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Originally Posted by
TUT317
Hi Joe and thanks for the reply. If it is OK with you I will deal with some of the last points you made first. No particular reason for this.
I cannot see how Hume is in any way an IDEALIST. He is definitely not a metaphysical idealist and there may be some confusion over epistemological idealism here. He is a skeptic but no in the same sense as Berkeley who is a skeptic and an idealist. Hume is not saying that objects of experience exist only in the mind. He is definitely an empiricist in regard to physical objects.
I have no problem with how you want to label Hume. The OP questions the existence of God, not what label we apply to Hume.
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In your quotes from the 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' I don't agree with your interpretation of Hume. Yes, you are right; Hume is not denying the possibility of a first cause. His conclusion is there may be a first cause or causes in the universe that bear some remote analogy to human intelligence, but this is as far as he is prepared to go.
Hume has always held his position in relation to our inability to establish anything about the characteristics of this first cause, if it exists. Therefore, we cannot establish any meaningful hypothesis how this cause might be related to us. For example, the problem of good and evil in the world.
From what little I know of Hume, it seems he was particularly challenged by things beyond his sensual perception. It seems to me that such perception is sterile, and whatever conclusion he drew were a cynic's postulates. Hume's approach on morals seemed consistent if not supportive of Utilitarianism. I've always taken Utilitarianism as a sort of 'justification' for 'if-it-feels-good,-collectively-it-can-be-made-a-moral-virtue'. One important obstacle, he was unable to overcome was how to reconcile the pursuit of happiness with the moral virtue of charity.
Furthermore, Hume's philosophies are part and parcel of modern liberalism. In part they were combined with the philosophies of Locke, Rousseau, Lessing and Kant. It's a designer virus attacking right reasoning since its introduction by an errant monk in 1520. This liberalism holds, as a right, emancipation from Divine Authority and sovereignty in all sectors of life to control and judge all matters. Fundamentally it requires God to conform his will to that of man's; because according to liberalism, true authority resides in the interior of the individual, to which the God's exterior creation must bow. The philosophy proposes: "It is contrary to the natural, innate, and inalienable right and liberty and dignity of man, to subject himself to an authority, the root, rule, measure, and sanction of which is not in himself.” At least in part, denying God and His supernatural creation this autonomous intellectual freedom from moral and social order is in conflict with the Church.
“If carried out logically, it leads even to a theoretical denial of God, by putting deified mankind in place of God. It has been censured in the condemnations of Rationalism and Naturalism. The most solemn condemnation of Naturalism and Rationalism was contained in the Constitution "De Fide" of the Vatican Council (1870); the most explicit and detailed condemnation, however, was administered to modern Liberalism by Pius IX in the Encyclical "Quanta cura" of 8 December, 1864 and the attached Syllabus. Pius X condemned it again in his allocution of 17 April, 1907, and in the Decree of the Congregation of the Inquisition of 3 July, 1907, in which the principal errors of Modernism were rejected and censured in sixty-five propositions. The older and principally political form of false Liberal Catholicism had been condemned by the Encyclical of Gregory XVI, "Mirari Vos", of 15 August, 1832 and by many briefs of Pius IX (see Ségur, "Hommage aux Catholiques Libéraux", Paris, 1875). The definition of the papal infallibility by the Vatican council was virtually a condemnation of Liberalism. Besides this many recent decisions concern the principal errors of Liberalism. Of great importance in this respect are the allocutions and encyclicals of Pius IX, Leo XIII, and Pius X. (Cf., Recueil des allocutions consistorales encycliques . . . citées dans le Syllabus", Paris, 1865) and the encyclicals of Leo XIII of 20 January, 1888, "On Human Liberty"; of 21 April, 1878, "On the Evils of Modern Society"; of 28 December, 1878, "On the Sects of the Socialists, Communists, and Nihilists"; of 4 August, 1879, "On Christian Philosophy"; of 10 February, 1880, "On Matrimony"; of 29 July, 1881, "On the Origin of Civil Power"; of 20 April, 1884, "On Freemasonry"; of 1 November, 1885, "On the Christian State"; of 25 December, 1888, "On the Christian Life"; of 10 January, 1890, "On the Chief Duties of a Christian Citizen"; of 15 May, 1891, "On the Social Question"; of 20 January, 1894, "On the Importance of Unity in Faith and Union with the Church for the Preservation of the Moral Foundations of the State"; of 19 March, 1902, "On the Persecution of the Church all over the World". Full information about the relation of the Church towards Liberalism in the different countries may be gathered from the transactions and decisions of the various provincial councils. These can be found in the "Collectio Lacensis" under the headings of the index: Fides, Ecclesia, Educatio, Francomuratores.”
CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Liberalism
JoeT
