It has been quite an 'easy ride' in so far as there is great material and supporting text for this part of the course, so it has not been too difficult to find content. I suppose the difficult part is presenting it clearly and properly answering the question.
I've enjoyed this part of the course more than I thought I would, and David Hume has certainly struck a chord with me, especially his implied critique of the 'woolly thinking' behind the blind acceptance of religion.
Hume wrote
"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask,
Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?
No.
Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?
No.
Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion."
This was pretty brave of him at the time he wrote this, as religion does not willingly tolerate intellectual scrutiny, especially in the 18th Century.
Had be been alive today I can't help feeling that David Hume would have been a fan of modern 'philosopher' and song writer Greg Graffin who among his writings wrote,
"Now we all see, religion is just synthetic frippery,
unnecessary, in our expanding global culture of efficiency"
Enjoy the clip below.....
Graffin, G. (2009) "God Song", in Bad Religion's Against the Grain, Epitaph Records, Los Angeles,
See more Bad Religion at www.badreligion.com/
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