Fifty Key Thinkers on Religion

Gary Kessler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781032031736
• eBook ISBN: 9781136662409
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Religion

Fifty Key Thinkers on Religion is an accessible guide to the most important and widely studied theorists on religion of the last 300 years. Arranged chronologically, the book explores the lives, works and ideas of key writers across a truly interdisciplinary range, from sociologists to psychologists.

Thinkers covered include:

• Friedrich Nietzsche
• James Frazer
• Sigmund Freud
• Emile Durkheim
• Ludwig Wittgenstein
• Mary Douglas
• Talal Asad
• Søren Kierkegaard

Providing an indispensable one volume map of our understanding of religion in the west, the book is fully cross-referenced throughout and provides authoritative guides to important primary and secondary texts for students wishing to take their studies further.

FIFTY KEY THINKERS ON
RELIGION

DAVID HUME (1711–76)

The wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.

(Hume 1955: 118)

This statement occurs in Section X “Of Miracles” in David Hume’s An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748). It succinctly expresses a philosophical principle that has spawned much debate in the philosophy of religion about the relationship between faith and reason. It also expresses Hume’s general skepticism about any claims to knowledge not based on sensations. As an advocate of empiricism, Hume regarded sensation as the primary source of whatever ideas we might enlist in forming and justifying beliefs. He combined skepticism about claims based entirely on human reason (rationalism), be they philosophical or religious, with an uncompromising empiricism that limits knowledge claims to what our senses tell us.

David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and grew up at the family estate, Ninewells. His father died when he was two and his mother raised and educated him until he entered the University of Edinburgh at the age of eleven (he was, as his mother remarked, very “acute”) with the intention of preparing for a career in law. However, his interest in the law waned and he turned his attention to the study of history and philosophy. He never succeeded in gaining an academic appointment because of his skepticism in religious matters but he did become, after some initial disappointments, a celebrated writer, earning fame as both a philosopher and a historian. His six-volume History of England (1754–62) became the standard work for many years.

Hume, by all accounts a respected and even-tempered man, found religious beliefs not only intellectually restrictive but also lacking any convincing proof. Many theologians and philosophers of his day viewed Christianity as a reasonable and rational religion whose truth could be established by two basic arguments: the argument from miracles and prophecy and the argument from design. Hume included a discussion of both in two sections of An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding.

He began his discussion of miracles and prophecy by establishing the principle that experience will be his guide in reasoning about these matters. Although he recognized that experience is not free of error, those who are wise will carefully weigh the evidence experience affords and proportion their beliefs accordingly, from the least certain to those with the highest degree of probability.

The argument from miracle and prophecy relies on the testimony of others and the degree of certainty we give to such testimony depends, Hume argued, on how closely what is reported coincides with our usual expectations. Reports of the deaths of others do not surprise us because human death is part of our common and ordinary experience of life. Reports that someone died and then came back to life do surprise us, indeed amaze us, because they do not agree with our usual experiences. If we mean by “a miracle” a violation of the laws of nature brought about by God or some other invisible agent, then just “as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined” (Hume 1955: 122). In other words, there must be a “uniform experience against every miraculous act, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. And as a uniform experience amounts to a proof, there is here a direct and full proof, from the nature of the fact, against the existence of any miracle” (Hume 1955: 122–23).

It should be noted that Hume did not deny the possibility of miracles and if there is very strong testimony concerning highly unusual events that might count as miracles, it is reasonable to investigate. However, the investigation of alleged miracles is very difficult because there may well be natural causes of such events that cannot now be proved or, perhaps, even clearly imagined. Our knowledge of the natural world is, at any given time, always limited. A proof that some event is actually a miracle would require a complete knowledge of all possible causes of such an event so that every natural explanation could be eliminated. It is extremely unlikely we shall ever fully possess such knowledge and hence ever possess a clear proof that a violation of nature’s laws has actually occurred. It would be best, Hume concluded, not to base an entire “system of religion” on testimony of alleged miracles and prophecy. If one does, it is better to openly acknowledge that this is a matter of faith, not of reason.

Hume understood that many religious believers would be quite content with this conclusion because they sincerely think that religious belief is a matter of faith. However, we must not forget that if, as Hume claimed, wise men proportion their beliefs to the evidence, then the appeal to faith leads to a rational dead end. The idea that there are good reasons based on experience that support religious belief would have to be abandoned along with the claim that religion can be rationally justified.

Hume titled Section XI of the Inquiry “Of a Providence and a Future State.” Hume did not directly discuss the topics of the title, but indirectly criticized them by an examination of the argument from design on which these beliefs are based. He disguised his own views by writing this section as a report of a conversation with an Epicurean friend who “loves skeptical paradoxes.”

The “friend” states that the central argument for the existence of God can be found in the very order of the universe. The beauty, order, and arrangement we observe in nature leads our minds quite naturally to a consideration of the cause of such effects, a cause that can be nothing less than an intelligent designer. Hume’s skeptical friend notes that this type of argument proceeds by inferring a cause from effects. There are two important, logical consequences. The first is the requirement that we cannot ascribe to the cause anything more than the effects will allow because our only knowledge of that cause is based on the observation of the effects, namely, the order we find in nature. The second is that the inference “upward” from effect to cause does not allow us to infer “downward” from the cause to new effects. This downward inference is illogical because we know nothing of the cause (the alleged designer of the order we observe in nature) than what the effects tell us.

Order, of course, is not the same as design. There can be many causes for the order we experience. And we should not ignore the fact that the world exhibits disorder as well as order. However, even if the inference that the cause of the order is an intelligent designer is correct, we cannot reasonably infer all the sorts of things Christians wish to say about such intelligence. How could we claim that the designer is wise, or providential, or justly distributes future rewards and punishments? Indeed, such a designer, if there is one, may not be benevolent at all given the amount of evil, disorder, and suffering we see about us.

In The Natural History of Religion (1757) Hume turned his attention to the question of how religion began and developed. His answer focused on human nature. Early peoples, Hume argued, found nature fearsome. In an attempt to control nature, its elements (wind, water, fire, and so on) were personified as invisible powers then offered gifts through sacrifice and worship in the hope that they would be benevolent. Religion originated, if Hume is correct, not in divine revelations but in the human emotions of fear and adulation.

Hume chose to have his most concentrated and developed critique of theism published after his death even though he wrote it in the 1750s. It is titled Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1778) and “records” a discussion among three protagonists: Cleanthes, who offers a rational defense of Christianity, Demea, a Christian who argues that faith, not reason, is the only legitimate basis for religion, and Philo, a skeptic.

Cleanthes begins the discussion by setting forth a version of the design argument. According to Cleanthes, the argument centers on an analogy. The world or universe is like a finely tuned machine. We know that human intelligence is required to create machines. It follows that the hypothesis that the world is caused by a divine intelligence is a reasonable one because only a divine being would have the abilities to produce a universe.

Philo responds by developing several lines of criticism. For example, Philo argues that the analogy between the universe and a machine is a very weak and misleading analogy because other things, such as biological generation, can cause the order we experience. Maybe the universe is more like a plant that grows than a machine that is made. He also points out that arguments based on experience require observation of a constant conjunction of associated events before we can conclude that one event caused another. However, we have only experienced one universe and have no independent experience of the invisible agent who presumably caused it.

In Parts X and XI, Philo turns his attention to the moral attributes of God, such as his goodness and mercy, mounting what many consider to be his strongest objection. He paints a dark picture of the world and society in which we actually live, describing its evils, chaos, and untold suffering. Philo then points out that given our experience, one might just as well infer that the alleged intelligence that created this universe is evil, or defective, or greatly limited.

The final section of the Dialogues has surprised many readers. In it Philo appears to do an “about face” and concedes that it is obvious that some intelligence is behind the world and his main point is simply that the analogy used by the theists is weak. He then espouses a fideist position, stating that faith not reason is the foundation of religion. Exactly what this means for discovering Hume’s own views is a matter that interpreters of Hume have been arguing about ever since.

Hume’s arguments have been debated and supported or rejected by scores of philosophers. His definition of miracles has been attacked as inadequate, his concept of experience as too limited, and his criticisms of the design argument have been met either by reformulations of the argument (reformulations that are still going on today) or counter claims that seek to undermine his criticisms. Whatever we make of his arguments, Hume transformed the study of religion in ways that make its contemporary study possible. His views are still carefully discussed in courses on the philosophy of religion, and his writings widely anthologized. His location of the origin of religion in human nature and his emphasis on its evolution significantly shaped subsequent developments in the history of religion.

See also: Boyer, Feuerbach, Kant, Schleiermacher, Wittgenstein

Major works

(1874–75) The Philosophical Works of David Hume, ed. T. H. Green and T. H. Grose, 4 volumes, London: Longman, Green.

(1935) Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

(1955) An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Charles W. Hendel, New York: The Liberal Arts Press.

(1967) The Natural History of Religion, ed. H. E. Root, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Further reading

O’Connor, D. (2001) Routledge Philosophical Guidebook to Hume on Religion, London: Routledge.

Passmore, John. (1952) Hume’s Intentions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Smith, Norman Kemp. (1941) The Philosophy of David Hume, London: Macmillan.

Tweyman, Stanley. (1995) David Hume: Critical Assessments, 6 vols., London: Routledge.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/h/humereli.htm.

IMMANUEL KANT (1724–1804)

I have found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.

(Kant 1929: 29)

With these enigmatic words, the German philosopher Immanuel Kant signaled that his philosophy, which was highly critical of conventional religion, was significant for discerning the relationship between knowledge and faith. To understand what he meant is to discover both how revolutionary Kant’s thinking was and to see how critical analysis of religious ideas can illuminate why faith is so vitally important to many different religions.

Kant was born in Königsberg in East Prussia into a Protestant home deeply influenced by the Pietist movement that stressed the devotion of the heart in contrast to ritual observances and doctrinal purity. He obtained a masters degree from the University of Königsberg in 1755 and spent his entire professional career there teaching and writing.

Many regard Kant as the greatest philosopher of the Enlightenment, the thinker who not only celebrated the power of reason by endorsing the call to “think for yourself” but also showed that reason had its limits. Hume, Kant said, woke him from his “dogmatic slumber” by showing how the rationalists’ claim to a priori knowledge of the way things really were apart from sensations could not withstand critical examination. Knowledge is, as empiricists like Hume claimed, derived from sensations (a posteriori). However, it did not follow, Kant argued, that the rationalists were entirely wrong. There was an essential role for reason in the production of knowledge.

We derive the objects of knowledge from the appearance of things to our senses, as Hume had said, but such data make no sense unless they are formed and shaped by human reason. The mind is not merely a passive receiver of sensations, but an active power organizing and categorizing what the senses reveal. Reason supplies the “glasses” through which we see the sensate or phenomenal world. For Kant, the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich), or the noumenal as Kant called it, is something we can never know by our senses but to understand what our senses tell us reason must posit its existence.

It takes only a moment’s reflection to see that any claims to know things beyond our senses, such as God, the immortality of the soul, and human free will are bound to fail. Should we then discard such notions as unreasonable? Kant argued that while we could not have knowledge of such things, nevertheless, it was reasonable to posit their existence.

If we look closely at the traditional arguments for the existence of God, of which rationalists are so fond, we can see that all of them fail to provide the knowledge they claim. The design argument, already shredded by Hume, fails to tell us much if anything about a God who is religiously meaningful. From the fact that some intelligent designer might have caused all this we cannot conclude that such a designer is good, merciful, cares about us, or about what we do. Would such a God be worthy of worship?

In ad...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Chronological list of contents
• Alphabetical list of contents
• Preface
• Fifty Key Thinkers on Religion
• David Hume (1711–76)
• Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)
• Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834)
• Georg Hegel (1770–1831)
• Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–72)
• SØren Kierkegaard (1813–55)
• Karl Marx (1818–83)
• F. Max MÜLler (1823–1900)
• E. B. Tylor (1832–1917)
• William James (1842–1910)
• Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
• Jane Harrison (1850–1928)
• James G. Frazer (1854–1941)
• Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
• Lucien LÉvy-Bruhl (1857–1939)
• Émile Durkheim (1858–1917)
• Max Weber (1864–1920)
• Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923)
• Rudolf Otto (1869–1937)
• D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966)
• Arnold van Gennep (1873–1957)
• Carl Jung (1875–1961)
• Martin Buber (1878–1939)
• A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1881–1955)
• Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942)
• Paul Tillich (1886–1965)
• Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975)
• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)
• Gerardus van der Leeuw (1890–1950)
• Gershom Scholem (1897–1982)
• Georges DumÉzil (1898–1986)
• E. E. Evans-Pritchard (1902–73)
• Mircea Eliade (1907–86)
• Claude LÉvi-strauss (1908–2009)
• Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1916–2000)
• Victor Turner (1920–83)
• Mary Douglas (1921–2007)
• John Hick (1922–)
• RenÉ Girard (1923–)
• Clifford Geertz (1926–2006)
• Michel Foucault (1926–84)
• Ninian Smart (1927–2001)
• Robert Bellah (1927–)
• Peter Berger (1929–)
• Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
• Walter Burkert (1931–)
• Talal Asad (1932–)
• Jonathan Z. Smith (1939–)
• Rita Gross (1943–)
• Pascal Boyer (1957–)
• Glossary
• Index