Refuting The Whole System? Hume's Attack on Popular Religion in The Natural History of Religion

Abstract

There is reason for genuine puzzlement about Hume's aim in ‘The Natural History of Religion’. Some commentators take the work to be merely a causal investigation into the psychological processes and environmental conditions that are likely to give rise to the first religions, an investigation that has no significant or straightforward implications for the rationality or justification of religious belief. Others take the work to constitute an attack on the rationality and justification of religious belief in general. In contrast to these views, I argue that Hume aims to establish two important claims in ‘The Natural History of Religion’. First, almost all popular religions, including popular monotheism, are deeply superstitious. Second, superstitious monotheism is incompatible with the variety of theism supported by the argument from design. This incompatibility puts significant pressure on the rational acceptability of popular religions.

Another look at Hume's treatment of the argument from design in theNatural History of Religion

“…Unlike Kail, she argues that Hume finds polytheism and monotheism epistemically problematic for different reasons. The problem with polytheism concerns the formation of belief based on anthropomorphizing: ‘the defect in the process by which polytheistic beliefs are formed occurs in our coming to believe in the ideas resulting from the anthropomorphizing tendency of the imagination, and not merely in our having the ideas’ (Marušić (2012), 727). The problem with monotheism, according to Marušić, emerges in the following passage from the NHR: It appears certain, that, though the original notions of the vulgar represent the Divinity as a limited being, and consider him only as the particular cause of health or sickness; plenty or want; prosperity or adversity; yet when more magnificent ideas are urged upon them, they esteem it dangerous to refuse their assent.…”

“…The monotheist, she infers from NHR 7.1, doesn't really believe what she professes to believe. ‘Rather,’ she claims, ‘Hume seems to hold that there is something wrong with the claims that the monotheist makes: His claims are not expressions of belief but the result of attempts to flatter a particular god’ (Marušić (2012), 722).…”

“…If God designed the world to operate in accordance with natural laws, as the design argument has it, then God's immediate operation in the world would occur outside of, and perhaps even in violation of, these laws. For Hume, she argues, ‘the argument from design rules out particular providence’ (Marušić (2012), 732). Marušić claims that her interpretation allows us to take a neutral stance on Hume's remarks on the design argument.…”