Hume

For Hume, all objects of human reason are divided into two kinds: Relations of Ideas and Matters of fact. All reasoning of matters of fact are founded on Cause and Effect. Cause and Effect play a big role in Hume’s philosophy. David Hume is a man of logic, who believes in experience over knowledge. This is the main in idea in his philosophy.

Contrary to many critiques Hume does believe that there is a God, however he does not believe that God is all greatness like society commonly assumes and excepts. Hume argues that because one sees an effect that doesn’t mean that we can automatically know or assume its cause. This argument can be used to explain the creation of the world. We know that the universe is here but we don’t know if God make it or if there was a scientific reason for the creation of the world. Perhaps the most obvious example of Hume’s argument is.

Of course, it is hard for such a man to believe in extraordinary claims without being there to witness them. Especially when such events require a lot of faith. In order for an event to be deemed a miracle, it must disobey the laws of nature. However, it is these same laws that disprove almost any miracle that has ever been reported. He writes that some events that people report as miracles truly are not. For example, it is not a miracle that fire burns wood, or that a healthy man dies, because both of these are within the laws of nature. If a person does seemingly commit a miracle, they must do something that obviously defies the laws of nature and be able to do it repeatedly, as to prove that it is not a fluke.

Hume strongly depends on the laws of nature to disprove miracles because it is something that he knows will hold up through experience. Even if something happens that is extremely rare, for example, snow in June, we can disprove this as a miracle because it has been our experience in life that the weather is never constant and under extreme conditions we can get very cold weather during the summer. He is so skeptical against miracles, that he says he cannot even believe someone claiming to have witnessed a miracle, without first examining their reason for making such a claim.

In order to believe a claim, their trust he must first learn the purity of their intentions. By this I mean he must first consider whether or not the person’s judgment was deceived by their senses and next why the person is telling him about the miracle and what they have to gain by trying to deceive him. In order for him to consider the possibility of a miracle actually occurring would be if a person publicly made a claim to have witnessed the miracle and if them telling about it would jeopardize them more than if they had not said anything. Then and only then would he be able to be sure that a person was not motivated by any other force when claiming that what they saw was actually a miracle. Because of his philosophy

In Kantian philosophy, the idea of a god only exists in theological idea, although the idea of god and its presence is very well noted through his writings. He explains that there is an Idea of Reason named the Theological Idea. This idea of reason is one in which addresses the question at hand. The theological approach is one that holds the idea of a supreme perfect first being. This reason did not rise from experience but from bare concepts of what would constitute the absolute completeness of a thing in general (pg.102).

The supreme perfect first being, god in this case, would have a totality of knowledge and understanding. I think that this is an illusion. According to Kant, an illusion is when you take something that is subjective and make it objective. God is a concept, a being that as a society we have given personification to. Since this is a theological idea, it’s a pure concept of reason and therefore are used merely for the sake of self-satisfaction (pg.103). Since we have limited understanding, and understanding leads us to want to learn and understand more, we have a conflict within ourselves. We seek god as a mediator to solve this inner conflict.