Refuting The Whole System? Hume's Attack on Popular Religion in The Natural History of Religion

Abstract

There is reason for genuine puzzlement about Hume’s aim in ‘The Natural History of Religion’. Some commentators take the work to be merely a causal investigation into the psychological processes and environmental conditions that are likely to give rise to the first religions, an investigation that has no significant or straightforward implications for the rationality or justification of religious belief. Others take the work to constitute an attack on the rationality and justification of religious belief in general. In contrast to these views, I argue that Hume aims to establish two important claims in ‘The Natural History of Religion’. First, almost all popular religions, including popular monotheism, are deeply superstitious. Second, superstitious monotheism is incompatible with the variety of theism supported by the argument from design. This incompatibility puts significant pressure on the rational acceptability of popular religions. In The Natural History of Religion (NHR), Hume describes Cicero’s argumentative strategy in De Natura Deorum. He claims that the skeptical Cotta ‘refutes the whole system of mythology by leading the orthodox gradually, from the more momentous stories, which were believed, to the more frivolous, which everyone ridiculed: From the gods to the goddesses; from the goddesses to the nymphs; from the nymphs to the fawns and satyrs’ (NHR 12.25 75). 1 The similarity between this description of De Natura Deo