenges the use of analogy in arguments for the existence of God, suggesting that the universe may not be similar enough to its parts to justify such reasoning.
- 🧐 Pho, a character in Hume's dialogue, questions the justification for analogical reasoning in theological arguments, pointing out the potential for disanalogy between a set and its members.
- 📚 Hume is known for his skepticism about human certainty, emphasizing the limits of what we can know and the potential for our senses and reason to mislead us.
- 🤓 Pho introduces doubt into common theological reasoning, focusing on the limits of reasoning by analogy and the comprehensibility of God's nature.
- 🧐 Pho argues that if God is infinite, He is likely beyond human comprehension, which complicates the idea of believing in one definite God.
- 🤨 Pho critiques the balance between God's greatness and His knowability, suggesting that a theistic worldview must be careful not to render God incomprehensible.
- 📉 Pho's critique extends to natural theology, questioning the plausibility of using abductive reasoning to explain the universe's order or fine-tuning by an intelligent designer.
- 🚫 Hume asserts that knowledge is limited to matters of fact and relations of ideas, implying that discussions about God's existence or nature may fall outside the realm of what can be known.
- 💭 Pho encourages epistemic self-awareness, asking how sure we can be of our theological reasoning and the extent to which we can know anything about the divine.
- 🔍 The script suggests that skepticism is valuable in philosophical inquiry, prompting us to consider the limits of our knowledge and the strength of our epistemological foundations.
Q & A
What is the main theme of the video script discussing David Hume's views on religion?
-The main theme of the video script is exploring David Hume's skeptical approach to religious debates, particularly his agnostic perspective on the existence of God and the limits of human reason in understanding the divine.
What does the script suggest about the role of analogy in human reasoning?
-The script suggests that analogy plays a significant role in human reasoning, especially in inductive reasoning, but also points out its limitations when used to make broad generalizations about the universe and God, as in the argument from design.
How does the script describe David Hume's approach to the question of God's existence?
-The script describes David Hume's approach as that of a skeptic, not taking the position of an atheist or theist but rather questioning the limits of what can be known about God and the validity of the arguments used to discuss the divine.
What is the script's stance on the argument from design?
-The script challenges the argument from design by highlighting the potential fallacy of drawing analogies between the complexity of the universe and human-made objects like watches, suggesting that such reasoning may not be justified.
What is the relationship between knowledge and truth as discussed in the script?
-The script discusses the relationship between knowledge and truth in the context of human understanding of metaphysics, suggesting that our knowledge is constrained by our ability to perceive and comprehend truth, especially in matters related to the divine.
How does the script address the problem of understanding God's nature?
-The script addresses the problem by suggesting that if God is infinitely great, then He may be almost entirely beyond human comprehension, which in turn raises questions about the certainty of any beliefs about God's nature.
What is the script's view on the role of skepticism in philosophical and theological discussions?
-The script promotes skepticism as a valuable tool for questioning the limits of human knowledge and understanding, especially in discussions about the existence and nature of God, and encourages a cautious approach to making definitive claims.
How does the script relate Hume's philosophy to the wider debate around agnosticism?
-The script relates Hume's philosophy to the wider debate around agnosticism by highlighting his skeptical inquiries into the limits of human reason and the extent to which we can know or understand metaphysical concepts like God.
What is the significance of the script's discussion on the limits of analogy in arguments for God's existence?
-The significance lies in challenging the certainty of such arguments by pointing out that analogies may not be a reliable basis for understanding the universe or God, as they can be subject to exceptions and may not accurately represent the divine.
How does the script suggest we should approach questions about the metaphysical possibilities beyond our experience?
-The script suggests that we should approach such questions with caution and skepticism, acknowledging the limitations of our knowledge and experience, and recognizing that our judgments about metaphysical possibilities may be uncertain at best.
What is the script's perspective on the value of skepticism in understanding the world and its mysteries?
-The script views skepticism as valuable for encouraging epistemic self-awareness and for questioning the extent of our knowledge and understanding, especially in areas where our experience is limited, such as the nature of the universe and the divine.
Outlines
📜 Introduction to Agnosticism and Sponsorship Acknowledgement
The script opens with gratitude to Squarespace for sponsoring the video and a brief teaser about the content to follow. It introduces the topic of religious debates, highlighting the common dichotomy between atheists and theists, with notable figures like Richard Dawkins and William Lane Craig representing their respective sides. The video promises to explore a less-discussed perspective: agnosticism, as exemplified by David Hume's 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.' Hume's skepticism and his examination of the limits of human reason regarding the divine are set to be the focal points. The script also touches on the importance of the relationship between knowledge and truth, and the need to reassess our metaphysical beliefs. Lastly, the video's sponsor, Squarespace, is introduced as a platform for building professional websites with ease, offering a discount code for the audience.
🔍 The Limits of Analogical Reasoning in Theology
This paragraph delves into the use of analogy as a reasoning tool in theological arguments, particularly in the context of the argument from design and the cosmological argument. It critiques the assumption that the universe's complexity necessitates a designer, questioning the justification for drawing parallels between the universe and its components. The character Pho from Hume's dialogue challenges the security of such analogies, suggesting that the properties of a set's members do not always belong to the set itself. The critique extends to the broader issue of the limits of human reason in understanding the divine, emphasizing the need for caution when making metaphysical inferences.
🤔 The Problem of Understanding God's Nature
The script discusses the challenges of comprehending God's nature, especially when conceived as having infinite properties. It contrasts natural theology, which seeks to understand God through the world, with revealed theology, which relies on divine revelations like scripture. The character Philo criticizes the tendency to balance God's greatness with human comprehension, using the example of a beetle's inability to understand Shakespeare's works to illustrate the gap between the finite and the infinite. This leads to a broader debate on whether believers truly believe in one definite God or merely entertain various possibilities of what God could be.
🔄 The Challenge of Abduction in Explaining the Universe
This paragraph examines the use of abduction, or inference to the best explanation, in natural theology arguments, such as the argument from design and the fine-tuning argument. Cleanthes, a character in Hume's dialogue, posits that the universe's order suggests the existence of an intelligent designer. However, Pho counters this by questioning the basis of our plausibility judgments, given our limited experience with anything beyond our own universe. Pho argues that our everyday reasoning might not apply to the metaphysical origins of the universe, introducing skepticism about the certainty of our beliefs regarding the divine.
📚 Hume's Epistemological Framework and the Limits of Knowledge
The script presents David Hume's epistemological framework, dividing knowledge into matters of fact and relations of ideas, and dismissing anything outside these categories as either nonsensical or beyond human comprehension. It discusses the implications of this framework for the debate between atheism and theism, which are ontological claims about what exists. Agnosticism, in contrast, is presented as an epistemological position, focusing on what can be known rather than what is the case. The value of Hume's work is highlighted in prompting a reevaluation of the certainty of our theological reasoning.
💭 Knowledge, Belief, and the Value of Skepticism
In the final paragraph, the script reflects on the value of skepticism in philosophical inquiry, as exemplified by Hume's challenge to question the limits of what we can know. It contrasts the practical concerns associated with skepticism, such as solipsism or the brain-in-a-vat scenario, with the deeper value of understanding the limits of human knowledge. The script concludes by encouraging epistemic self-awareness in all areas of inquiry, including theology, and suggests that a healthy dose of agnosticism might be beneficial in acknowledging the limits of our understanding.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Agnosticism
💡Analogy
💡Natural Theology
💡Cosmological Argument
💡Epistemology
💡Ontology
💡Skepticism
💡Inference to the Best Explanation
💡Plausibility
💡Divine
💡Metaphysics
Highlights
Sponsor appreciation for Squarespace and its website building services.
Introduction to David Hume's skepticism and his approach to theism and atheism.
The importance of examining the limits of human reason and knowledge in metaphysics.
Discussion on the use of analogy in reasoning, especially in arguments for the existence of God.
Critique of analogical reasoning in the argument from design and cosmological argument.
Philo's challenge to justify the analogy between the universe and its contents.
The problem of understanding God's nature given His supposed infinite properties.
Critique of natural theology and the balance between God's greatness and comprehensibility.
Exploration of the implications of God's infinite nature on human comprehension and belief.
Introduction to epistemic logic and its relevance to belief and the consideration of possibilities.
Hume's challenge to the plausibility of abductive reasoning in explaining the universe's order.
Critique of the fine-tuning argument and the limitations of plausibility judgments about the universe.
Philo's skepticism about the ability to make definite judgments on metaphysical questions.
Hume's division of knowledge into matters of fact and relations of ideas, with a challenge to what lies beyond.
The value of skepticism in assessing the limits of knowledge and its application to theological debates.
Encouragement of epistemic self-awareness and the importance of questioning the limits of knowledge in various inquiries.
Final thoughts on the necessity of humility in our pursuit of knowledge and understanding of the world.
Transcripts
thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring
this video more about them in just a
moment a wise man proportions his belief
to the evidence religious debates are
often framed as a clash between atheists
and theists on the one hand there are
the Dawkins harrises and Hitchens of the
world and on the other there are the
aquinus the phasers and the Craigs but
seldom does the middle path get nearly
as much consideration there are not many
who will boldly take to the stand to say
I'm not sure about the whole God thing I
uh I haven't made my mind up but luckily
David Hume will come to our rescue in
his dialogues concerning natural
religion he looks at the question of God
not just through the eye of an atheist
or a theist but rather an outright kinly
skeptic who wishes to show the limits of
what we could ever know about the Divine
get ready to learn the constraints of
human reason the importance of the
relationship between knowledge and truth
and why we could all stand to reexamine
our ideas of what is metaphysically
possible as always bear in mind that I'm
only really scratching the surface of
hume's philosophy and The Wider debate
around agnosticism here and there are
responses to each of his points which I
won't have time to examine in detail
just know that they are there none of
hume's arguments are knockdown
objections but before any of that I want
to thank the very kind sponsor for this
video Squarespace if you are looking to
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website but anyway back to God one the
limits of analogy out of all of the
tools of human reasoning I think analogy
is one of the least appreciated it's
very cool and in some ways I don't know
what we would do without it in the
beauty of intricate formal systems and
probabilistic inductive reasoning we can
forget the amazing fact that we can go
this thing is a bit like this other
thing maybe it will behave in the same
way and we rely on this thinking a fair
amount for good reason in some way
straightforward inductive reason often
relies on analogies just like this for
instance we make generalizations about
watches because we know that watches are
all alike in a whole host of ways thus
it makes sense to group them under the
term watch and start to make
semi-universal statements about the
class of watches and a huge amount of
arguments for belief in God rely on some
form of analogical reasoning classically
the argument for design often goes a bit
like this in general life whenever we
encounter something sufficiently complex
we tend to infer that there is some
designer py famously uses the example of
a watch on a beach if we came across
such an object we would not think wow I
wonder how this watch came to be via the
interaction of the sand the wind and the
Sea we would instead think someone must
have made this watch there must have
been a watch maker however the universe
itself is vastly more complex than a
watch so much so that even our most
advanced mathematical theories cannot
come up with a complete description of
it so because the universe is a bit like
a significantly more intricate and
complicated watch should we not by the
same token infer that it too must have a
designer for another example we might
take a particular formulation of the
cosmological argument this might say
that since everything we've observed in
the universe has a beginning and also a
cause and the universe is also a thing
analogous to all of the objects we've
already observed then that must also
have a cause in both cases there is the
general idea that the universe itself is
similar enough to the stuff in the
universe that we can generalize from
observations about interest Universe
objects to the universe itself it's a
bit like a suppressed premise in the
argument I want to note here that there
are versions of both of these arguments
that are not analogical in this way but
they also tend to rely on a priori
metaphysical principles that are open to
question and required defense you can
check out my video on St Thomas aquinus
is five ways if you want to learn a
little bit more about that however one
of the characters in hume's dialogue Pho
throws this type of reasoning into
question he asks whether we can actually
justify our analogy here are arguing
that at best we have very limited
reasons to think that the universe
itself must be like anything within it
after all there are plenty of instances
where the members of some set have
properties that do not belong to the set
itself think of a square made up of two
triangles while everything inside the
square has the property of having three
sides the square itself obviously does
not or to take a Starker example
everything in the set of reptiles is an
animal but the set of reptiles isn't
anything living at all we see these
disanalogies between groups and their
members all the time it might be the
case that no individual member of a
community is self-sufficient but the
community itself may be perfectly
self-sufficient many single-colored
objects can form a multicolored
composite and so on the point Philo is
getting at is that the analogic leap the
theist makes in the argument from design
or the cosmological argument are not
nearly as secure as we might initially
think it's worth noting here that this
is not a positive argument for atheism
at all it's not suggesting that the
analogy definitely does not hold whereas
something like the problem of evil
attempts to identify a positive tension
in the proposed properties of God and
thus make an active argument for his
nonexistence Pho is simply introducing
doubt into the common patterns of our
theological reasoning this is sort of
emblematic of hume's General approach
David Hume is one of the closest things
we find in modern philosophy to a proper
skeptic he spent much of his life
attempting to find the limits of what
humans can be certain of and the extent
to which our senses reason and thoughts
can lead us astray his essays on a huge
number of topics all make the same broad
Point our reasoning is much less clear
than we think it is and this attitude
makes him a fantastic spokesman for
something like agnosticism in effect Pho
wants to know what the limits of
reasoning by analogy are and how we know
when we've gone too far his proposed
answer is actually very intuitive
reasoning by analogy holds just to the
extent to which the objects of
comparison are similar in the relevant
ways so if we are reasoning about
movement then we can expect two things
of similar weight and shape to move in
similar ways but then the question this
raises for the theist is this how
similar can we truly say the objects in
the universe are to the universe itself
and thus how Justified is this
analogical reasoning for the record
pho's criticisms do not just apply to
religious answers but just any sort of
response to the question what was there
before the universe or what caused the
universe or any question that addresses
things outside of the world we Habit in
many ways his attack is not actually on
theism itself but rather the
comprehensibility of the question that
theism has set out to answer this is
going to become a bit of a theme Philo
is far more a skeptic than an atheist he
is less concerned with whether the
theism is a good theory but more with
whether this sort of metaphysical Theory
crafting even makes sense and having
taken issue with the arguments for the
existence of God Pho then moves to
attack God's nature if you want to help
me make more videos like this then
please consider consider subscribing to
my patreon the link is in the
description two the problem of
understanding God to massively simplify
some fascinating history in medieval
Christian thought there were two primary
types of theology revealed theology
which dealt with direct Revelations from
God like scripture and natural theology
which attempted to find out about God
through the world itself that is
revealed theology dealt with his words
and natural theology dealt with his
works and it is worth saying this was a
huge part of theology much of St Thomas
aquinus is sum theologica arguably the
greatest work of Christian theology in
history is about inferring the
properties of God from nature and
natural theology has numerous strengths
that revealed theology does not quite
have access to for instance if a
Christian Theologian is talking to
someone who does not already believe in
the divine inspiration of the Bible then
they are unlikely to be amenable to
arguments from revealed theology but
almost everyone believes the natural
world exists so it's a fantastic place
to start the two other main characters
in dialogue cleanthes and DEA both make
natural theological arguments at various
points in particular DEA wishes to argue
for a Transcendent god with infinite
properties he is not just good but
infinitely good not just intelligent but
infinitely intelligent he is boundless
and eternal and woven through everything
in existence in itself this is a
slightly esoteric but not too unorthodox
characterization of God a lot of
conceptions of a theistic deity make
many of his properties infinite and
almost all of them make him
significantly greater than humans this
makes a lot of sense what would be the
point of worshiping something that was
not a whole lot greater than us but this
is where Philo begins his critique he
points out that a theistic worldview
must be very careful to balance two
properties of God on the one hand he
must be so much greater than us mere
humans but on the other he must remain
comprehensible to us in some way after
all if we could not know anything about
God then a theistic worldview would not
be that much different from an atheistic
one it would simply amount to saying
well there is something out there but I
don't know what it is but Pho is quick
to remark that God's greatness is at
odds with his knowability an example
might help illustrate what he means for
instance imagine that you were not you
but instead a beetle and you were
happily crawling around the floor when
one day you come across the complete
works of Shakespeare from one
perspective you now know the complete
works of Shakespeare exists as a
physical object but from another you
only do so in a highly limited way you
cannot tell that it's a book but
basically treat it like you would a
brick you cannot understand the language
contained within nor the meter nor the
dramatic beats in fact you can't really
get any of the information encoded
inside at all there is a sense in which
Beatle youu would not believe in the
complete works of Shakespeare but
instead only that there is some object
on the floor and that its details will
be forever beyond your grasp pho's
argument is essentially that if God is
as great as the reports claim and is
infinite then he must be almost entirely
Beyond human comprehension after all to
understand a finite amount of an
infinite being would still be to
understand only an infinitesimally small
amount about him in some ways Pho Echoes
what many Christian theologians have
themselves stated according to Christian
Legend St Augustine was once admonished
by an Angel who told him that attempting
to understand God's trinitarian nature
via human reason was like attempting to
fit the entire ocean in a small hole on
the beach others have said that when we
call God kind or loving or talk of his
wroth we must be speaking by analogy
we're just saying the closest thing that
humans can think of however for Pho this
means that the theist is not really
believing in one definite God at all
this point is going to get a bit
technical so bear with me let's think
about belief in terms of considered
possibilities then we can say that what
you believe is what you think is true in
every possibility you are considering so
if I believe that London is the capital
of the UK then that means that in every
possibility I will consider London will
be the capital of the UK I won't
consider any possibilities in which this
is not true because then my belief could
not serve as the basis for decisive
action on the other hand if something is
an open possibility for me then it will
be true in at least one of the
possibilities that I'm considering so if
I know that my friend John is either in
Manchester or in Birmingham but I don't
know which then they are both open
possibilities for me one of the
possibilities I'm considering has John
in Birmingham and the other has him in
Manchester funnily enough I did my
Master's thesis in epistemic logic and
this is pretty much how logicians tend
to treat belief mathematically pho's
point is partly that if God remains
mostly incomprehensible then the theist
does not really believe in one whole
definite God but rather considers a
whole load of different gods as open
possibilities corresponding to all of
the possible qualities of God that are
forever beyond their reach at its
extreme end this approach is something
that is atheism adjacent like what we
were saying earlier about someone
believing that there is something out
there but they don't know what it is but
pho's problem is really one of gradation
the greater the god the more difficult
he would be to comprehend but the more
difficult to comprehend the harder it is
to believe in anything definite it's a
fun little conundrum though I I do think
there are solutions to it in practice
most religions get around this by using
revealed theology if you are a Christian
then God has informed you about himself
directly through holy texts but Hume is
largely concerned with natural theology
here for the reasons I gave at the
beginning of the section whether or not
you agree with it this is quite a cool
argument to think about because it helps
illustrate the connection between
ontology and epistemology ontology is
the study of what is whereas
epistemology is the study of how we come
to know things on the traditional
Aristotelian picture epistemology rests
upon ontology and this makes sense how
we gain knowledge will depend on how the
world is and thus on ontology however
Hume points out a flip side to this the
ontology that we can believe in rests
upon what we can know and what we can
comprehend in other words what it is
possible to believe depends on what it
is possible to understand and thus Hume
raises an interesting question for
theists even if we grant that God exists
to what extent must we remain agnostics
about his nature and furthermore does
this mean that we would not be believing
in one definite God but rather gesturing
at a whole host of possible gods and
saying well one of them must exist that
was all pretty heavy-going stuff and to
anyone who's interested I would truly
recommend looking into epistemic logic
it's a fascinating field next next we
will look at a different but related
idea that Hume raises at numerous points
during his dialogue how should our
reasoning change when we are talking
about things so far outside the realm of
our ordinary experience three
possibilities plausibility and you to
return to the concept of natural
theology many arguments in that field
tend to go something like this You
observe a property in the world and then
you ask what would be the most plausible
way to explain this and then you
conclude something about God or just the
mere fact that God exists this is a very
familiar pattern of reasoning known as
abduction or an inference to the best
explanation for instance if I had left
my laptop in public and it was gone when
I came back any number of things could
have happened a group of pigeons could
have coordinated to carry it away a gust
of wind could have blown it to where I
cannot see it but The Disappearance of
my laptop is probably best explained by
the hypothesis that someone has stolen
it cleanthes makes many such arguments
of this structure in the dialogue most
notably he uses a variant on the
argument from design and the fine-tuning
argument to show God's existence and his
Supreme intelligence cleanthes first
points out that the Universe has an
astonishing amount of order in it the
natural laws keep everything reliable
and predictable if anything was even
slightly off then there would be total
and complete chaos it could have been
that gravity was slightly different and
as a result planets would not hold
together it could have been the case
that natural laws were unstable and
unreliable they could have stopped one
day in 1350 and destroyed the universe
in that very moment cleanthes then says
that the best way to explain such a
delicate balance is that there is a
highly intelligent agential designer who
carefully crafted these laws and we call
that design a God the alternative is
that they came about by chance and that
just seems absurd so God is the most
sensible option thus via abduction it is
rational to believe in God there is
something very appealing about this line
of argument but pho in classic fashion
raised some important skeptical
challenges in his view there is a
significant impediment to using
abductive reasoning to answer questions
about God or the ultimate causes of the
universe and it essentially arises from
a parcity of data for Pho the reason
that abduction works in the world of
everyday life is because we have an
awful lot of experience to draw from to
compare different explanatory theories
take the example of my laptop I know
from previous encounters with pigeons
that they are unlikely to have
coordinated to nickit because I'm not
even sure that they could do such a
thing and even if they could they would
not have anything to gain by doing so
likewise the idea that a gust of wind
specifically blew my laptop out of sight
while leaving the surrounding area
untouched seems implausible because I
know that that's not the type of thing
that wind does on the other hand I know
that when people leave things unattended
sometimes they are stolen it is a much
more plausible hypothesis than the other
two options I was considering
essentially underlying my abductive
reasoning is a whole load of ground
knowledge and defeasible rules that I
rely on to make the inference function
the philosopher John Norton calls these
things material rules and he uses them
quite a lot in his own theory of
induction but then Pho raises a pretty
sensible question what can we possibly
base our plausibility judgments on in
arguments like the fine-tuning one a
premise of the fine-tuning argument is
that the Universe could have been a
whole host of other ways there is a
sense in which this is true it is
logically possible that the Universe
could have been made entirely out of
cheese or consist only of math or any
number of things but all that says is
that it wouldn't be contradictory for
the universe to be like this but to say
something is non-contradictory and to
say that it could have metaphysically
happened are two different things in
effect Pho is saying that we have no
idea about the possible ways the
universe could have been because we only
have access to this one for all we know
this is the only way the universe could
have ever been or it is in fact the
worst organized out of all of the
possible universes that could be Pho is
not saying that either of these is the
case he is just saying we have no way of
telling again it is less an atheist
Point than an agnostic one Pho is
throwing his skeptical Gauntlet down at
any sort of talk about the way the
universe could have been because
according to him we have no experience
of the material rules at play here so we
cannot really make any judgments about
possibility plausibility or probability
moreover he points out these same
arguments can be applied to an
intelligent God as the best way to
explain how the universe is
since we've never seen anything outside
the universe how can we say that an
intelligent God is more plausible than
other competing theories offhandedly Pho
raises a whole set of alternative
hypotheses to explain why the world
might be orderly including God is just
very prolific and came to the
orderliness of this universe via trial
and error the universe was formed via a
committee of a whole load of
intelligences or the universe was not
made by an agent at all but instead a
supremely sophisticated mechanistic
Force now now cleanthes and indeed any
theist could respond here by saying that
the hypothesis of an intelligent God
just seems simpler and more plausible
but pho's whole point is that our
plausibility judgments formed from our
experiences in this world are entirely
inappropriate to discussing what is
plausible outside of this world it would
be like me learning to play football and
assuming that every other game must
follow the same rules again Pho is not
saying that God definitely doesn't exist
his scope is so much broader than that
he is suggesting that our epistemic
position is so limited that almost any
definite judgment we make about the
metaphysical beginnings of the universe
or its alleged Creator are going to be
tentative at best and complete guesses
at worst his issue is not with the
theistic hypothesis in particular but
rather with this sort of metaphysical
theorizing in general and I want to
finish by examining this point in
further detail because I think it
presents very interesting questions that
often go unacknowledged in theological
discussions but nonetheless ones we
might want to approach before we start
making broad proclamations or asserting
theories four knowledge belief and doubt
perhaps David hume's most famous idea is
that all knowledge can be divided into
matters of fact which are contingent
observations about the world which we
can in principle check and relations of
ideas which are mathematical and logical
truth that we can know simply by
analyzing the definitions of the
concepts involved he then declared that
anything that does not fall into one of
these two camps is either nonsense or
just beyond human comprehension and so
it must be committed to the flames and
this is classic Hume he was just as much
concerned with what we can know as what
is the case of course fundamentally the
debate between atheism and theism is
about what is the case one side has the
proposition there is no God and the
other side has the proposition there is
a God it's a very familiar structure
it's just two propositions that
contradict ICT one another just how I
might argue with someone over whether
aliens exist or over whether my table
exists however in a lot of ways
agnosticism seems slightly different
because a committed agnostic if that
makes any sense at all is not making a
claim about what exists but rather what
can be known its scope is
epistemological rather than ontological
it also seems like someone can be
agnostic to a greater or lesser extent I
would be agnostic in as much as I would
think someone cannot be confident in
their answer to the question of God's
existence the positions of Pho in hume's
dialogue are mostly in this
epistemological vein rather than the
ontological one and I think the value of
this work is mainly in how it encourages
us to sit back and ask just how sure we
can be of our theological reasoning do
our analogies between the material world
and the immaterial one hold can we make
sensible judgments about plausibility or
possibility outside the universe but
this General approach is not just
valuable in the realm of theology it is
a fantastic weapon in our philosophical
toolbox if we look at almost any
contemporary debate either philosophical
or non-philosophical we are almost
always watching a clash between two
sides one side argues that euthanasia is
moral and the other argues that it's not
one side believes in the immortality of
the soul and the other doesn't one group
of people think that Jesus rose from the
dead while the other disagrees in each
case here we are mainly looking at which
proposition is true is euthanasia moral
or isn't it is the soul Immortal or does
it perish but running parallel to each
of these debates is the question of our
own certainty for every what is the case
there is a corresponding how would we
know what is the case and moreover how
sure is our epistemic process Beyond
this we can ask what are the kind of
things it is possible for us to know and
which can we only guess or estimate at
the beginning of the video I use David
Humes quote the wise man proportions his
belief to the evidence but another way
of phrasing this same point is your
beliefs about ontology depend on the
strength of your epistemology and this
is a very helpful bit of advice Hume
challenges us not just to think about
what we believe but also the extent to
which we believe it and to keep one eye
on our own limitations at all times when
we're investigating the world because
something both the theist and the
atheist agree on is that the world is
greater than us possibly to the extent
that we will never fully understand it
we are using the fallible tools of our
own reasoning to engage with it and to
that extent we can never be 100%
confident in what we believe we are
constantly making these tiny gambles
with each and every decision we make or
belief we take on skepticism gets a
really bad R these days and it is for
pretty good reason it's associated with
people wondering whether we are brains
invat or if the universe exists at all
in other words things of seemingly
little practical consequence however the
true value of skepticism runs far deeper
than this hume's style of skepticism is
not to raise idle worries that we we are
wrong about everything but instead to
Simply ask what are the limits of the
things we can know and he places quite a
lot of questions quite near the
periphery of possible knowledge for
instance Hume is a phenomenalist about
the external world meaning that he just
says we cannot know if it exists all we
know is that our observations are
ordered as if such an external world
exist so it's a very good working model
likewise pho's position is essentially
that whatever our purported Answers to
Religious questions might be we must be
so unsure of them that there will always
be a healthy amount of agnosticism mixed
in with either our atheism or our theism
Pho is skeptical not just of the
existence of God but the answerability
of the very questions God is supposed to
help with for him the honest answer to
questions about the metaphysical
underpinnings of the universe or the
origins of it or the nature of the
Divine is just a gentle shrug and and I
don't know and there is a part of me
that strongly Rebels against this
conclusion these are some of the most
important questions to answer the issue
of eternal life is on the table and Hume
just says we can't know but for him that
is just tough luck the limits of our
knowledge do not care what is important
to us and it just so happens that since
we have no precedent for arguing about
what is outside the universe we are a
bit stuffed when it comes to having
knowledge about it of course we don't
have to agree with hum I've not had
space in this video to examine the
criticisms of hume's position but
suffice to say there are many but I want
to end by highlighting the key question
that I really do think is worth asking
when we are addressing an issue any
issue be it philosophical or material or
observational it might be worth
occasionally stepping back and asking
what are the limits of what we can know
here from Socrates saying all I know is
that I know nothing to dayart deciding
to test the limits of his certainty
philosophy has a rich history of
encouraging epistemic self-awareness
perhaps we could do with a bit more of
the AG tic spirit in our inquiries both
within Theology and outside of it but of
course alongside agnosticism there are
further debates to be had about whether
God even can exist or whether his
properties are contradictory and if you
want to check out that question I have a
video about it right here and stick
around for more on thinking to improve
your life
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