David Humes Views On Natural Religion - 2294 Words

In Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, David Hume challenges the existence of God by presenting three different arguments from the perspectives of three philosophers. First is that of the fideist, Demea, who presents the weakest argument. The reader is quickly aware that this perspective is the least believable according to Hume. Although Hume quickly dismisses the idea of faith as a basis for the existence of God, he uses faith as a wedge in the attempt to break apart the argument of for intelligent design presented by the second character Cleanthes. A majority of the Dialogues is dedicated to this cause, as the strongest argument is from the perspective of intelligent design. The third character, Philo, is the skeptic wielding the pickaxe, and believed to be the voice of Hume, has the most difficult time dismantling this concept. By the end of the dialogue, it is unclear as to the true position that Hume is taking concerning natural theology. It is my understanding that H ume would accept the existence of God through the perspective of natural theology, if it were not deterred by the misuse of a Deity through organized religion as a means to control the masses. Because of this misuse, it is understandable why Hume remained a skeptic (at least publically) for the duration of his life (Craig 486-512). As we begin the Dialogues, Demea is complimenting Cleanthes on the education of his young student, Pamphilus. I find the compliment disingenuous. I believe it servesShow MoreRelatedHumes Ethics1047 Words   |  5 PagesHume’s Ethics Contents 1. Introduction 2. Hume’s ethics as an emotive theory of ethics 3. Conclusion 4. Bibliography David Hume is an outstanding Scottish philosopher of the 18th century whose views has a significant impact on the following generations of thinkers throughout the world. His sceptical arguments concerning induction, causation and especially religion, including his famous thesis that human knowledge arises only from sense experience and not from rational judgments, shaped theRead MoreEssay on An Analysis of Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion4493 Words   |  18 PagesAn Analysis of Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion ABSTRACT: Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) may be read in the way Cleanthes (and Philo as well) reads Nature, as analogous to human artifice and contrivance. The Dialogues and Nature then are both texts, with an intelligent author or Author, and analogies may be started from these five facts of Humes text: the independence of Humes characters; the non-straightforwardness of the characters discourse; the way theRead MoreBy Definition Miracles Do Not Occur Essay1398 Words   |  6 PagesBy Definition Miracles Do Not Occur Even in this modern age, belief in the miraculous is widespread and is a feature of many world religions, including the Christian faith where miracles have played a significant role. It is important attempt to define what a miracle is, as this in itself is a source for debate. Today the term ‘miracle’ in many different ways and the idea is open to many interpretations. A miracle can be defined in a number of ways, firstly asRead MoreWilliam Paley And David Hume1260 Words   |  6 PagesAristotle. This discussion will focus on the differing works of authors William Paley and David Hume and I will argue that there is an Intelligent Designer for our universe. William Paley believes in the existence of God and that through his watchmaker analogy in â€Å"Natural Theology† he can prove that there is an Intelligent Designer. David Hume addresses William Paley’s argument in â€Å"Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion† and argues Paley’s analogy is weak since Hume believes we cannot analogize earthlyRead MoreDavid Humes Anti Miracle Belief Essay1577 Words   |  7 Pagescenturies. The great empiricist philosopher David Hume was one of the first to present an analysis of miracles that tried to explain why they are created (by human beings themselves, in Hume’s opinion) and why people are so ready to believe in them. This is an important field of study, as with greater knowledge of the character of physical law, one finds more and more (rather than less) accounts of miracles being touted as exceptions to natural laws. Hume’s ideas on the matter are extremely illuminatingRead MoreDavid Hume Essay1210 Words   |  5 PagesDavid Hume Hume, David, 1711-76, Scottish philosopher and historian. Hume carried the empiricism of John Locke and George Berkeley to the logical extreme of radical skepticism. He repudiated the possibility of certain knowledge, finding in the mind nothing but a series of sensations, and held that cause-and-effect in the natural world derives solely from the conjunction ofRead MoreDavid Humes Theory of Ethics Essay1675 Words   |  7 PagesDavid Hume is considered to be one of the big three British empiricists, along with Hobbes and Locke, and lived near the end of the Enlightenment. The Catholic Church was losing its control over science, politics and philosophy and the Aristotelian world view was being swallowed up by a more mechanistic viewpoint. Galileo found the theory provided by Copernicus to be correct, that our earth was not the center of everything, but the celestial bodies including the earth circled the sun. MathematiciansRead MoreDavid Humes Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Essay1524 Words   |  7 PagesDavid Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion provide conflicting arguments about the nature of the universe, what humans can know about it, and how their knowledge can affect their religious beliefs. The most compelling situation relates to philosophical skepticism and religion ; the empiricist character, Cleanthes, strongly defends his position that skepticism is beneficial to religious belief. Under fire from an agnostic skeptic and a rationalist, the empiricist view on skepticism and religionRead MoreComparing David Hume and Immanuel Kant Essay1356 Words   |  6 PagesComparing David Hume and Immanuel Kant David Hume and Immanuel Kant each made a significant break from other theorists in putting forward a morality that doesn’t require a higher being or god, for a man to recognize his moral duty. Although Hume and Kant shared some basic principals they differed on their view of morality. In comparing the different views on human will and the maxims established to determine moral worth by David Hume and Immanuel Kant, I find their theories on morality have someRead MoreImmanuel Kant And Kant On Morality1097 Words   |  5 Pagesanother, Immanuel Kant and David Hume. Immanuel Kant had many theories throughout his philosophical time. Here are some of his ethical works, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), which contains both â€Å"the Doctrine of Right† and â€Å"the Doctrine of Virtue.† He also had some other works of importance to his moral philosophy including the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), Religion within the Boundaries of Mere

The World War I Is War - 1653 Words

World War I is war famous for European nations fighting against themselves. It began to take shape when countries like France and Germany beginning to form their own allies. It all started with the powerful Austria-Hungary wanted to have Serbia as part of their own empire. However a group of Serbian nationalists known as Black Hands dislike the idea. So they wanted to send a message to the Austria-Hungary government by killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Gavrilo Princip, member of the Black Hands, shot and killed Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie and thus started World War 1. Austria-Hungary soon moved against Serbia but Serbia counter by moving against Austria-Hungary. Then comes with new superpower in Europe Germany. It got involved by†¦show more content†¦So Germany constitute a plan to be in 3 special events to make and force United States to take action and be part in World War 1. The three events that causes the United States to take part into World War I is the sinki ng of Lusitania, Zimmerman Telegraph, and Germany U-subs attacking trade ships on American soil. The sinking of the British passenger ship Lusitania is one out of 3 serious of events of America’s involvement in World War I. Before it happened, Germany is becoming more and more powerful especially technology wise. One of which surprised the British was Germans maximization of the U-Boot since Great Britain is the strongest naval power in all of Europe. In response to this, they would use water mines in the English channel to defend against the Germans. This triggered the Germans to be very aggressive and suspicious. The Germans are suspicious of the United States and Great Britain has weapons on that ship. They would give 3 days of warning to both U.S. and British to turn those weapons in or they will see as enemy threat and therefore blow up the ship. In the first day, U.S. and Britain refuse to say they have any weapons on the ship. And in the 2nd and final day of the warnin g, United States and Britain decided to stand pact and thinking this is just a regular passenger ship. However, Germany did not bluff and they

The Great Leap Forward  Impact and Consequences free essay sample

Instead, the judgment of history paints a far different picture. An irreversible focusing of profound rifts in the Chinese Communist Party and a delirious fabrication of reality led to rapid disintegration of the Leap’s goals, and to what perhaps was the greatest famine in human history. Both the immediate impact and far-reaching consequences of the Great Leap Forward (GLF) influence the current trends and priorities of today’s China, and understanding the nature of these past events is crucial in ascertaining the nature of the present. The Hundred Flowers campaign and the following rectification movement in 1956-1957 left the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) divided and hesitant, sincerely concerned with acute contradictions within itself and among the Chinese people (Domenach 119). At that time, talk of future industrialization and economic growth was timid at best, as stated by Liu Shaoqi’s political report at the Eighth National Congress of the CCP in September 1956: On the basis of actual conditions of our country, the Central Committee has thus defined the Party’s general line in the period of transition: to bring about, step by step, socialist industrialization and to accomplish, step by step, the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts and capitalist industry and commerce over a fairly long period. (Liu 2)   No talk of â€Å"leaps† had emerged yet, and the industrial growth of about 18. percent during the First Five Year Plan period was accompanied by a slow crawl in agricultural production of only about 3. 8 percent (Spence 574). Chairman Mao’s extremely sensitive political antennae were very alert in 1957, as the completion of a basic socialist system both confirmed his confidence in his own leadership and opened the question of what direction China’s socialist politics would take (Womack 24). He felt China had reached the next stage in its continuous and permanent revolution, one that could actualize traditional Marxist theory in a uniquely Chinese way. If China lacked the economic prerequisites that Marx had defined for a communist society, Mao had begun to believe that those same economic conditions could be brought into existence in the very process of striving to realize ultimate communist goals (Meisner 210). Thus, he became more and more frustrated with what he saw as a lagging process toward communism that was being prolonged unnecessarily. His feeling of urgency for China’s future was greatly intensified during a crucial visit to Moscow in November 1957. Conflict and competition between Mao and Khrushchev were becoming more and more apparent. Khrushchev had boasted that the Soviet Union would overtake the United States in the output of major products in fifteen years, and Mao reacted by committing China to a similar competition (MacFarquhar, Cheek, and Wu 14). Upon his return to China, he began paving the way for an immediate move from the moderate to the frenzied, focused on the setting of targets that were from the outset over-ambitious. These targets must be seen not only as an attempt at modernization, but also as a fusion of rapid economic growth and its fuel, consisting of equally rapid processes of radical social and ideological change (Meisner 204). The impetus was to pave a Chinese road to an eventual state of absolute communism that was ahead of the Soviet Union, in effect, to launch a Chinese â€Å"sputnik† (MacFarquhar, Cheek, and Wu 15). Mao had persuaded himself by now that this was a response to the spontaneous wishes of the people, to enlighten China’s countryside withindustrialization (de Bary and Lufrano 468). The new rhetoric that Mao embraced was manifested in the nature of emerging propaganda that was regretfully drowned in overemphasis and incoherence. Automatically, the scale of the ambitions was in stark contrast with the muddiness of the formulations (Domenach 167). The Anti-Rightist Campaign had by then already made people within and without the Party scared to report anything but good news, and the new plans for China grew more from ideology than from efficiency (MacFarquhar 332). A battle on many fronts began: to strengthen industry, revolutionize agriculture, and implement communes in the countryside; all factors involved perpetuating and sustaining each other. By the summer and fall of 1958, crucial policy decisions in the establishment of the communes were frenetically improvised on the spot by local leaders (Meisner 230). Mao had provided the spark that rapidly became a bonfire, engulfing the whole country in half-baked, misguided efforts to reshape the land as their own lives were reshaped by the communes. In a typical village, people would enter waving red flags, beating drums and gongs, and burning firecrackers, proclaiming the arrival of a new way of life (Leung 200-201). In Hebei, for example, the Provincial Committee of the Party boldly announced: â€Å"The great achievements of the overall leap forward have educated the masses and educated the cadres. People now unrestrictedly place confidence in the correctness of the leadership of the Party and fully realize the superiority of the socialist system and the great prowess of the working people in the conquest of nature† (Shi 278). However, reaction was mixed, and included a mad rush to slaughter draft animals so that they would not be confiscated by the new communes (MacFarquhar 328). In the spirit of â€Å"communization† (gongchan feng), many communes were actually set up in a threatening, predatory fashion beyond the original intent of the Party. Properties and even entire handicraft workshops were impounded by local Party members to be absorbed into the new communes, alienating people by the hasty and arbitrary seizure of private property (Zhang 64). Internal reports even indicate resistance of a violent nature, peasants reportedly beating up cadres and leaving the communes, taking both grain and animals with them (Becker 54). Radical transformation of the countryside included filling in lakes to create more fields for farming, the manual construction of huge dams and roads, and intensified mining (Bardeen 64). In addition, under direct guidelines issued from Mao himself, new and bizarre agricultural techniques were insisted upon in an eightfold strategy: the popularization of new breeds and seeds, close planting, deep plowing, increased fertilization, the innovation of farm tools, improved field management, pest control, and increased irrigation (Becker 70). Rural industry at this time was ushered in with a crazed steel-smelting campaign that, coupled with the vast array of constructions and earth-moving projects, totally diverted the peasant population (Clark 240). Able-bodied men and women worked around the clock fueling the inefficient furnaces that sprang up nationwide, consuming huge forest resources and every last scrap of metal or iron they could find (MacFarquhar 327). Meanwhile, much of the harvest was tragically wasted, left to rot out in the fields. At the same time, highly trained engineers and scientists all over China whose advice could have saved tremendous losses in human effort and natural resources were labeled â€Å"bourgeois experts† and imprisoned or sentenced to manual labor (Becker 63). Thus, as the Party ecstatically created thousands of new colleges, universities, and research institutes, an emphasis of political loyalty rather than competence was placed on the education of China’s countryside (Zhou 61). This loyalty entailed a firm belief in the millenarian proportion of the whole event and the easy abundance that will inevitably come from such toil. This happened in certain provinces more than others, as some regional leaders even went to the extreme of allowing people to eat as much as they could stand. In some communes, people were so relieved at the notion of free food that they consumed three months’ supply of grain in a mere two weeks (Yang 55). State policy began to become a victim of its own guaranteed success as local leaders fiercely competed with one another using unrealistic goals and falsified accomplishments (Womack 29). Central leadership caught on to this trend and was gravely concerned not just at the lies but the means used in preserving them. Even Mao was alarmed at the abundance of claims being made: â€Å"We must get rid of the empty reports and foolish boasting, we must not compete for reputation, but serve reality. Some of the targets are high, and no measures have been taken to implement them; that is not good† (Schram 106). Despite his alarm, however, the understanding among the Party members themselves that failure to respond to production imperatives could impact their own political future led to frenzied production of substandard, unusable products and outright lies about agricultural yields (MacFarquhar 248). Areas that had a greater density of party membership were more likely to stick to the letter of the central directives and were thus more moderate, while outlying areas, in their eagerness to demonstrate their loyalty to the Party, were more likely to overreact to central directives (Yang 245). As a result of these self-perpetuating claims that rang hollow with fantasy, the Party itself began to lose legitimacy (Shi 273). At the same time, those who knew the truth of communal mess halls beginning to shut down, Party cadres refusing to work, and other serious deteriorations of the fledgling system would not speak up (Becker 80). Direct challenge to the bogus claims being made and direct pronouncements of the truth were nothing short of political suicide. Meanwhile, the truth slipped out of reach for the entire Party. In early 1959, the State Statistical Bureau was dismantled and replaced by â€Å"good news reporting stations† (Clark 239). In the summer of 1959, well after the GLF had entered its crisis phase, Mao appeared critically under-informed in his dismissal of the possibility of disaster (Mosher 270). It was at a Party meeting in Lushan that Mao was first confronted with the festering and rapidly deteriorating problems of the communes and the utter disasters stemming from GLF policies (de Bary and Lufrano 470). Peng Dehuai, then the defense minister, delivered a letter to Mao that politely but unmistakably laid the blame where it ultimately belonged: with the Chairman (MacFarquhar 216). Peng had broken a cardinal rule in Chinese factional politics in revealing not only which â€Å"faction† he belonged to, but in taking the wrong side at a potential situation of struggle (Shi 283). This resulted in a savage attack launched by Mao that was compellingly mixed with hints of apology and self-criticism: â€Å"The chaos caused was on a grand scale and I take responsibility† (Schram 146). By that time, however, far away from the Party elite, the very structure of society was falling apart. Starvation was already progressing through the provinces as grain was being forcibly taken from the communes to, ironically enough, meet a raised quota of exports to the Soviet Union (Spence 583). The insanity of mind-boggling production goals persisted; coal production was to go from 30 million to 270 million tons, grain from 185 million to 525 million tons, and so on throughout the economy (Mosher 264). As fall arrived and Mao had settled his personal score with those who dared to doubt him, he issued the following order to all of the provincial Party Committees: â€Å"On the basis of your actual conditions, adopt all effective measures, squeeze out all of the labor force that can be squeezed out, strengthen the first line of agricultural production, and speedily change the grave situation of the present insufficiency of the labor force† (MacFarquhar 324). In actuality, Mao was simply reacting to provincial initiatives already taking place, including a similar survival policy that had been fully implemented for over three months (Yang 75). After a long winter, the spring of 1960 witnessed nature’s retaliation for the â€Å"war† that had been raged against her. A massive drought affected every province in China, bringing with it pests and diseases, while the worst typhoons in 50 years flooded twelve separate provinces (MacFarquhar 322). By the end of May, an undeniable indicator of widespread disaster came when the grain reserves in Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai became totally depleted (Becker 80). Mao was shocked by this and sank into a deep depression in which, according to his librarian, he sometimes sat for long periods of time, gazing at nothing in total silence (Yang 72). The Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Justice both released internal documents during the first part of 1960 that drew attention to the severity of the famine’s impact. Cases of 96,200 anti-communist activities and 5,700,000 cases of sabotage, assassination, theft, and plunder had been reported over the course of the twelve preceding months (Shi 280-281). Meanwhile, some thirty percent of all rural units in China had already adopted some form of household responsibility and production without central authorization (Yang 241). Moral alienation and corruption followed in the wake of the struggle for survival, as a fundamental change began to occur in the paradigm of China’s goals. Material survival was to come first before any notion of a socialist cause could be acknowledged. The legacy of this huge famine, in which up to 30 million Chinese had died, devastated agricultural growth for the following six years, finally beginning to recover in 1965 (Clark 244). The impact in areas of industry was similarly intense, as 100,000 enterprises were closed down between 1960 and 1965 so that over 20 million people could be withdrawn from the urban areas to help salvage something from the agricultural disaster and the stagnation that followed (MacFarquhar 330). In looking at the long-term consequences of the Great Leap Forward and its subsequent famine, a pattern can be seen that transcends all of the movements, campaigns, and other easily labeled events. A considerable amount of work done on the part of China scholars, especially since the Cultural Revolution, attributes major changes in state policy to the Party elites and the campaigns that they initiated (Perry 2). Despite this, in the case of modern reforms in China it can be said that Deng Xiaoping and his economic liberalization initiatives were not simply initiatives from higher-ups who decide the future of their country. These initiatives are at least partially reactions to pervasive patterns that already existed. It can be said that the national psyche of China was so deeply affected by this devastating event that it served as a psychological imperative for economic growth, regardless of the socialist aspect. Myths, formally held sacred, were permanently undermined, and the moral consensus of the socialist and communist systems was essentially destroyed. When the utopian aspirations of the GLF became seen as a field day for Party corruption, lies, and terrorism practiced on the people of the countryside, the gulf grew between the Party and the masses. This gulf has arguably remained wide since that time, and threatens to grow wider. Despite the fact that the communes were falling apart by 1961, they were not entirely dismantled until 1984 (Zhang 66). While unofficial change in China is often improvised, official change is often painfully slow. It was not until 1981 that the issues of the GLF were addressed formally by the Communist Party, in a resolution which stated: â€Å"Comrade Mao Zedong and many leading comrades, both at the center and in the localities, were impatient for quick results and overestimated the role of man’s subjective will and efforts† (Womack 26). Mao cannot be thoroughly demonized because of his delusions and the sufferings that they caused; but neither can an apologist stance be taken. In the same respect, the modern economic reforms in China are not simply consequences of a shifting influence in government policy-making, nor can they be fully attributed to the efforts of Deng Xiaoping and the official â€Å"Four Modernizations.   Ã‚   The consequences of the GLF and its immediate impact of famine extended into the realm of Chinese political action, which in a modern context is at least partially a reaction to what the Chinese people were already practicing. Forms of economic initiative and autonomy at the village level existed unofficially, years before they became a practice favored by the government. The main stance that emerges from a close examination of the GLF is an admiration for the resilience of a peasantry who are still striving for a better way of life.