HKB
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Often appears with: the nature and attributes of God · the problem of evil and theodicy · language, naming, and meaning · universal consent · tolerating vice · the fear of death · terminology and meaning · suffering and salvation · sin, guilt, and repentance · sectarian theology · religious persecution and toleration · religious controversy
Usually: argument (6) · skepticism (4) · crisis of belief (2) · indignation (2) · narrative (1) · confronting death (1) · censure (1) · exhortation (1)
“A mind, whose acts and sentiments and ideas are not distinct and successive; one, that is wholly simple, and totally immutable, is a mind which has no thought, no reason, no will, no sentiment, no love, no hatred; or, in a word, is no mind at all.” David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion · precept
“Now anthropomorphism, far from being primitive, is rather the mark of a relatively advanced civilization.” Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life · insight
“In fine, religion is nothing but a dream, systematized and lived, but without any foundation in reality.[134]” Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life · wit
“To-day we are beginning to realize that law, morals and even scientific thought itself were born of religion, were for a long time confounded with it, and have remained penetrated with its spirit.” Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life · insight
“A king should generally have nothing so much at heart as to keep his subjects free from oppression.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · precept
“God takes care of the universe, he neglects nothing, he chooses what is best on the whole.” Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Freiherr von, Theodicy · insight
Durkheim argues against the idea that people first anthropomorphize nature, saying anthropomorphism marks a more advanced stage, while early sacred beings are often animal or plant forms; even Australia holds that human ancestors were beasts or plants.
of its time outside the object which serves as its base. This is one difference which does not seem to show that the second idea was derived from the first. From another point of view, it must be added that if men were really forced to project their own image into things, then the first sacred beings ought to have been conceived in their likeness. Now anthropomorphism, far from being primitive, is rather the mark of…
Locke observes that people commonly hold “odd, low, and pitiful” ideas of God even among Christians and Muslims, including anthropomorphic notions, and he argues this shows the concept is not naturally imprinted.
18. If the Idea of God be not innate, no other can be supposed innate. Since then though the knowledge of a God be the most natural discovery of human reason, yet the idea of him is not innate, as I think is evident from what has been said; I imagine there will be scarce any other idea found that can pretend to it. Since if God hath set any impression, any character, on the understanding of men, it is most reasonabl…
Leibniz rebuts the idea of God giving mixed good through unavoidable pain, insisting God chooses the best overall, that suffering often leads to salvation, and that objections rely on a sophism.
*Bona magna multis non amicus dat Deus,* *Insigniore ut rursus his privet malo.*) All these objections depend almost on the same sophism; they change and mutilate the fact, they only half record things: God has care for men, he loves the human race, he wishes it well, nothing so true. Yet he allows men to fall, he often allows them to perish, he gives them goods that tend towards their destruction; and when he makes…
Responding to Bayle’s maxims, Leibniz denies the analogy that God would ‘crush vice before birth’; unlike a human king, God never errs and his governance permits evils for the good of the whole.
things possible what produced the best effect together, and since vice entered in by this door, God would not have been altogether good, altogether wise if he had excluded it. [199] 125. X. 'The way to evince the greatest hatred for vice is not indeed to allow it to prevail for a long time and then chastise it, but to crush it before its birth, that is, prevent it from showing itself anywhere. A king, for example, w…
Cleanthes challenges Demea for claiming God is wholly incomprehensible and unlike humans, arguing that calling such a unknowable cause “God” while denying intelligible likeness is incoherent and invites atheism-like consequences.
It seems strange to me, said CLEANTHES, that you, DEMEA, who are so sincere in the cause of religion, should still maintain the mysterious, incomprehensible nature of the Deity, and should insist so strenuously that he has no manner of likeness or resemblance to human creatures. The Deity, I can readily allow, possesses many powers and attributes of which we can have no comprehension: But if our ideas, so far as they…
Philo presses Cleanthes by saying orthodox divines may look “atheist” under Cleanthe’s labeling, then argues that treating God like an architect’s mind fails to explain cause and effect.
mind at all. It is an abuse of terms to give it that appellation; and we may as well speak of limited extension without figure, or of number without composition. Pray consider, said PHILO, whom you are at present inveighing against. You are honouring with the appellation of Atheist all the sound, orthodox divines, almost, who have treated of this subject; and you will at last be, yourself, found, according to your r…
The discourse extends natural evil to moral evil, challenges “anthropomorphites” to explain vice without appealing to the first cause, and then stages a dispute where Demea accuses Philo of undermining orthodoxy.
can never prove the two former unmixed principles; and the uniformity and steadiness of general laws seem to oppose the third. The fourth, therefore, seems by far the most probable. What I have said concerning natural evil will apply to moral, with little or no variation; and we have no more reason to infer, that the rectitude of the Supreme Being resembles human rectitude, than that his benevolence resembles the hu…