While Hume has often been held to have been an agnostic or atheist, several contemporary scholars have argued that Hume was a theist. These interpretations depend chiefly on several passages in which Hume allegedly confesses to theism. In this paper, I argue against this position by giving a threshold characterization of theism and using it to show that Hume does not confess. His most important confession does not cross this threshold and the ones that do are often expressive rather than (...) assertive. I then argue that Hume is best interpreted as an atheist. Instead of interpreting Hume as a proto-logical positivist and arguing on the basis of Hume’s theories of meaning and method, I show that textually he appears to align himself with atheism, that his arguments in the Dialogues on Natural Religion support atheism, and that this position is most consistent with Hume’s naturalism. But, I hold that his atheism is soft and therefore distinct from that of his peers like Baron d’Holbach—while Hume really does reject theism, he neither embraces a dogmatically materialist position nor takes up a purely polemical stance towards theism. I conclude by suggesting several ways in which Hume’s atheistic philosophy of religion is relevant to contemporary discussions. (shrink)

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This paper rereads David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion as dramatising a distinctive, naturalistic account of toleration. I have two purposes in mind: first, to complete and ground Hume's fragmentary explicit discussion of toleration; second, to unearth a potentially attractive alternative to more recent, Rawlsian approaches to toleration. To make my case, I connect Dialogues and the problem of toleration to the wider themes of naturalism, scepticism and their relation in Hume's thought, before developing a new interpretation of Dialogues part (...) 12 as political drama. Finally, I develop the Humean theory of toleration I have discovered by comparison between Rawls's and Hume's strategies for justification of a tolerant political regime. (shrink)

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Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion1 closes with an endorsement of the very position which it has consistently attacked, namely belief in an orderer. Hume's willingness to oppose arguments supporting a position in which he believes means that, despite mounting severe criticisms, he can consistently support a designer as the optimum hypothesis for order in the world. He produced numerous statements of order in the world and then, in Part 12 of the DNR, alleged that persons of understanding would find that (...) belief in a designer follows. (shrink)

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This study advances the claim that Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which drew its inspiration and guidelines from Cicero's De Natura Deorum, fulfills four basic elements of Michel Meyer's theory of problematology. In doing so, it is argued, the Dialogues contribute importantly to our understanding of the question-answer pair, and to the notion of rhetoric as a way of knowing.

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