David Hume: Empiricism, Miracles, and the Critique of Design

David Hume: Empiricism, Miracles, and the Critique of Design

David Hume (1711–1776) is one of the most important philosophers in the Western tradition and arguably the most significant critic of religious belief in the history of philosophy. A Scottish empiricist, historian, and essayist, Hume mounted devastating challenges to the rationalist arguments for God’s existence, to the credibility of miracles, to the design argument, and to the very possibility of establishing religious truths through reason or experience. His philosophical works — especially A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–40), An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published posthumously in 1779) — remain essential reading for AQA A-Level Religious Studies.

Hume’s Empiricism

Hume’s entire philosophy rests on the principle of empiricism — the view that all genuine knowledge of matters of fact is derived from sensory experience. In the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume divided all objects of human inquiry into two categories: