Monday 30 March 2009

Was Hume an atheist or an agnostic?

"There are two senses of agnosticism. One is a suspension of judgment which leaves the mind of the doubter as open to belief as to disbelief. This kind of agnostic is genuinely uncertain as to whether God exists or not, and is unable to say which possibility is significantly more likely. Neither Hume nor Russell were agnostics in this sense. For them, God was not something whose existence they continued to seriously entertain. However, they were agnostics in another sense: unable to conclusively settle the matter, God becomes a kind of irrelevant distant possibility, albeit one they would not say definitely did not exist."
Concluding part of series on Hume on Religion at Comment is Free Belief.