The Logical Atheist

One would have supposed that after having brought temporal death into the world by [Adam and Eve's] transgression, and after having corrupted every moral principle of the human heart, the contrivers of the scheme might have been contented, without annexing to this crime any other fatal consequences; but fanaticism and superstition delight in murder, misery, and eternal fire; and to this flaming lake I wish them a speedy passage, never more to rise to insult the dignity, or destroy the happiness of the human race. To punish the temporary and finite crimes of a finite life with eternal fire, would be to relinquish every principle of distributive justice, and to act like an arbitrary and malevolent tyrant. All the sins that ever have been committed do not deserve this unlimited severity of punishment; and to attribute to one solitary infraction of a moral law these terrible consequences, is to lose sight of infinite benevolence and eternal justice. It is to represent the God of Nature...

[T]his doctrine, called original sin, is, in the first place, totally impossible, and in the second place, that it is as immoral and unjust, as the Creator is righteous and benevolent. The virtues and the vices of intelligent beings are not of a transferable but of a personal nature. In a moral point of view, the amiable or useful qualities of one man cannot become those of another, neither can the vices of one be justifiably punished in the person of another. Every man is accountable for himself; and when he can take no cognizance of the intentions or actions of any other man, how can he be justly responsible for their injurious effects, or applauded for any benefits resulting from them? If Adam or any other man, who lived several thousand years ago, was guilty of an immoral conduct, what has that to do with the moral condition of the present generation? Is a man to become criminal before he has existed? or, is he to be criminated afterwards, by the immoral conduct of those who lived ...

A hardcore skeptic, one that David Hume would call an "excessive," or (unmitigated)  Pyrrhonian , skeptic, would not ask, "How do you know P is true?" Rather he would ask, "Why should I believe anything put forth as evidence for P?" The first question acknowledges the possibility of knowledge and hence is not the question of a philosophical skeptic. The second denies or at least seriously doubts that any knowledge is possible. That is skepticism (in all its self-contradictory glory).

I don't know how I recognize faces I have seen many times before (though specialists may understand this to some extent). But who would insist that since that is the case, I have no grounds confidently thinking that I indeed  do  recognize such faces? Or who would say that until I  do  understand, I should restrain my confidence in my reasonably reliable ability to recognize faces? Gilbert Ryle referred to this distinction as knowing   how versus knowing that . It's a distinction we ignore at our folly.

Should it here be asked me ... whether I be really one of those sceptics, who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in any thing possest of any measures of truth and falshood; I should reply, that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I, nor any other person was ever sincerely and constantly of that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontroulable necessity has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connexion with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long, as we are awake, or seeing the surrounding bodies, when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine. Whoever has taken the pains to refute the cavils of this total scepticism, has really disputed without an antagonist, and endeavoured by arguments to establish a faculty, which nature has antecedently implanted in the mind, and rend...

For here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigour. We need only ask such a sceptic, What his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer. A Copernican or Ptolemaic, who supports each his different system of astronomy, may hope to produce a conviction, which will remain constant and durable, with his audience. A Stoic or Epicurean displays principles, which may not be durable, but which have an effect on conduct and behaviour. But a Pyrrhonian cannot expect, that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind: or if it had, that its influence would be beneficial to society. On the contrary, he must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge anything, that all human life must perish, were his principles universally and steadily to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately c...

I hear skeptical atheists (as opposed to the logical variety) laud David Hume, the great 18-century Scottish philosopher, who is thought to have been a thoroughgoing skeptic. Hume famously wrote that "reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." So I wonder whether these atheists would endorse this passage from Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding , section 12, part 1, in which he criticizes Descartes's proposed path to knowledge: There is a species of scepticism, antecedent to all study and philosophy, which is much inculcated by Des Cartes and others, as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgement. It recommends an universal doubt, not only of all our former opinions and principles, but also of our very faculties; of whose veracity, say they, we must assure ourselves, by a chain of reasoning, deduced from some original principle, which cannot possib...