David Hume's Dialogues

The stronger prey upon the weaker and keep them in perpetual terror and anxiety. . . . Man . . . can . . . surmount solely his real enemies . . . but does not he immediately rise up up to himself imaginary enemies, the demons of his fancy, who haunt him with superstitious terrors and blast any enjoyment of life? (60).

Philo speaks here of the torments of the conscience of terrors of the future, death and its aftermath. compensate if an individual is king of the serviceman, leader of the greatest army, he or she still will suffer more than he or she enjoys life, and the greatest joys are brief and mild compared to the intensity and eon of suffering.

Philo agrees with Demea that life is a miserable feel overall. How, then, can any nonpareil ordinate that an all-good and all- causationful idol created much(prenominal) a world? To Philo, such a claim is simply not grounded in reason, not grounded in the reason which perceives, experiences and analyzes the human condition. To Philo, it cannot be reason which brings a person, based on his or her experience in the tangible world of nature and humanity, of life and suffering and death, to conclude that God is uncountedly good:

His power, we allow, is infinite; whatever he wills is put to death: but neither man nor any separate creature is happy; therefore, he does not will their satisfaction. His wisdom is infinite; He is never mistaken in choosing the means to an repeal; but the course of nature tends not to human

Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 2nd ed. N.P.: N.P., N.D.

In new(prenominal) words, if one tries to argue (based on reading from a world full of suffering and evil, which appear to clearly overwhelm happiness and goodness) that God is infinitely good and infinitely powerful, he or she will be making an argument which Philo says is without a introduction in reality. Our personal experience, as well as our comment of others' experience, reveals a world which calls into serious question the infinite goodness and/or the infinite power of God.

or animal enjoyment: therefore it is not established for that purpose. . . . Is he willing to proceed evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing? Whence then is [i.e. wherefore is there] evil? (63).

When Demea offers the supposition that the evils and suffering in this world will be somewhere and somehow "rectified in other regions" in the future, Cleanthes jumps in and correctly argues, before Philo can, that if the argument is to be based on reasoned analysis of the evidence provided by experience in the real world as we be intimate it, then such "arbitrary suppositions can never be admitted, contrary to matter of fact, visible and uncontroverted" (64).

Nothing can cast off the solidity of this reasoning, so short, so clear, so decisive, except we corroborate that these subjects exceed all human capacity, and that our common measures of truth and fabrication are not applicable to them (66).

Philo's argument is persuasive on the nose because he does not try to prove that God is not infinitely good or infinitely powerful. His aim is not to prove anything about God, but rather to show that, with the information we have to work with, nothing can be proved about God or his attributes.

In other words, one might accept the infinite goodness and infinite power of God, but such cannot be evidenced by the experience human beings have on earth. T
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