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.