Conception Of The Religion, Natural Religion By Philosopher David Hume

Philosophy
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Philosophy
The conception of the religion, the proper attitude toward it, and its relation to suffering are evident in various texts, including Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by the philosopher David Hume, Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard, the Cornel West piece Prophetic Fragments, and even in the 2011 Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life. This paper compares and contrasts the conceptions as seen in these four texts. This essay argues that the connection between the four texts is that they all focus on the rationality of religious beliefs.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by the philosopher David Hume includes three characters, namely Cleanthes, Demea and Philo. In this text, Hume extensively examines whether religious belief could be rational. Given that this philosopher is himself an empiricist, meaning a person who believes that knowledge comes through a person’s experience, he maintains that a religious belief is rational only if that particular belief is adequately backed by experiential evidence. Therefore, the question that Hume tries to answer is as follows: is there an adequate amount of proof to infer an infinitely perfect, powerful, wise and good God? He presented the three aforementioned characters to explore the issue. Each of them represents a dissimilar stance on the topic. They explained the problem of irrefutable suffering and pain in Part 10 of the Dialogues.
With regard to suffering and God’s existence, Philo comes to the conclusion that the fact that suffering exists is major evidence against God’s existence. According to him, suffering and pain cast doubt that a wholly maximal perfect and loving deity with respect to power is in existence. In Part ten and eleven of his text Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David Hume, through Philo, argues that because of the occurrence of suffering and pain, an omnipotent being cannot exist. Philo asserted that the existence of cases of suffering and pain in the world is logically mismatched with the existence of such a being. It is notable that the views of Philo are most similar to the views of Hume. Hence Hume looks at the rationality of religion at length.
Famously referred to as a religious knight of faith, Soren Kierkegaard was a religious author and later became the first existentialist philosopher in the world’s history. Soren Kierkegaard wrote his text Fear and Trembling under the alternate persona of Johannes de Silentio for the purpose of highlighting the internal conflict with religion that a person has to experience for him or her to mature into the religious phase of life. In so doing, Kierkegaard also explores the subject of rationality of religion. In the text, he outlines three different phases of life which Kierkegaard thinks that every person goes through. These are the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious phases. The author’s ideas of the religious phase focused on the notion that a human being could comprehend his/her existence, but surrender it in order to follow God. In essence, Kierkegaard believed that when a person follows God, he/she would be able to regain their purpose.
The author’s thoug...