Natural belief and Hume's philosophy of religion (David Hume)

In this dissertation I critique a novel reading of David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. According to this novel interpretation, Hume regards belief in an intelligent designer as a natural belief, a belief that all humans irresistibly hold, and accordingly that Hume himself believed in the existence of a deity.; I present and criticize two species of attempts to establish a natural belief doctrine in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The accounts include Beryl Logan's process approach (Chapter 3 and Chapter 5), Stanley Tweyman's criteria approach (Chapter 3 and Chapter 7), and William Lad Sessions' natural theist interpretation that supports both approaches (Chapter 6 and Chapter 7). I argue that each account fails to adequately address textual evidence from Hume's other writings and does not cohere with the Dialogues as a whole, as well as with Hume's other writings on religion.; I conclude that the natural belief reading of Hume's Dialogues is implausible, that it is unlikely that Hume himself ever espoused such a position. While belief in an intelligent designer might in fact be a natural belief, the historical question as to whether or not Hume held such a view seems to be best answered in the negative. Through my criticisms of the natural belief proponents, a skeptic or agnostic interpretation of Hume will emerge indirectly, though I defend such a position hesitantly for Hume seems to have concealed his intentions in writing the Dialogues. In the end I offer suggestions for how Hume understood the instinctual, but avoidable tendency to ascribe intelligent design to order in the world.