David Hume is one of the most important figures in the development of modern philosophy. Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 7 May 1711, David Hume was a very young child when the English revolution broke out. As the result of this, his father, a Scotland-bred lawyer, was forced to leave England and emigrate to Boston, Massachusetts, where his son would become a celebrated doctor. David was therefore already very young when his father died of a broken heart. There is some speculation as to the cause of this tragedy, but no one is sure. The great philosopher’s father had been a staunch critic of the excesses of religion and of the established Church and so this must have had an impact on the young David as he matured into manhood.
When David Hume reached the age of puberty, he reached the zenith of his academic success, at age 26 he received his degree from Harvard University in the courses of medicine and law. The most distinguished part of this early period of his career was his development of his skepticism, or what we today would term’s naturalism, in his Essay on Criticism and Essays on Man. In these works, which remain greatly respected even today, David Hume tried to overcome some of the biggest problems facing mankind, including his belief in the reliability of recorded testimony, his rejection of physical science altogether, his skepticism about divine intervention, his skepticism about the possibility of knowledge, his rejection of utilitarianism and his overall skepticism about the world as a whole. These skeptical positions gave him the fortitude to withstand attacks from some of the more prominent intellectual giants of his time, such as Hooker, Jeffrey Jaynes, Samuel Adams, John Locke, Franklin Bell, and of course Newton.
One of the most powerful pieces of argument that David Hume uses in his defense of religion is the argument that religion is necessary for intellectual life. According to this line of reasoning, to believe in something necessitates to be capable of using that belief. That is to say, if you believe in the existence of gods, then you are capable of understanding things that other people could not. And thus, if there is no God, then there is no intellect, because there is no knowledge. Now, this argument has many flaws. The first being that it makes a number of errors in its assumptions, and secondly, the flaw that it assumes the existence of gods and denies the existence of an intellect.
The first flaw is related to the assumption that there can be an “intellectual” without having a mental state. This is a very significant error, as many philosophers before David Hume has denied the fact of mental states and suggested instead that they were the effects of physical conditions. But the truth is, there is nothing which could make somebody’s experience any different from somebody else’s experience.
The second mistake is related to the thesis that intellectual life is necessary for physical life. It could be argued that a superior intellect is necessary for understanding the physical world. But, in order to understand the physical world, one would need to have all the other necessary elements in place as well, such as the strength of the body, the presence of hearing and sight, etc. Thus, the argument that it is necessary for understanding the physical world to possess an intellect is false, and David Hume has pointed out this mistake in his Refutations of Montaigne.
The third mistake that must be corrected by people who wish to improve the status of David Hume’s thesis concerning the existence of God is related to the confusion caused by the three distinct types of proofs offered by him. The problem is that many people confuse one particular type of proof with another, in order to support their views on the existence of God. So, for example, they could argue that we should believe in atoms since some people think that it is possible to prove the existence of God through experiment. It is necessary to realize that this argument has to be refuted on the grounds that it is not relevant to say that some things are impossible, because the existence of the atoms must be proved as something that cannot be doubted, in the same way as the existence of God cannot be denied. Rather, refutation of the Montaignesque thesis must focus on its flaws, rather than its premises.
The fourth mistake that people make when they refute David Hume’s Theorems is related to the attitude of the person making the argument. Some people argue that the thesis must be false, because there is no evidence that shows that the physical sciences actually provide evidence for the existence of God. This can be countered by pointing out that the problem of proving God’s existence is not as difficult as some people suppose it to be, because there is no scientific method that would allow us to prove that there is a God. If someone thinks that this is an argument based on the weakness of the arguments, then they are mistaken.
The fifth mistake that people make when refuting David Hume’s Theorems is related to the premises of the argument, which most people seem to think are necessary to make sense of the argument. It must be said that the premises do not play a decisive role in this argument. The thesis that God exists is sufficient to show that there is a God, but it does not follow that all the other theorems must be false. A person could easily rebut the thesis that God exists by showing that there is evidence that God does exist by using alternative methods.