Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion — Selections
Hume was an Edinburgh-born philosopher whose empiricism led him to subject religious belief — theodicy included — to scrutiny that most of his contemporaries found liberating or scandalous. His private views almost certainly extended to disbelief in God, though he was careful never to say so in print; blasphemy was still a criminal offense in Britain. His deathbed in 1776 was serene and unrepentant — Adam Smith witnessed and reported it — and the public that had expected a last-minute conversion got none. His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (published posthumously, 1779) give the problem of evil its sharpest philosophical formulation: the evidence of suffering and disorder in the world is simply incompatible with a perfectly good and omnipotent creator.