David Hume The Theist: A believer in God championed by contemporary atheists and secularists

David Hume is a kind of "hero" for many atheists and secularists, mostly because Hume was a critic of religion, miracles and the classical arguments for God's existence.

But what is not well known is the fact that some of writings of Hume suggests he was actually a theist. (Note that being a theist is perfectly compatible with being critic of religion or of classical arguments for God's existence).

Many of Hume's atheistic fans are wholly ignorant of Hume's theism.

Consider:

In his book The Natural History of Religion, Hume wrote: "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquierer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion... Were men led into the apprehension of invisible, intelligent power by a contemplation of the works of nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts, according to one regular plan or connected system . . .All the things of the universe are evidently of a piece. Every thing is adjusted to every thing. One design prevails throughtout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind to acknowledge one author" (pp. 21, 26, emphasis in blue added).

Philosopher Nicholas Capaldi, a world-renown Hume scholar (and founder of the Hume Society) explaining Hume's position, writes: "Hume believed in the existence of God. He rejected the ontological argument. He accepted in one form the argument from design. God exists, but his properties are unknown and unknowable by us" (David Hume, ch 9)

Hume scholar Kenneth R. Merrill comments "Hume does not reject the design argument out of hand. Indeed, he seems (at least) to accept a scaled-down version of the argument, but he points out weaknesses that significantly diminish its force... At the end of the Dialogues, Hume has Philo (one of the principals) endorse what has been described as an “attenuated deism” (or, sometimes, as an “attenuated theism”); namely, “that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence” (Dialogues, 227; italics are in Hume’s text). Whether this represents Hume’s own view is a point of contention." (Historical Dictionary of Hume's Philosophy, pp 91-92)

So, Hume wasn't even agnostic about God's existence, but a theist. Certainly, his theism conceives a God without all the attributes which classical theism consider essential to God, but the point is that Hume was convinced by the evidence, and despite his skepticism, that the most reasonable position for a rational man is theism (over atheism and agnosticism). And he was convinced by the evidence of design in nature.

Interestingly, a version of the same argument from design was what convinced another Hume scholar (and champion of atheism for 5 decades), Antony Flew.

On his change of mind, Flew comments: "There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins' comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a "lucky chance." If that's the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion."

Compare Flew's reference to "intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical universe" with Hume's comments that "The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author".

Recent discoveries in cosmology have made the argument from design a lot of stronger than in Hume's times. So, perhaps if Hume were alive today, his theism would be more solid.

In the following videos, you can watch contemporary formulations and defenses of the argument from design: