Name: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
ISBN: 9781494767365

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion is a philosophical work by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Through dialogue, three fictional characters named Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes debate the nature of God's existence. While all three agree that a god exists, they differ sharply in opinion on God's nature or attributes and how, or if, humankind can come to knowledge of a deity. In the Dialogues, Hume's characters debate a number of arguments for the existence of God, and arguments through which we may come to know the nature of God. Such topics debated include the argument from design -- for which Hume uses the example of a house -- and whether there is more suffering or good in the world.

What Hacker News says

parenthesisSep 2015

Yes, Hume is one of my favourite writers. I'd recommend his Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, and his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

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bosconiMay 2011

Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialogues_Concerning_Natural_Re...). A tour de force rebuttal of the watchmaker and other creationist arguments. He did not allow it to be published during his lifetime for fear of the response it would provoke. A classic Philosophy 101 text too.

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fpolingFeb 2023

Was it a reference to “Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion” by David Hume? That book debunked the arguments by design 50 years before the watchmaker parabola was written:

“If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel when we find him a stupid mechanic who imitated others, and copied an art which, through a long succession of ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections, deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually improving?“

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