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.
No comments:
Post a Comment