Empiricism In David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

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Hume can be considered an empiricism, theism, atheism, agnosticism or fideism. In his “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion”, he puts religious beliefs on trial and different types of argument are spoken. Based on ‘Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779), there is a debate among three people on the existence of God; two theist who has different version of theist and a sceptic who became a weak form of deism in the end. (O'Connor, 2001) The three characters in the “dialogues” are Demea, the one who believes that we can use a priori to understand the existence of God, Cleanthes, who states that existence of God can be discover through observation and evidence of the world and the skeptical Philo, who agrees with Cleanthes that the argument…show more content…
His thoughts were, if he was not a creature of a benevolent God, but owe his existence to a chain of not perfect causes, he knows that he might be deceived in matters even the most obvious one. In contrast, if he was in existence brought by God, then there will be some foundation of truth in his innate ideas because otherwise it would not be possible that God should have place in him. (Cottingham, 1986) Trademark argument The first argument for existence of God follows from his awareness of his own existences. He did not do conclusions directly like any normal theologian will do that is by observing the effects in the world and concluding that God is behind all this. Descartes’ approach is a causal one, where the “effect” focus on the mind itself. The trademark argument brings the idea that God has placed himself within us, in other words he has place his “trademark” within us. It can be set out in 4 phases. i) The mediator starts by making a list of ideas that he discovers within himself. He finds the idea of “a supreme God and a creator of all things”. The idea of a prefect being is the first premise of the

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