Obviously, as this book was written (and revised several times) in the mid to late 1700's, the English that Hume uses is quite different from the English that you and I use. To make up for this, I am going to attempt to translate Hume's thoughts into modern English. While I cannot guarantee that I will hit on every nuance of Hume's thoughts, I will do my best to present Hume's argument in an understandable and useful form. Text in brackets will be my own additions, which will largely include groups, concepts, scientific advances, etc, which Hume would not have been aware of.
The following is my translation of David Hume's argument:
Religious thinkers [i.e. Apologists, Biblical literalists, the "ID" crowd, many Evangelicals, etc] often make efforts to see just how far they can establish their religion [and refute evolution] upon the principles of reason. They paint, in the most magnificent colors, the order, beauty, and wise arrangement of the universe; and then ask, if such a glorious display of intelligence could be the result of a random arrangement of atoms, or if random chance could produce such an outcome.
I will not examine the soundness of this argument here [Although I will be personally refuting it during my next "Sunday Sermon"]. For now, I will assume that it is a solid argument. Instead I will prove - from this same reasoning - that the idea of divine intervention, the afterlife, and virtually any other claim about any deity is entirely speculative, and unjustifiable.
Now then, it has been established that the chief argument for the existence of a deity is derived from the order of nature. It has been argued that nature is so complex, that it would be ludicrous to claim that random chance and/or natural selection could account for all of its subtle nuances. This argument is clearly drawn from effects to causes. From the order found in the work, you infer that there must have been forethought in the workman.
When we look at any particular effect, and assume that there must have been a particular cause, we must keep the cause in proportion to the effect, and we can never ascribe any qualities to the cause, except for those that are exactly sufficient to produce the observed effect. For example, lets assume that we have two weights, one is ten ounces, and the other is an unknown weight. We put both on the arms of a scale, and watch the arm with the ten ounce weight flop upward. From this we know that the other weight must be more than ten ounces (otherwise it would never have been able to cause the other arm to lift up), but we have no reason to claim that the weight must be more than 100 ounces. To make any claim besides "It must be heavier than ten ounces" can only be speculation, and reason cannot justify it.
The rule holds whether the cause is natural law, or an intelligent deity. If the cause is only known (or inferred) from the effect, we can never give the cause any qualities beyond those that are necessary to produce the effect. Similarly, we cannot turn around and ascribe new effects to the inferred cause, beyond the effect that we started from. For example, no one could look at a painting by Zeuxis of Heraclea, and know just from that painting that he was a skilled sculptor and architect. We could look at the painting and infer that there must be a painter, but we could never say, "well there was a painter, therefore he was a sculptor and architect as well". We could speculate and say that he may have been a sculptor, but it would only be speculation and could not be proven through reason or logic.
Therefore, if we assume that a god is the author of existence, it follows that it possesses only the precise degree of power, intelligence, and benevolence required to bring about the universe as it currently is, but nothing farther can be proved. Any additional qualities that we ascribe to god must therefore be exaggeration, flattery, or wild speculation.
As an example of the above rule, many religions have a golden age, or a "garden of eden" type of scenario in which the universe was perfect, and without the wickedness and disorder that are easily observed in the world. This perfect world is imagined to accommodate the belief that this god is all powerful and without flaw. However if your only evidence of this divinity is the order of the world as it currently exists (wickedness and disorder included), there is no reason to suppose that this deity is all-good.
An incredible amount of effort has been put into working out the problem of how there can be evil in the world when god is all good. While some of the proposed explanations are better than others, the question remains of why these attributes are ascribed to the cause (the deity) when they do not appear in the effect (the world as we know it). Why torture your brain to justify ideas which - for all you know - may be entirely imaginary, and which are nowhere to be found in the course of nature?
If you think that the order of the world is proof of an intelligent cause, it is allowable for you to draw an inference concerning the existence of this deity, but that is all the further you can go without abandoning logic and speculating wildly.
[End of Hume's argument]
To put it another way,
"The atheist proposition is the following, most of the time: it may not be said that there is no god, it may be said that there is no reason to think that there is one… You may wish to be a deist… and you may not wish to abandon the idea that there must be some sort of first or proximate cause, or prime mover of the known and observable world and universe. But even if you can get yourself to that position - which we unbelievers maintain is always subject to better, and more perfect, and more elegant explanations, even if you can get yourself to that position - all your work is still ahead of you. To go from being a deist to a theist, in other words to someone who says 'god cares about you, knows who you are, minds what you do, answers your prayers, cares which bits of your penis or clitoris you saw away or have sawn away for you, minds who you go to bed with and in what way, minds what holy days you observe, minds what you eat, minds what positions you use for pleasure' all your work is still ahead of you, and lots of luck. Because… there's no one who could move from the first position to the second." ~ Christopher Hitchens
In short, even if you choose to discount and ignore the vast amount of scientific literature concerning the Big Bang, and the origin of life. Even if you choose to ignore everything we've learned in the past century or so, and assert that it is simply too unlikely to have happened by chance, and that it must have been done by an intelligent deity. You can go no further. You cannot prove - through the use of reason or logic - that this deity has ever made itself known to human kind, you cannot prove that it has any desires for how we should behave, you cannot prove that it has a place for us after death, you cannot make any claims about the deity's character, you cannot even prove that it was the same deity that created both the universe and life. All of that is speculation that cannot be reached by any logical process. Even the name of the deity (or deities) is a subject of speculation.
Thus if we were to teach "Intelligent Design" in a classroom, without engaging in any sort of speculation, the lecture would be as follows:
"Because the universe is so seemingly well put together and orderly, some people hypothesize that it must have been created by at least one intelligent being. This being or beings must have been powerful enough to create all matter, and intelligent enough to put it together into a functioning cosmos. Beyond this, we know nothing about when this being or beings existed, what its/their origin is, whether or not this being or beings still exists, what this being or being's character either is or was, why, when, or how this being or beings created all of this, or any other information about this being or beings. Numerous religions claim to possess this information, but all of this information is based on speculation, and cannot be proven by the use of reason, logic, or the scientific method.
"Now then, moving on to established science…"In closing, if Intelligent Design wants to get itself into the science classroom, all it has to do is scrub itself clean of all speculation… which unfortunately for ID, seems to be all that it has...
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