Reading Comprehension 4

" Voltaire, like many others before and after him, was awed by the order and the beauty of the universe, which he thought pointed to a supreme designer, just as a watch points to a watchmaker. In 1779, a year after Voltaire died, that idea was attacked by David Hume, a cheerful Scottish historian and philosopher, whose way of undermining religion was as arresting for its strategy as it was for its detail. Hume couldn’t have been more different from today's militant atheists.

In his "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion," which was published posthumously, and reports imaginary discussions among three men, Hume prized apart the supposed analogy between the natural world and a designed artifact. Even if the analogy were apt, he pointed out, the most one could infer from it would be a superior craftsman, not an omnipotent and perfect deity. And, he argued, if it is necessary to ask who made the world it must also be necessary to ask who, or what, made that maker. In other words, God is merely the answer that you get if you do not ask enough questions. From the accounts of his friends, his letters, and some posthumous essays, it is clear that Hume had no trace of religion, did not believe in an afterlife, and was particularly disdainful of Christianity. He had a horror of zealotry. Yet his many writings on religion have a genial and even superficially pious tone. He wanted to convince his religious readers, and recognized that only gentle and reassuring persuasion would work. In a telling passage in the "Dialogues," Hume has one of his characters remark that a person who openly proclaimed atheism, being guilty of "indiscretion and imprudence," would not be very formidable.

Hume sprinkled his gunpowder through the pages of the "Dialogues" and left the book primed so that its arguments would, with luck, ignite in his readers' own minds. And he always offered a way out. In "The Natural History of Religion," he undermined the idea that there are moral reasons to be religious, but made it sound as if it were still all right to believe in proofs of God’s existence. In an essay about miracles, he undermined the idea that it is ever rational to accept an apparent revelation from God, but made it sound as if it were still all right to have faith. And in the "Dialogues" he undermined proofs of God's existence, but made it sound as if it were all right to believe on the basis of revelation. As the Cambridge philosopher Edward Craig has put it, Hume never tried to topple all the supporting pillars of religion at once.

In Paris, meanwhile, a number of thinkers began to profess atheism openly. They were the first influential group to do so, and included Denis Diderot, the co-editor of the Enlightenment's great Encyclopédie, and Baron D'Holbach, who hosted a salon of freethinkers. Hume visited them, and made several friends there; they presented him with a large gold medal. But the philosophers were too dogmatic for Hume's taste. To Hume's like-minded friend the historian Edward Gibbon, they suffered from "intolerant zeal." Still, they represented a historical vanguard: explicit attacks on religion as a whole poured forth within the next hundred years.

Since all the arguments against belief have been widely publicized for a long time, today’s militant atheists must sometimes wonder why religion persists. Hitchens says that it is born of fear and probably ineradicable. Harris holds that there are genuine spiritual experiences; having kicked sand in the faces of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, he dives headlong into the surf of Eastern spirituality, encouraging readers to try Buddhist techniques of meditation instead of dangerous creeds. Dawkins devotes a chapter, and Dennett most of his book, to evolutionary accounts of how religion may have arisen and how its ideas spread. It’s thin stuff, and Dennett stresses that these are early days for a biological account of religion. It may, however, be too late for one. If a propensity toward religious belief is "hard-wired" in the brain, as it is sometimes said to be, the wiring has evidently become frayed. This is especially true in rich countries, nearly all of which—Ireland and America are exceptions—have relatively high rates of unbelief.

After making allowances for countries that have, or recently have had, an officially imposed atheist ideology, in which there might be some social pressure to deny belief in God, one can venture conservative estimates of the number of unbelievers in the world today. Reviewing a large number of studies among some fifty countries, Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist at Pitzer College, in Claremont, California, puts the figure at between five hundred million and seven hundred and fifty million. This excludes such highly populated places as Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, and Nigeria, for which information is lacking or patchy. Even the low estimate of five hundred million would make unbelief the fourth-largest persuasion in the world, after Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism. It is also by far the youngest, with no significant presence in the West before the eighteenth century. Who can say what the landscape will look like once unbelief has enjoyed a past as long as Islam's—let alone as long as Christianity's? God is assuredly not on the side of the unbelievers, but history may yet be. "

Q.1. According to the passage, which of the following statements best describes the difference between Voltaire and Hume?

1. Voltaire was in awe of the cosmos whereas Hume was unmoved.

2. Voltaire was daunted by nature while Hume was the mundane historian.

3. Voltaire was a deist and Hume a zealot.

4. Hume disputed Voltaire’s notion of the transcendental originator.

5. Hume affirmed religious theories in a veiled manner unlike Voltaire.

Q.2. Why, according to the passage, does Hume adopt a veneer of complaisance in his writings?

1. Because Hume prized apart the analogy of the supreme craftsman.

2. Because Hume questioned the existence of the perfect deity.

3. Because he was facile in his dissuasion.

4. Because he was disdainful of Christianity.

5. Because he did not believe in an afterlife.

Q.3. According to the third paragraph, Hume’s recurring strategy pointed to his main objective, which was to:

1. Sprinkle enough anti christ ammunition in the public.

2. Instigate readers to rebel against their faith.

3. Kindle the minds of the readers against miracles.

4. Implant moral reasons to believe in God.

5. Innervate and invoke mistrust towards one’s faith.

Q.4. What, according to the author, could be the reason for Hume’s rejection of the intellectuals?

1. That they professed atheism under the garb of knowledge.

2. That they were fearful of intolerance.

3. That they represented a radical religious sect.

4. That the authoritarian liberals were fractious.

5. That they were inciting freethinking.

Q.5. What, according to the passage, is not a reason for the spread of unbelief?

1. The ‘wiring’ has since become frayed.

2. There is an officially imposed ideology.

3. The rich countries are turning atheist.

4. There are genuine spiritual experiences.

5. People are possibly getting biologically turned off.

Passage Analysis

This time we have picked a slightly tough topic to deal with, religion. Religion and philosophy are some of the topics are few are comfortable with, mainly due to the fact that people generally don’t read this kind of stuff. Hence there is always the tendency of CAT to have one passage in one of these topics. Lets try and look at a easier passage in this field.

Explanations

Q.1. 4. Hume disputed Voltaire’s notion of the transcendental originator.

Answer: This has been indicated in the first part of second paragraph itself.

Q.2. 3. Because he was facile in his dissuasion.

Answer: While the other options are factually true, but none of them are the reason for Hume’s adoption of veneer of complaisance in his writings. This becomes clear towards the end of the third paragraph.

Q.3. 5. Innervate and invoke mistrust towards one’s faith.

Answer: Clearly an idea highlighted in the second and the third paragraphs. The other options do point towards religious intolerance, none of them were Hume’s true intentions.

Q.4. 4. That the authoritarian liberals were fractious.

Answer: The fourth paragraph deals with Hume’s rejection of intellectuals. Options 4 is indicated towards the end of the paragraph, while other options are never explicitly mentioned anywhere in the passage.

Q.5. 4. There are genuine spiritual experiences.

Answer: Option 4 would be a reason for the spread of belief, not unbelief. The other options have been mentioned towards the end of the passage indicating the rise of unbelief.

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