HKB
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Often appears with: the nature and attributes of God · religious persecution and toleration · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · wage insecurity · the problem of evil and theodicy · the passions and the emotions · terminology and meaning · suicide among workers · reality of sensible qualities · providence and divine governance · problem of pain · poverty and wealth
Usually: argument (5) · indignation (3) · crisis of belief (2) · injustice endured (1) · censure (1) · detachment (1) · exhortation (1) · lament (1) · skepticism (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
“There is therefore some other Spirit that causes them; since it is repugnant that they should subsist by themselves.” George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowle · insight
“Want leaves the working-man the choice between starving slowly, killing himself speedily, or taking what he needs where he finds it--in plain English, stealing.” Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 184 · insight
Engels says poverty and insecurity push workers toward theft, atheism, and suicide, and he portrays wage-living “from hand to mouth” as a demoralizing condition that breeds rebellion or despair.
the reigning class. They become brutes the moment they bend in patience under the yoke, and merely strive to make life endurable while abandoning the effort to break the yoke. This, then, is all that the bourgeoisie has done for the education of the proletariat--and when we take into consideration all the circumstances in which this class lives, we shall not think the worse of it for the resentment which it cherishe…
Locke warns against relying solely on the idea of a most perfect being to silence atheists, arguing instead that proofs from one’s own existence and the sensible world are clearer and more cogent.
to another any perfection that it hath not either actually in itself, or, at least, in a higher degree; [it necessarily follows, that the first eternal being cannot be matter.] 11. Therefore, there has been an Eternal Wisdom. If, therefore, it be evident, that something necessarily must exist from eternity, it is also as evident, that that something must necessarily be a cogitative being: for it is as impossible th…
Berkeley argues that denying matter does not reduce the reality of sensible qualities, and he links matter-belief to atheism, fatalism, idolatry, and difficulties about the resurrection.
another sense, namely when they exist in some other mind; thus, when I shut my eyes, the things I saw may still exist, but it must be in another mind. 91. SENSIBLE QUALITIES REAL.--It were a mistake to think that what is here said derogates in the least from the reality of things. It is acknowledged, on the received principles, that extension, motion, and in a word all sensible qualities have need of a support, as n…
He replies to objections from imperfections and pain by arguing such features are necessary for our present good and our broader understanding, and he says atheism and Manichaeism arise from lack of attentive reflection.
immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas; but depending on the intervention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs. 146. But, though there be some things which convince us human agents are concerned in producing them; yet it is evident to every one that those things which are called the Works of Nature, that is, the far greater part of the ideas or sensa…
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…