Not!
Helm writes:
"Hume wrote his atheistic treatise Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, but
then stuck it away in a drawer. His reason for not publishing it was very like
some of the criticisms leveled against Nicholas Wade recently, namely that
these ideas, even if true will have a negative effect on important elements of
society."
I always relish on the fact that the very Scots surname "Hume" was originally
(and by myself, still) spelt (or spelled, as Geary prefers), "Home" -- as in
"Home is where the heart is". In Scots, "Home" is pronounced "Hume", and so
Hume changed his Home to his Hume. And so, to use a bad pun we can say that
Hume is where the Hart is -- H. L. A. Hart wrote extensively on David Hume.
Note that the title is "Dialogues concerning Natural Religion," where I think
the key word is "natural". -- Very Oxonian. The Oxonians distinguished back
then between the chair of
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY (now Science)
and the chair of TRANSNATURAL (or metaphysical) philosophy -- the Waynflete
chair.
Wilde, an Oxonian benefactor (not Oscar -- Speranza's son), instituted a number
of lectures at Oxford: the Wilde readership in mental philosophy, and the Wilde
lectures in natural theology.
A. J. P. Kenny, a Catholic from Liverpool, and once president of the British
Academy, gave them, and the result was a slim essay, "The god of the
philosophers". I think that when you use 'natural', we implicate,
'philosophical'. But what is philosophical about religion? Does Home just mean
plain 'natural religion'.
Incidentally, when I quoted from pseudo-Dionysius's "Of the names of the gods,"
it should be pointed out that perhaps the closest here were the Romans, with
their Jupiter. Geary was mentioning ways of referring to God. And then there's
"By Jove!"
The etymology seems to be 'deus-pater' -- i.e. God the Father. So, even though
the Romans provided a VERY HUMAN face (and body, in general) to GIOVE
(IUPITER), the idea was that they KNEW that he was God, and the Father.
Short/Lewis's Latin Dictionary, under 'deus', gives some interesting etymology:
m. root in Sanscr.: dī, div- (dyu-), to gleam: dyāus (Gr. ζεύς -- i.e. "Zeus"),
heaven: dévas, God; cf. Gr. διος, εὐδία; but NOT θεός [so "theos" is a red
herring here], Curt. Gr. etym. 503 sqq.. a god, a deity (for syn. cf.: divus,
numen).
Home was possible C. of S. -- this is how I abbreviate Church of Scotland. As
Sellars and Yeatman ("1066 and all that") write, while the earliest Englishmen
worshipped odd gods by the names of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday,
they finally became, thanks to St. Augustine, "C. of E.", which was "a very
good thing," since, they add, "England was bound to be C. of E.". It's
different with Home.
In America, there is a different implicature to "Episcopalian," although
Anglicans and Episcopalians possibly relate. Or not, of course.
When Wilde instituted the lectures IN NATURAL THEOLOGY, the implicature seems
to be that there is a TRANSNATURAL THEOLOGY. This is a reverse implicature,
since when it comes to 'philosophy' simpliciter, 'natural philosophy', as
taught by Oxford then, is now science, and it's TRANSNATURAL philosophy
(metaphysical philosophy) that is philosophical. The idea seems to be that
'transnatural theology' depends on dogma only?
Another odd implicature was Grice. When he coined "philosophical eschatology,"
he very cleary wanted to distinguish is from 'theological eschatology'. For
Grice, "philosophical eschatology", the title of one of his essays in "Way of
Words", is concerned with transcategorial barriers, analogy, metaphor, and
such. It is a branch of metaphysics.
'Tis true that Home called his thing "natural RELIGION," not theology, and the
implicature seems to be that a population may have a religion, but not a
theology. Or not, of course.
Cheers,
Speranza
