farideh lazemi

In the second half of the eighteenth century, with the publication of non-religious philosophy, Hume claims that the existence of the Christian God is impossible, therefore his contemporaries viewed him as a downright atheist. Recently, and despite the interpretations of the last two centuries, Hume has not been introduced as an atheist, but as an agnostic, theist and deist. According to these three attitudes, perhaps Hume has either suspended the claims of thick theism and thin theism, or has explicitly endorsed the existence of God, or has defended from unknown commitment regarding the existence of wisdom that is the origin, creator, and ruler of this world.This paper rejects mentioned four readings and shows that Hume is a weak and non-dogmatic atheist. Because, this philosopher, by demonstrating that the claims of thick theism are groundless, concludes that the existence of God, with a rich set of attributes, is impossible. However, Hume's attitude to thin theism is not so sharp. Thin theism is not wrong and incredible. According to him, thin theism is empty and useless, that it does not deserve to investigate by any skeptic. In fact, Hume neither denied, nor suspended, nor endorsed thin theism; If he would denied it, he would knowned as downright atheist, if he would suspended it, he would knowned as downright agnostic, and if he would endorsed it, he would knowned as genuine theist and attenuated deist.

 The most natural result of Hume's philosophy is his explanation of the existence of God. That God does not exist. However, recently researchers are trying to moderate Hume's contradictory approach to the existence of God, and to show that Hume accepts the existence of God. This has been done, mainly, by relying on another reading of Hume's attitude to the design argument. This article, for the first time in the scientific community, wants to criticize the new explanation of our commentators with Hume's naturalistic explanation through our belief in the existence of body, and also by applying Hume's skeptical and naturalistic principles.  

Kant's critical philosophy relies on certain fundamentals of practical reason, such as the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and, most importantly, the supreme good as the ultimate objective of morality, encompassing virtue and happiness as its two key components. This perspective has led to the perception of absolute reductionism in Kant's philosophy. According to this view, Kant appears to reduce religion entirely to morality, advocating solely for its moral dimension while deeming other aspects and dimensions as redundant. In a more moderate form, Kant's philosophy faces explanatory reductionism, explaining religion solely in terms of morality. However, this paper argues that Kant, through various forms of reductionism, posits that while religion is an essential component that complements the ultimate goal of morality, he also acknowledges that religion holds a position beyond the ethical realm. As a result, both the complete reduction of religion to morality and the explanatory reduction of religion as morality are not without challenges in interpreting Kant's philosophy.

In the field of philosophy of religion, the issue of the existence of world after death and the doctrine of rewards and punishments in the hereafter is one of the important and confusing issues as persuades theologians and philosophers of religion to present various and contradictory views about it. Meanwhile, despite David Hume's considerable reputation as one of the most important philosophical critics of religion, the secular irreligious significance of this philosopher's views, especially on the issue of induction and probable reasoning, has not attracted the attention and energy of Hume's researchers in recent decades. The main objectives of this paper, on the basis of methodical research, are to identify the relevance of induction and probable reasoning to the problem of belief in a future state and to the doctrine of rewards and punishments of human acts in philosophy of religion, and to show that the goal of Hume's critical analysis of the credibility and practical significance of religious inductive arguments, by providing an account of the foundation of probable reasoning, is to reject the principal aims of defenders of Christian orthodoxy. It was orthodoxy defender’s aim to show, on the basis of our experience of this world, that there is a future state of rewards and punishments, and that prudence requires that we guide our conduct in this life with a view to our expectations of happiness or misery in the next. We will show that Hume provides a naturalistic account of the psychological mechanisms for the foundations of probable reasoning that generate our beliefs concerning the future, and this account serves to explain why religious arguments concerning the doctrine of a future state inevitably fail to persuade us or influence our conduct, so the doctrine of state of rewards and punishments is of little or no practical consequence for human.

In the ethical view of modern philosophy, there can be seen two aspects of morality; religion-free morality and religion-sensitive morality. Despite the disagreement between his naturalist ambitions and his extreme skeptical principles, Hume’s aspiration to stabilize moral science tends to show that morality is not only independent of religion, but also is destructed by it. The main objective of this paper is to unmask the relationship between religion and morality based on the works of Hume, his critics, and his supporters. The findings of this paper, based on Hume's moderate view of commonsense morality and his undercover belief in God, indicate that morality for Hume is not ultimately independent of religion and God. In other words, Hume reduces the whole religion to a combination of morality and philosophy, defends the morality and rational aspects of religion, and deems other aspects and dimensions as unnecessary. Finally, according to the evidences used in this article, it is better to put Hume in a specific rank of the religion-sensitive moral philosophers.

There is always an inevitable conflict between Hume’s naturalistic ambitions and his skeptical judgments. Some of his contemporary critics accused him of atheism because the foundations of his naturalistic system restricted the human knowledge to the human nature, thus destroying his contemporary naturalistic apologies. After Hume’s death, his critics provided a naturalistic interpretation of his philosophical system. In this paper, we will first show that Hume’s ambitions for establishment of ethics led him to the human nature, making his research fall into a skeptical trap. We will then evaluate the truth or falsity of the atheistic or skeptical accusation through an analysis of the Humean thought, an investigation of his critics and advocates, and an exposition of hidden motivations behind his skepticisms. In the end, we seek to free his naturalism from skepticism, showing that even his skeptically-oriented research is in conflict with consequences of denying God. We have found that skepticism is not an instrument for undermining intellectual foundations; it is instead a bridge for reaching the goal. Thus, Hume deserves to be called a “Rational Moralist.”

One of the debates concerning Hume’s Philosophy is whether he believes in God. Through investigating his own works and extraction of his assertions concerning God, we try in this paper to examine the internal consistency of his system. In order to do this, we shall analytically examine whether the current tags attached to him are consistent with implications of his works. This research shows that it is problematic to call him an “atheist” or an “agnostic”. Furthermore, the findings of this paper shows that his minimal belief in God can be found in all of his works. Finally, according to the results, it is suggested to call him a weak or non-dogmatic agnostic.

Generally, Cartesian and Humean doubts are considered as two types of different and diverse doubts. The first one is imperative and the second one is real. Although Cartesian and Humean points of view about doubt from one perspective reflect the fact that, not only the Humean doubt is not in continuity with the Cartesian doubt, but it has fundamental differences with it in terms of forms and contents. On the other hand, there are some elements indicating that the Humean doubt is unreal and incomplete. So, in this regard, it is possible to see the Humean doubt as being the same as the Cartesian doubt that has an imperative characteristic. In this paper, we try to represent similarities and differences between these two philosophers about this topic by focusing on doubts in Hume’s works and we will briefly refer to the Cartesian doubt; and see whether the common idea about the relation between the skepticisms of these two philosophers is true or not.