update 3/13/98
Well I did get some responses from my previous page (the first) click here to read it.
Not too many responses of course, but I want to thank those who did respond negative or positive/and believe it or not that was the range.
I was extolling the glories of David Hume, or at least trying to and denouncing religion-the usual. I really didn't get too far with D hume I must admit, I said a few things, but they are his general claim to fame. D Hume the greatest Empiricist. I am going to continue my blind leap into the ever sharp legacy of D Hume.
Let's first consider empiricism itself. What can we know? How did this term come about and what is it's importance. It should be stated I suppose that the first person to really apply this concept was John Locke (maybe Hobbes). Philosophy had come to a dead end and rightfully so. Philosophy from Socrates to Descartes was filled with assertions with absolutely no logical validity. Just because I say this or that it's true or God did it or as Flip Wilson said "The devil made me do it". All this crap was believed-and still is! Locke had to sit back and say "What the hell do we really know?" Turns out not much-but if anything is known it comes from our sense perceptions only. We cannot presume to have any knowledge other than what our senses tell us. The importance of this is staggering! Not only is the concept of a God meaningless but a philosophy based on a belief in a God is null & void and so is anything else that doesn't have a base in sense experience.
The great atheist and skeptic D Hume was the master of this philosophical breakthrough and brought it to its peak of thought. His methodical and thorough examination of what we can really know (empirically) shatters rationalism and all other philosophical positions that believe true knowledge comes from the mind only. This does bring man down to earth (as contemporary science also did) and exposes the irrational falsehoods of superstition, religion, etc. A renaisance of thought that leaves the Italian one of 300 years earlier in the dust. (Alright the art might have been better). Reading "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion", you'll see the man at work employing with ease his attack on religious belief, although somewhat toned down for the time period. Yet his intentions were very obvious to an educated reader.
I had previously stated Hume's position on cause and effect, one of the three ways we interpret impressions, and I tried to say that Hume stressed the fact that cause is an impression and effect is an impression, yet there is no impression in between. Example: ball (cause) hits other ball-other ball moves (effect)----So the only way we would ever assume a ball would move when hit by another is by habit of thought-not impression. Consequently it should be no surprise if the ball was hit and both just stay there unaffected.--This is really emphasized by D Hume and I welcome somebody out there in cyberland to give me their opinion as to why this was a major point of Humes!
Well it certainly was a hell of a time, The Age of Reason that is. I think it is safe to say mankind jumped up a few pegs-The first time that knowledge (books) were available to a majority of people and not either an elite few or the religious orthodoxy. Gutenburg had finally done it! France was the center of this awakening but obviously the buzz was all around Europe. Helvetius, Diderot, Voltaire, Big names.
I'm going to leave with this quote by Baron d'Holbach form his book "Good Sense Without God".--This stuff is hard to find --but a more than strident librarian ordered it for me and it was worth the wait.
"Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity: he has been taught stories about invisible powers upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Religious opinions are ancient monuments of ignorance, credulity, cowardice, and, barbarism of their ancestors."
--see you at the next Promise keepers rally
P.S.---I am quite aware of the Kant problem--That damn Kant! Now there's some tough reading-- I often think a joke is being played on me in pretending I understand a little of what the big K is putting down. Suggestions for reading welcome. Kant for Dummies maybe?.