David Hume and the Atheists

Last year marked the tercentenary of the birth of Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and controversial atheist David Hume. And in April this year, thousands of card-carrying (or at least mildly-amusing-T-shirt-wearing) atheists will descend upon the Melbourne Convention Centre for the Global Atheist Convention. The relative coincidence of these two occurrences, I feel, invites a brief consideration of what progress has been made in the atheism–theism debate since Hume’s posthumously and (even then) anonymously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. 

Hume devotes the majority of his Dialogues to discrediting various incarnations of the Teleological Argument for the Existence of God—that is, whether the apparent order and purpose we find occurring in the natural world warrant an analogical inference to the existence of an intelligent designer. Hume (along with the vast majority of other philosophers since) is certain that no such warrant is forthcoming. He argues that,…