David Hume and the Naturalistic Origins of Religion
David Hume (1711–1776), in his Natural History of Religion (1757), presented a theory about the origins of religious belief that has since become widely influential. Writing before the advent of Darwinian evolution, Hume was nevertheless part of an intellectual movement that sought to explain human culture, including religion, in purely naturalistic terms. His account rejected the idea that religion was originally revealed by God or that it arose from rational reflection on the order of the universe. Instead, he proposed that religion was a product of human psychology—specifically, the fear of the unknown and the attempt to control nature through imagined divine forces.
Polytheism Before Monotheism
One of Hume’s central claims was that the earliest forms of religion were not monotheistic but polytheistic. In contrast to traditions that argue for an original belief in one God that later degraded into polytheism and idolatry, Hume asserted that early humans, overwhelmed by the vast and unpredictable forces of nature, personified these forces as multiple gods or spirits. The sun, storms, rivers, and earthquakes were not understood as operating by natural laws but were instead seen as the actions of conscious beings. This early polytheism was deeply anthropomorphic—gods were imagined with human-like passions, emotions, and even moral failings. Rather than being wholly transcendent and perfectly just, these deities were fickle, vengeful, and sometimes even comically flawed, much like the Olympian gods of Greek mythology.
Fear as the Root of Religion
For Hume, the root of all religious belief was fear. The primitive mind, unable to predict or understand the workings of nature, lived in constant anxiety. Thunder and lightning, disease and famine, victory and defeat in war—all of these were attributed to the will of unseen forces. Early humans, desperate for protection, sought to appease these imagined deities through sacrifices, rituals, and prayers. Unlike later theological systems that emphasized reasoned arguments for God’s existence, early religion was born not from philosophy but from desperation. It was a psychological mechanism to cope with uncertainty rather than a rational or revealed truth.
The Transition to Monotheism
Although polytheism was the earliest form of religious belief, Hume argued that monotheism emerged later, often as a product of philosophical reflection or political influence. As societies grew more organized and rulers sought greater unity, the idea of a single, supreme deity became more appealing. Kings and emperors, seeing themselves as earthly representatives of divine power, encouraged belief in a single god who mirrored their own centralized authority. Philosophers, dissatisfied with the crude and contradictory nature of polytheism, argued that there must be one supreme being responsible for the order of the universe. However, Hume was deeply skeptical of monotheism, believing that while it had a more sophisticated intellectual basis than polytheism, it also led to greater intolerance. A single god demanded exclusive worship, which often resulted in religious persecution, dogmatism, and conflicts between different sects.
Hume’s Skepticism Toward Religious Belief
At the core of Hume’s Natural History of Religion was his broader skepticism about religious claims. He saw religious belief as a product of human imagination, shaped by cultural and psychological needs rather than by divine revelation or rational inquiry. His work laid the groundwork for later thinkers, such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Émile Durkheim, and Sigmund Freud, who sought to explain religion in entirely human terms. Hume’s argument was not simply that religion evolved over time but that its development reflected the psychological weaknesses of humanity—our tendency toward fear, our need for control, and our willingness to believe in comforting illusions.
By proposing that religion arose from human superstition rather than divine revelation, Hume directly opposed traditional religious narratives that claimed an original monotheism that later degraded into idolatry. His work remains one of the most influential early attempts to explain religion without reference to God, shaping modern debates about faith, reason, and the role of religious belief in human history.
The Degradation of Original Monotheism: From Creator to Creation
The history of religious belief can be understood as a gradual departure from the original knowledge of the one true God. The ancient texts of religions show an original belief in God the Creator that was exchanged for polytheism. While David Hume argued that religion arose from fear and ignorance, a different and older perspective—rooted in biblical and historical theology—suggests that humanity began with a clear knowledge of God, which was progressively exchanged for idolatry, superstition, and, ultimately, naturalism. Rather than originating in animism and ancestor worship, religion began with the worship of the transcendent Creator and slowly degraded into various philosophical and religious errors, including dualism, polytheism, animism, and materialistic naturalism.
From Monotheism to Dualism and Monism
Original monotheism affirmed that God is transcendent, distinct from creation, and the source of all things. The Creator brought the universe into existence ex nihilo (out of nothing), meaning that the world is not eternal and is entirely dependent upon Him. However, as human societies drifted from this belief, they began to reimagine the nature of reality in ways that blurred the distinction between Creator and creation.
One of the earliest deviations was dualism, which claimed that two opposing forces—often good and evil, light and darkness, or spirit and matter—were eternal and coequal. In this view, creation was not the work of a single, sovereign God but the result of a cosmic struggle between two principles that together formed a unity. Dualistic religions often saw the material world as evil or inferior, the result of a lesser or malevolent force, rather than as the good creation of an all-powerful and holy God.
From dualism, religious thought further degraded into monism, which denied any real distinction between Creator and creation. Monism held that all is one, meaning that the universe itself is divine, eternal, and self-sufficient. This shift eliminated the need for a transcendent God and instead placed divinity within the natural world itself. Monistic religions emphasized immanence over transcendence, leading to pantheistic beliefs in which nature itself was worshiped as a god.
Polytheism and the Deification of Ancestors
As belief in the transcendent Creator faded, early civilizations developed religious systems centered on gods that were essentially glorified versions of human rulers. The great leaders of the first cities—those who built societies, led conquests, or advanced technology—were honored after their deaths. Their descendants, seeking to maintain authority, declared that these ancestors had become gods, ruling from the spiritual realm. Over time, these deified ancestors became the gods of polytheistic pantheons, each with a domain over natural forces, war, fertility, or the underworld.
Unlike the transcendent Creator, these gods retained human characteristics: they had families, engaged in conflicts, displayed jealousy, and behaved immorally. Male and female gods produced divine offspring, waged war, and demanded sacrifices. Their moral failings reflected human corruption rather than divine holiness.
This shift was described in biblical terms as humanity “exchanging the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:23). Rather than worshiping the true God, people turned to idols made in the image of creation itself.
Animism, Demon Worship, and Religious Corruption
Polytheism further degenerated into animism and spirit worship, where gods became less like exalted human rulers and more like mystical forces inhabiting the world. As people sought security in a world filled with suffering and uncertainty, they performed rituals to appease spirits believed to control nature.
In many cases, these religious practices took on dark and perverse forms. Fertility cults incorporated ritual prostitution, and human sacrifice was offered to ensure divine favor. The gods became increasingly identified with demonic forces that demanded blood, suffering, and perversion as a means of maintaining order in the world. This phase of religious history saw some of the most grotesque distortions of true worship—practices that sought to manipulate the divine rather than submit to the transcendent God.
The Rise of Naturalism: The Rejection of the Transcendent
In reaction to these degrading religious forms, some thinkers rejected the supernatural entirely. Rather than return to God the Creator, they sought to explain the world purely in terms of material causes. This shift marked the rise of naturalism, the belief that only the physical world exists and that all events can be explained through natural processes alone.
The first known naturalist philosophers, beginning with Thales of Miletus (c. 624–546 BC), attempted to identify the fundamental substance from which everything was made. Thales argued that all things ultimately came from water. Later philosophers suggested other elements: Heraclitus claimed that fire was the basis of all things, Anaximenes proposed air, and Empedocles combined all four classical elements—earth, air, fire, and water—into a single system. Some thinkers proposed a “fifth essence” (quintessence) as the ultimate reality.
These naturalists followed a consistent pattern: denying anything beyond the material world and reducing existence to some fundamental substance. Instead of acknowledging a transcendent Creator who gives meaning and order to all things, they sought to explain human life, morality, and the cosmos purely in terms of material processes. This marked the final stage of religious degradation—where even the spirits and gods of polytheism were abandoned in favor of a world without divine order.
Philosophical Attempts to Explain Dualism
The so-called Axial Age saw the great thinkers of each tradition attempt to give their religions coherent and systematic explanations. As religious beliefs developed, some thinkers sought to provide a more analytical explanation for the dualistic worldview that had replaced original monotheism. The Greek philosophers are the best known examples, particularly Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC), who introduced systems of thought that sought to reconcile the eternal nature of existence with the evident change and imperfection of the material world.
Plato argued that reality consists of two distinct realms: the world of material things, which is constantly changing, and the world of Forms or Ideas, which is eternal and unchanging. He believed that abstract concepts—such as “triangle” or “justice”—exist independently in a higher, non-material realm and that the physical world is merely an imperfect reflection of these perfect Forms.
Plato also introduced the concept of the Demiurge, a divine craftsman who shaped the chaotic material world by imitating the Forms. However, the Demiurge did not create matter itself; rather, the material world was co-eternal with the Demiurge. In this view, the universe was not created ex nihilo but existed alongside a divine principle that merely gave it order. Likewise, the human soul was eternal, preexisting the body and undergoing reincarnation until it achieved justice and was freed from the material realm, which Plato saw as the source of suffering and evil.
Aristotle’s system differed slightly, but it remained within the framework of dualism. He posited the existence of an Unmoved Mover, a pure actuality that set all things in motion. However, unlike the personal God of monotheism, Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover was impersonal and unaware of humanity. The material world, according to Aristotle, was co-eternal with the Unmoved Mover, and everything in existence was striving to achieve its fullest potential by imitating this perfect actuality.
Both Plato’s and Aristotle’s systems attempted to explain existence without appealing to a transcendent, personal Creator who made all things from nothing. Instead, they offered philosophical justifications for a universe that had always existed. This placed them in fundamental logical conflict with theism, which maintains that God is both the Creator and the Sustainer of all things, existing apart from and above creation.
The Preservation of Monotheism: Israel Amidst a Pagan World
Among the ancient civilizations, the Israelites were the only people who continued to hold to monotheism. While other nations embraced polytheism, ancestor worship, animism, and later philosophical monism and dualism, Israel remained distinct in affirming the one true God, the Creator of all things. The foundation of this belief is recorded in Genesis 1–3, where Moses provides an account of creation, the fall of humanity, and the promise of redemption.
In this account, God alone has existed from eternity. Unlike the myths of surrounding cultures, which described the world as eternal or as the product of warring deities, Genesis declares that God created the heavens and the earth ex nihilo—out of nothing. Humanity was formed not as divine emanations or trapped spirits seeking liberation from the material world, but as a body-soul unity, made in the image of God. The material world itself was originally very good, not the source of evil as later Greek and Eastern philosophies would claim.
Sin entered the world when humans attempted to put themselves in the place of God, determining good and evil for themselves without reference to their Creator. This rebellion did not merely distort human nature; it also corrupted the way people thought about God, leading them to exchange the worship of the one true Creator for idolatry. From this point forward, history is marked by two competing groups: those who reject God and attempt to suppress all knowledge of Him and those who continue to worship Him in truth.
The Calling of Israel and the Knowledge of God
God’s response to humanity’s rebellion was not to abandon creation but to call a people through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. Abraham was chosen to be the father of a great nation, Israel, which was given the task of preserving the knowledge of the true God in the midst of a pagan world. This calling was formalized through the covenant at Sinai, where God gave the Law to Moses and established the Tabernacle as the place of worship. Later, this would become the Temple in Jerusalem, the one location on earth where the Creator was rightly worshiped.
The sacrificial system, central to Israel’s worship, taught the necessity of vicarious atonement—the idea that sin requires a substitutionary sacrifice to restore humanity’s relationship with God. This stood in stark contrast to the religious practices of Israel’s neighbors, where sacrifices were often attempts to manipulate the gods for personal gain, rather than acknowledgments of human sin and the need for divine mercy.
Despite Israel’s unique role in preserving monotheism, the surrounding nations—Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans—were aware of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Temple but largely ignored them. Instead, they pursued their own philosophical and religious traditions, which increasingly embraced monism and dualism rather than acknowledging a transcendent Creator.
Jerusalem and Athens: A Clash of Worldviews
This fundamental divide between biblical monotheism and pagan philosophy has often been framed in terms of the relationship between Jerusalem and Athens. One way this is famously asked is: “What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”—a question that captures the tension between biblical revelation and Greek philosophy. But this is not merely a conflict between faith and reason, as some have misunderstood it. Rather, it is a conflict between two fundamentally different views of reality:
- Theism – The biblical teaching that the use of reason show creation clearly reveals God as the transcendent, personal Creator who is distinct from His creation and has communicated truth to humanity.
- Monism and Dualism – The philosophical systems that deny the existence of a personal Creator, asserting instead that all is one (monism) or that the world consists of two opposing but eternal forces that together make up a unity (dualism).
Greek philosophy, especially in its later developments, rejected the idea of a transcendent Creator and instead proposed that reality is self-existent and eternal. The physical world, rather than being created by God, was seen either as an illusion, an emanation of some impersonal principle, or as an arena in which conflicting forces struggled for dominance. These ideas persisted through Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, and later philosophical traditions that sought to explain existence without reference to a personal, creating God.
Thus, the contrast between Jerusalem and Athens is not simply about religion versus philosophy; it is about two competing visions of reality—one in which God is the Creator and Lord of all, and one in which nothing is transcendent, and all things reduce to an impersonal substance, unmoved mover, or a dualism where good and evil are in eternal conflict. This difference remains at the heart of debates about the nature of existence, the purpose of life, and the foundation of knowledge.
The history of religion is the story of this ongoing struggle.
The Historical Pattern
The historical pattern is straightforward: original monotheism was exchanged for systems of belief that denied the transcendent creator and instead feared spirits in nature or gods on mountains. Dualism blurred the Creator-creation distinction, polytheism deified human ancestors, animism sank into terrifying superstition, and naturalism ultimately denied the spiritual realm altogether. Yet, throughout these changes, the fundamental impulse remained the same: the attempt to understand the world without reference to God the creator.
Rather than arising from fear and ignorance, as Hume suggested, religion began with the knowledge of God but was progressively distorted by humans as it regraded from original monotheism into polytheism. The question is which view is coherent which is a question for Reason to answer. The task of theology and philosophy is to use Reason to test these presuppositions: All is one or only God is eternal.
Leave a Reply