Payback for all those words Plato put in Socrates's Mouth?

Dawn over the canal road at Santa Ana NWR

Hume's "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion"

I'm going to have to go back and listen to this again in six months or so. The arguments are quite complex, too complex to follow while running. Hume thoroughly explores all arguments that might be made about the existence or nature of God. Though Philo takes on the role of Devil's Advocate, which provides a nice twist in Part 12, overall, the dialogue lacks the  humor of Plato's dialogues.

At question in Hume’s treatise is whether we can come to a knowledge of God, or even the belief there is a God, by systematically observing nature. This method leads to a problem that tends to obfuscate the argument even today. Of course, Hume is writing at the cusp of the scientific revolution. So it makes sense that he should explore whether experience or reason, science or a prior arguments, are the best method for coming to a conclusion about God. The problem, as Hume recognized, is that any empirical discovery can be interpreted to prove either side of the argument. In the dialogues, Philo remarks that,    

“The discoveries by microscopes, as they open a new

universe in miniature, are arguments ·for theism· according

to me, whereas to you they are objections to it. The further

we push our researches of this kind, the more we are led to

infer that the universal cause of it all is vastly different from

mankind, and from anything of which we have empirical

knowledge” (Part 5)

The conclusion we have to come to, and that Pamphelus was so uncomfortable with, is that we believe what we believe, or often what we must believe, and filter the evidence through our belief. In this sense, all knowledge is a priori, though not necessarily rationally so. In fact, one could draw the inference that the more strongly we believe on either side of the hypothesis, the less rational we have become.  

Mesquite Ridge Trail in Pedernales Falls State Park

 The trail, which follows the Mesquite Ridge along the west side of the river, is mostly flat. Just enough switchbacks to make it interesting. Not as many views of the river valley as I'd expected.

Natural Religion

Listening to David Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion. I'm fascinated by his description of cynicism in the first chapter. According to Hume, cynicism is based on a distrust of human understanding. Because humans have only incomplete knowledge, they shouldn't assume to actually know anything. They should, thus, be skeptical of any belief, particularly a belief in God. (It's not clear yet which participant in the dialogue is voicing Hume's perspective. Must keep listening to figure that out.)

The version of cynicism prevalent in Hume's time seems to be the opposite of modern cynicism. Modern cynics assumes the superiority of human knowledge, that science has, or eventually will, open all mysteries, understand all things. Thus, we should take a cynical stance toward anything that can not be explained by science, IE, God.

There is a paradox revealed by these two versions of cynicism; either our understanding is incomplete, therefore we should be cynical about the existence of God, or our understanding is complete, therefore we should be cynical about the existence of God. This circularity reveals less about the existence of God than it does about cynicism, which seems to have a preconceived notion of the existence of God, then looks around for a rationale for that disbelief.