An Incomprehensible God We Know Everything About
David Hume's Dialogues
Today’s topic is 18th century English philosopher David Hume’s work Dialogues, which is a lengthy debate between three imaginary people – Cleanthes, Demea, and Philo.
Cleanthes is the representative of argument a posteriori, Demea is the representative of argument a priori, and Philo is a sceptic.
Let’s define these terms.
A posteriori (from the later), is the idea that something (in this case an argument) can be proved with the aid of experience. That means you can imply things, you can assume things, you can make slightly larger leaps of logic based on your experience. A good example is the statement it’s raining right now. You know this is true because either you can see the rain out the window or you are currently wet or some other experience tells you that it’s true. Not simply from the statement itself.
A priori (from the earlier), renounces experience. In this case, the only thing you are allowed to use to determine the validity of a statement is an understanding of the language in which it was spoken. Nothing else. For example, if you hear the statement bachelor’s are unmarried, you can prove it’s truth simply by knowing the definition of the word bachelor. You don’t need any experience. You don’t need to have met a bachelor or been one yourself – it can be proven independent of experience.
The sceptic is much simpler. He just likes to argue and will poke holes in any claim presented to him.
So there we have it: Cleanthes who uses experience to prove his beliefs. Demea who rejects all experience. And Philo who’s just along for the ride, ready to argue and doubt.
In the debate, the three characters unanimously agree that there is a Deity, so their debate is not about the existence of God, but his nature.
Assuming God is real, what is God like?
The three once again agree that it is a daunting task to determine the nature of God. Philo compares discussing theology and religion to visiting a foreign country:
“We are like foreigners in a strange country…who are in danger every moment of transgressing against the laws and customs of the people…we know not how far we ought to trust our vulgar methods of reasoning in such a subject.”
But here we get the first indications of disagreement. Demea (a priori) is inclined to lean further into this idea: why consider the nature of God at all? It is too far beyond our understanding! But Cleanthes (a posteriori) thinks otherwise. We search for answers – concrete answers – in all other areas, so why not theology? Cleanthes says:
“This is their practice in all natural, mathematical, moral, and political science. And why not the same, I ask, in the theological and religious?”
This is the starting gun. The central topic, and the greatest source of tension between our three debaters, is now out in the open.
The question is: can we determine the nature of God or not?
Cleanthes – following his a posteriori ideas – believes that God is greater than anything we could imagine, but that does not mean we cannot understand his general shape. We can get a rough estimate. How? Because he is similar to us! Greater and holier, of course, but similar. Cleanthes argues that because the world exists (the effect), there must be a cause, and that cause can be determined by referring to our own world. To nature, to human experience, and to logic. Think of it this way: if you see a house, you assume (correctly) that there must have been an architect to design it. When you see nature and life and the universe, you also can assume there is a creator who designed it.
The word designed is key here. There was a logic to the creation of the universe, a plan that came from God, but makes sense to us. Not just that there is a Deity, but that he created us intentionally and with reason. Cleanthes says:
“Since therefore, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of a much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work.”
The cause must be similar to the effect – and so God must be similar to man. A world of logic made by a logical Being.
Demea wholeheartedly disagrees with this. He is happy to admit that God is perfect, but to assume that we know what that perfection looks like is ridiculous. He says:
“But as all perfection is entirely relative, we ought never to imagine that we comprehend the attributes of this divine Being, or to suppose that his perfections have any analogy or likeness to the perfections of a human creature. Wisdom, thought, design, knowledge; these we justly ascribe to him; because these words are honourable among men, and we have no other language or other conceptions by which we can express our adoration of him. But let us beware lest we think that our ideas any wise correspond to his perfections, or that his attributes have any resemblance to these qualities among men.”
Just because we find logic and reason and wisdom to be positive ideas when applied to man, does not mean that they are mirrored (no matter how greatly) in God. Who is to say the scales are the same? Who is to say that his perfection resembles our measly understanding of perfection in any way?
Philo – our resident critic – happily jumps in to attack Cleanthes’ idea. He says:
“If we see a house… we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had an architect or builder… But surely you will not affirm that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause.”
Besides, argues Philo and Demea, we only have one example of a universe being created, whereas we have countless examples of houses being created. It is easy to assume every building had a builder because we have a massive sample size, but with the universe, we have but one example. Is that enough to assume a creator? More than that, how can we compare the building of a house to the forming of a universe? Philo mockingly asks:
“From observing the growth of a hair, can we learn anything concerning the generation of a man?”
Why should we think that just because our brains operate on the level of logic and reasoning – and we are so proud of our little brains – that the entire structure of the universe should be created and governed by similarly rational powers? As Philo says:
“What particular privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe?”
We know so little, our brains aren’t even capable of comprehending everything that happens on earth, let alone the universe, and yet we are bold enough to assume the entire thing – and the creator himself – is based on our ideas of logic. Philo says:
“A very small part of this great system, during a very short time, is very imperfectly discovered to us: And do we thence pronounce decisively concerning the origin of the whole?”
Demea piles on, asking why Cleanthes is so partial to his own experience. It’s a prideful inclination, a gross boldness to assume not only that you understand the creator and his creation, but that it is formed in a way comprehensible and similar to the human mind.
It’s not just that God is greater than us, Demea says, it is that he is not like us at all!
“The infirmities of our nature do not permit us to reach any ideas which in the least correspond to the ineffable sublimity of the divine attributes.”
The key phrase here is “in the least correspond.” God, according to Demea, is further from our nature than we can comprehend. His goodness does not relate in any way to our frail, narrow-minded human ideas of goodness.
Cleanthes, realising himself as ganged up on and seeing his ideas threatened, does the predictable thing and digs his heels in.
His belief, “instead of being weakened by that scepticism…becomes more firm and undisputed.”
He does realize though, that he will have to present his idea in a new way. A way that is used often to justify groundless beliefs: I feel it.
“Tell me…if the idea of a contriver does not immediately flow upon you with a force like that of sensation.”
Don’t you just feel like there’s a God, and he resembles us? Doesn’t it just feel like the world was made by design?
“The most obvious conclusion surely is in favour of design; and it requires time, reflection and study, to summon up those frivolous, though abstruse, objections.”
In other words – if you don’t think about it too much, Cleanthes says, my analogy of the building and the architect makes sense! So stop thinking about it! He goes on:
“Your greatest errors proceed not from barrenness of thought…but from too luxuriant a fertility, which suppressed your natural good sense, by a profusion of unnecessary scruples and objections.”
You’re thinking too much, says Cleanthes. It would be a lot easier to agree with me if you stopped all that pesky thinking!
Demea and Philo, unsurprisingly, are not convinced by this feeling base argument. Once again, as a reminder, everyone in the debate agrees there is a God. The question is whether or not you can determine his nature. Cleanthes thinks so, and he thinks God is like us, just greater. He thinks the universe was designed with a logic understandable to us. He thinks this design was perfect.
Philo has a question:
“Have we not the same reason to trace that ideal world into another ideal world?”
What he means is: if God created a world that is both understandable and perfect, could we not – with our human logic – think of other ways the world might have been? Where is the proof, even, that the world was designed perfectly? I mean, if our measly brains can comprehend it, how good could it be?
Philo goes on:
“It is impossible for us to tell, from our limited views, whether this system contains any great faults, or deserves any considerable praise… Could a peasant, if the Aeneid were read to him, pronounce that poem to be absolutely faultless, or even assign to it its proper rank among the productions of human wit; he, who had never seen any other production?”
We’ve only ever seen the one world, how do we know if it’s perfect? If we assume it was designed like an architect designs a building or an author designs a book, what is to prevent us from wondering if there wasn’t some error in the creation? Philo stretches this hypothetical out:
“A man who follows your hypothesis is able, perhaps, to assert, or conjecture, that the universe… arose from something like design: But beyond that position… this world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant Deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance.”
In fact, and Philo is really warming up now, if all we need to determine the nature of God is a flimsy analogy, can’t we do better than an architect and a building?
“If the universe bears a greater likeness to animal bodies and to vegetables, than to the works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than that of the latter, and its origin ought rather to be ascribed to generation or vegetation than to reason or design.”
Toss out the design theory, says Philo, and bring in the vegetable theory. The universe wasn’t created by a reasonable God that resembles us, but was actually formed much more like vegetables. Clearly the world is more like a living thing – a plant or animal – than it is like a watch or a building. And so if strength of analogy is the only metric Cleanthes cares about, how could he object to the Veggies Theory™?
Philo keeps going, playfully describing this plant based world:
“A comet, for instance, is the seed of a world; and after it has been fully ripened… sprouts up into a new system.”
Finally Demea cuts in, absolutely beside himself. He disagrees with Cleanthes’ design theory, and Philo has been backing him up so far, but now Philo is going on about plants!
“But what wild, arbitrary suppositions are these? What data have you for such extraordinary conclusions? Is the slight, imaginary resemblance of the world to a vegetable or an animal sufficient to establish the same inference with regard to both? Objects, which are in general so widely different; ought they to be a standard for each other?”
Philo smiles. He has proven his point. If we can assign the cause of the universe to anything with a nice analogy, why not veggies? Forget intentional design, we’re just the result of comet seeds!
Why does Cleanthes insist that the cause has to be design and logic and wisdom? Vanity, Philo claims, and a partiality to our own perception of the world. Nothing more.
“It is a palpable and egregious partiality to confine our view entirely to that principle by which our own minds operate.”
Think about it this way:
Imagine, as Philo says, that “the world arose from an infinite spider, who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels… here is a species of cosmogony, which appears to us ridiculous; because a spider is a little contemptible animal, whose operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole universe. But… were there a planet wholly inhabited by spiders… this inference would appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence.”
Cleanthes is pretty beaten down at this point, but like any true believer, he clings tightly to his own ideas:
“Such whimsies, as you have delivered, may puzzle, but can never convince us.”
At this point, instead of just putting down Cleanthes belief, Demea wants to present his own, a priori, theory. He says:
“Whatever exists must have a cause or reason of its existence; it being absolutely impossible for anything to produce itself, or be the cause of its own existence. In mounting up, therefore, from effects to causes, we must either go on in tracing an infinite succession, without any ultimate cause at all, or must at last have recourse to some ultimate cause that is necessarily existent.”
Every effect has a cause, but we can go on forever down the line of cause and effect and never reach the end. You can always ask: what caused that? And so, we need a way to break free, we need something separate from our mode of understanding.
We need an ultimate cause. We need something that is necessarily existent.
The answer is God.
According to Demea, there is a “necessarily existent Being, who carries the reason of his existence within himself; and who cannot be supposed not to exist without an express contradiction.”
It is time for Cleanthes to strike back. It’s his turn to poke holes in beliefs, and he wastes no time:
“Whatever we conceive as existent, we can also conceive as non-existent. There is no Being, therefore, whose non-existence implies a contradiction… it will still be possible for us, at any time, to conceive the non-existence of what we formerly conceived to exist…the words, therefore, necessary existence, have no meaning.”
Just because you give something the fancy label of necessary existence, doesn’t make it make sense, and certainly doesn’t make it exist. You cannot abandon cause and effect just because you feel like it. Demea saying God is outside the bounds of cause and effect and therefore his methods are incomprehensible and immune from human criticism is as flimsy an argument as Cleanthes saying he believes God designed the world with a logic humans can understand because he feels it.
Demea – perhaps getting a taste of his own medicine and not liking it – decides to go back on the attack. Forget about presenting his ideas about an incomprehensible God, it was a lot more fun when he was berating Cleanthes. So he pivots the conversation to a topic well trod by those who try to determine the nature of God.
If God created the world, why does it suck?
Philo hops back into the mix here, excited to discuss the suffering of the world and how strange it is that a God who – as Cleanthes claims – designed the world lovingly, would allow so much evil:
“His power we allow infinite: Whatever he wills is executed: but neither man nor any other animal are happy: therefore he does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite… but the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: therefore it is not established for that purpose.”
He even presents that classic series of questions:
“Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?”
If, as Cleanthes so passionately argues, the world was created with reason and for a purpose – what is that purpose? Explain it to us, Philo says, using that logic and reason which you believe is the same God uses. It would be impossible! There is more bad than good in the world. In other words, it’s a poorly designed machine. There is no way to argue that a good, loving God – all powerful and all knowing – created a world as terrible as ours. How could you defend such a God?
Cleanthes has a response:
“The only method of supporting divine benevolence (and it is what I willingly embrace) is to deny absolutely the misery and wickedness of man. Your representations are exaggerated: your melancholy views mostly fictitious.”
In other words: the world’s not so bad!
Philo does not accept this defense for a second. A pretty-okay world is not good enough for an apparently divine being.
“For this is not, by any means, what we expect from infinite power, infinite wisdom, and infinite goodness. Why is there any misery at all in the world? Not by chance surely. From what cause then. Is it from the intention of the Deity? But he is perfectly benevolent. Is it contrary to his invention? But he is almighty.”
Philo and Demea believe the world is awful – this they maintain – but even if they were exaggerating, it is still far from perfect, and that is enough to make you question the presumably all-powerful, all-loving being who created it. And so what can be the only solution?
They go for the all-time classic religious response to human suffering: God works in mysterious ways!
Philo says, “These subjects exceed all human capacity.”
There’s no need to answer the tough question of human misery because Philo and Demea can “account for this strange mixture of phenomena, by deriving it from attributes, infinitely perfect, but incomprehensible.”
God is perfect, of course, but how? We have no idea. What’s his nature? Who knows! In the words of Demea, “I know not; I care not; that concerns not me. I have found a Deity; and here I stop my enquiry.”
When you cry out that the world is not fair, that it is cruel, that you don’t understand why God would allow a world like this to exist, Demea would say something like, “Exactly! We aren’t meant to understand the machinations of God. He is so far above, so far beyond, that we cannot even comprehend a sliver of his being, let alone understand why the world is the way it is.”
You only have to justify the cruelty of the world if you believe that God thinks in the same moral terms as you do. Demea does not believe God does and so is unconcerned, on a theological level, about the world’s suffering.
Cleanthes, once again, adjusts his opinion slightly. He cannot accept giving up an anthropomorphized God – a God that resembles him and thinks like him:
“If we abandon all human analogy… I am afraid we abandon all religion, and retain no conception of the great object of our adoration.”
If we can’t picture God, if we can’t understand him, how do we worship him? How do we feel comfort from him? But if we hold onto this humanoid God, we are forced to deal with the harsh reality of suffering in an imperfect world:
“If we preserve human analogy, we must forever find it impossible to reconcile any mixture of evil in the universe.”
How do you defend a perfect, comprehendible God who allows suffering? The solution is a finite, not infinite, God.
“But supposing the Author of nature to be finitely perfect, though far exceeding mankind; a satisfactory account may then be given of natural and moral evil… In a word, benevolence, regulated by wisdom, and limited by necessity, may produce just a world as the present.”
If you can accept the idea of a God that is regulated and limited, you can explain the imperfections of the world while at the same time praising a loving, finite God who is far more powerful than you, but not infinite.
Even this is not enough to convince Philo – lover of arguments that he is. He argues that if you go in a poorly designed building, you complain about the incapable architect who designed it. It doesn’t matter if the architect can think of no ways to improve the building – it doesn’t even matter if you can think of a way to improve it – the fact remains, you always “condemn the architect.” And so, if we accept a finite God, that does not mean we accept his choices.
“Is the world considered in general… different from what a man or such limited being would, beforehand, expect from a very powerful, wise, and benevolent Deity?”
Even if God is finite, we would still judge him and expect him to do better, to create a world that isn’t so stuffed full of suffering.
To summarize:
Demea believes the solution to be a completely remote and incomprehensible God who works in mysterious ways we should not even attempt to decipher, but are nevertheless perfect.
Cleanthes argues that God’s nature can be determined as reasonable and similar to humans based on the seemingly intentional design of the universe, although he concedes that perhaps a finite God is necessary to explain the faulty bits of the machinery of the world and the suffering it causes.
Philo, who is hard to pin down, offers at the end another option. A simple one. He imagines a God with “neither goodness nor malice.” A detached, amoral being who neither wants to harm us nor is so perfect as to create an idyllic world for us. But, it’s hard to know what Philo really believes.
At the end of all that, where do we stand? Can we comprehend God? Can we pin down his nature? Did these guys – who all blindly assumed the existence of a God but could not agree on his nature – reach any real insight?
Something that stuck out to me while reading this was that often organized religions like to play both sides of this game. Out of one side of their mouth they will talk about the mysteries of God, how we cannot understand his decisions, though they are always good, how his time is not our time, how we need to trust in him even when we don’t understand logically, because his understanding is so much greater than ours, how he created everything and is all loving and yet there is suffering, but that suffering is for a reason, though one which we cannot comprehend (and on and on and on). And out of the other side of their mouth they claim to know exactly what God is like, what he demands, and what his words mean. They know exactly the rituals to please him, the prayers to reach his ear, the commands he demands we follow, the things we must avoid, the specific keys to salvation, the extremely minute details of what makes a good or bad believer in that God (and on and on and on).
How can both those things be true at once?
There’s something evil about groups or people that use both sides of this debate to garner power, to put other people down, or to make themselves feel superior. To demand something, invoking the will of a God they claim to understand, and then in another breath to plead the unknowability of God when confronted with the faults of that belief is cowardly. It’s a way to trap people because there is always an excuse. If you say “God wants this from you” and “God works in mysterious ways” in the same conversation, I don’t trust you. Not because that is absolutely untrue – it very well may be true – but because those two phrases working together are the one-two punch of so much religious manipulation.
I don’t know where I land on this debate, whether I’m more of a Cleanthes or a Demea (although I suspect I am mostly a Philo), but I enjoyed the Dialogues immensely. I hope you did too.
