RELS 205 LECTURE 4.1

Voltaire [1694-1778]

David Hume 1711-1776

Cause and effect

To me, there appear to be only three principles of connection among ideas, namely resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect....

Experience

What is foundation of all our reasoning and conclusions concerning that relation? It may be replied in one word, experience.

Problem

Where am I, or what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court? … I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable … A Treatise of Human Nature (1739 )

Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779)

If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter, who framed so complicated, useful and beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we entertain, when we find him a stupid mechanic, …

World like a Ship

Sailing Ship

Shipbuilding

Shipbuilding

The Shipbuilder

Polytheism

A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing a city, in framing a commonwealth: Why may not several Deities combine in contriving and framing a world?

Houses

Edinburgh

John Knox(11513-1572)

House

A Veggie

If the universe bears a greater likeness to animal bodies and to vegetables than to the works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than that of the latter, and its origin ought rather to be ascribed to generation or vegetation than to reason or design...

The World as Organism

World like a cabbage

Miracles

Our evidence, then, for the truth of the Christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses; because, even in the first authors of our religion, it was no greater …

Belief?

Rule for belief

A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event …

The Law of Nature

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined …

First Rule for testing miracles

Firstly … there is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good-sense, education, and learning, as to secure us against all delusions in themselves … 

Men of Good Sense

Second Rule

Secondly … The maxim, by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasoning, is , that the objects, of which we have no experience, resemble those, of which we have not; that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable …

Sunrise

Third test

Thirdly. It forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations, that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations …

The Zulu

Alan Gardiner (1794-1851)

Zulu:Highly intelligentScepticalTest everything

E.E. Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973)

Before the Enlightenment

Ghanaian, Anton Wilhelm Amo, gained a considerable reputation as a rationalist philosopher and in 1737 was appointed lecturer (Privatdozent) at the German University of Halle.

Africans in Europe

H.W. Debrimmer, The Presence and Prestige of Africans in Europe, Basil, Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 1979

Voltaire [1694-1778]

Voltaire on Africans

“The NEGRO race is a species of men as different from ours as the breed of spaniels is from that of greyhounds ... if their understanding is not of a different nature from ours, it is at least greatly inferior. They are not capable of any great application or association of ideas, and seem formed neither of the advantages nor abuses or our philosophy.”

[Voltaire 1901: XXIX-240-242].

David Hume 1711-1776

David Hume 1711-1776

“I suspect that negroes ... be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white ...” [Hume 1906:152-152].

Rousseau [1712-1778]

Rousseau on Blacks

“they go naked, have no dwellings, and lack all superfluities which we think so necessary ... Their children are slowly and with difficulty taught to walk ... Savage man … must accordingly begin with purely animal functions ... being destitute of every species of intelligence … his desires never go beyond his physical wants … food, a female, and sleep …”[Rousseau 1966:168 and 171]

Kant (1724-1804)

Kant on Race

“On the different Races of Mankind” (Von den Verschiedenen Rassen der Menschen), he appears to think that racial mixture is to be discouraged and laid a highly theoretical basis for segregation [Kant 1922:445-460, first published 1775].

Hegel 1770-1831

Hegel on Africa

The Negro … exhibits the natural man in his completely wild and untamed state. We must lay aside all thought of reverence … moral sentiments are quite weak, or more strictly speaking, non-existent ... At this point we leave Africa to mention it no more. For it is no historical part of the World ...”[Hegel 1944:93 & 99]

Apparitions of MaryThe New Cathedral Of The Virgin Mary At Zeitoun, EgyptFacing The Apparition Church.

Began April 2nd 1968 and continue.

http://www.zeitun-eg.org/stmaridx.htm

Other apparitions

http://www.marypages.comhttp://www.apparitions.org/

Healing miracles