In a Strange Country

Hume argues that priests feign knowledge of the strange theological country they supposedly represent and so are hypocrites, conceited because they think themselves better than the multitude whose minds they fill with superstitions and keep in ignorance to encourage their veneration as envoys from God. They thus work against the public interest in having an informed and educated citizenry. The nub of his concern, as he wrote in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, was that when we consider theological matters, we have moved beyond “the more solid and natural arguments, derived from the senses and experience,” and must be more than “apprehensive, that we have here gone quite beyond the reach of our faculties.”

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• Traité de la nature humaine

  David Hume•Anthropologie médicale en société…•2007

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