Abstract

One of the most puzzling features of Hurries Natural History of Religion is its apparent defense of God and the Design argument. These claims contradict Humes well-known position in the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding that the Design argument is inherently fallacious and God's existence cannot be known. ;Some Hume commentators have declared that Hume is inconsistent. Most commentators, however, reconcile the NHR with the Enquiry by dismissing the NHR's defense of God and the Design argument as ironic. ;I maintain that Hume was consistent in his religious writings. In both the Enquiry and the NHR, Hume utilizes a "mitigated skepticism" to advance his position that belief in the theistic God is unreasonable and undesirable. ;Nor is Hume ironic. However, I believe that Hume's skepticism toward God underwent a profound change in the decade between the publishing of the Enquiry and the NHR . ;Hume's skepticism in the Enquiry is Pyrrhonic. Hume aims here to show the inherent weakness and limits of understanding, why knowledge of God is impossible, and why the reasonable man will suspend judgment on God's existence. Here Hume's skepticism is directed toward knowledge of God's existence: humans cannot know if a God exists and the Design argument is inherently fallacious. ;Hume's skepticism in the NHR is very different. The NHR is concerned with the nature or essence of God. Here, Hume not only grants that God exists, but insists upon it. Although God is unknowable directly, the Creator can be known through His effect, Nature. God can thus be known through the Design argument which Hume now calls an "obvious and invincible argument". ;In the NHR, Humes skepticism is "Academic": Hume concludes a God exists but bears scant resemblance to the Christian God. To avoid persecution, Hume hid his position with misdirection and subterfuge. Hume's most cunning use of misdirection occurs in the final paragraph: "The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery..." This would have been an accurate summary of Hume's position in the Enquiry, but in the NHR it is a subterfuge that hides his true anti-theistic conclusions