Islam clearly teaches that “There is to be no compulsion in matters of religion.” In the 7th century Muslim armies brought vast territories under Muslim political control, but conversion to Islam was voluntary and was not imposed “by the sword.” This is a Western myth. Virtues of the oneness of God and related matters of truth can be assessed in the unconscious thought. Nor can we attribute unity to the original cause of the universe on the basis of any analogy to human artifacts such as houses; as they are often built by a number of people working together. 1) There is an analogy or resemblance between the world and man-made machines in respect of their shared features of order, structure, harmony and the evident way that their parts are suited to perform some function or serve certain ends. There are fundamental beliefs in both Islam and Judaism that are likewise denied by most of Christianity (e.g., the restrictions on pork consumption found in Jewish and Islamic dietary law), and key beliefs of Islam, Christianity, and the Baháʼí Faith not shared by Judaism (e.g., the prophetic and Messianic position of Jesus).

Only Christianity has more followers. Perhaps, therefore, there is more than one God involved in the creation of the universe? There is, therefore, no contradiction involved in denying that God exists. God’s nature, therefore, remains altogether “mysterious and incomprehensible” from the point of view of human understanding. In this way, it is Philo’s position that all we know about God is that he exists (qua cause of the universe) but beyond this we have no idea or understanding of his nature or attributes. When there is a close resemblance or “exact similarity” among objects then we may infer a similar cause. There is, however, a vast difference between these effects. We cannot, for example, attribute any thing infinite to God based on our observation and experience of finite effects. Beyond this, we have no experience at all of its cause. These other analogies do not suggest that the cause of this world is something like mind or human intelligence. On the one hand, theists such as Cleanthes want to insist that the analogy between this world and human productions is not so slight and maintains, on this basis, that God in some significant degree resembles human intelligence (D, 3.7-8/154-5). The difficulty with this view, as we have seen, is that it leads to “a degradation of the supreme being” by way of an anthropomorphism which from the standpoint of traditional theism involves idolatry and is no better than atheism (D,2.15/146,3.12-3/156, 4.4-5/160, 5.11/168). On the other hand, if we follow mystics, such as Demea, we end up no better off than sceptics and atheists who claim that we know nothing of God’s nature and attributes and that everything about him is “unknown and unintelligible” (D, 4.1/158). Hume’s sceptical technique in the Dialogues, therefore, is to play one group of theists off against the other, showing that both their positions end up as nothing better or different from the atheism that they both claim to abhor.

It follows that there is little or no basis for assuming that Z resembles something like Xs (i.e., human mind or intelligence). There are, however, several passages in the final Part of the Dialogues (XII) that suggest that Philo (Hume) reverses or at least moderates his position – making some significant concessions to Cleanthes’s position. The fundamental difficulty with Cleanthes’s example is, however, that it suggests a non-traditional, anthropomorphic conception of God’s nature that cannot be overcome other than by arbitrary stipulation. The mistake that Hume particularly warns against, in respect of the issue of God’s perfection, is that we cannot begin from the assumption that God is perfect, then assume that his creation is worthy of him, and then argue, on this basis, that we have evidence that God is perfect. If so, what sense can we make of God’s simplicity and immutability (D, 4.3/159)? Why should we not assume that God has other human features such as passions and sentiments, or physical features such as a mouth or eyes (D, 3.13/156, 5.11/168)? In all cases that we have experience of, human intelligence is embodied, so why not also assume that God has a body (D, 6.4-5/171-2)? What this plainly manifests is that the anthropomorphic conception of God, as defended by Cleanthes, reflects an egocentric outlook and delusions about the significance of human life in the universe.

Moreover, our experience of this effect is limited to a small part or a “narrow corner” of it – from which we must make conjectures about the whole. Christians by census profession now make up 44.5% of the country, down from 46.7% in 2006 and 63.8% in 1996. For the first time ever, there are less than 2 million census Christians in NZ. If God is both willing and able to prevent evil then why is there evil in the world? I was in the office, not expecting them, and they came up looking for me, I was right there, and they asked me for Kimmie Weeks and I said “Never seen the guy, don’t know where he is.” Then immediately after they started deploying troops at my home, they shut down my school and deployed soldiers there. Then he is malevolent (or at least less than perfectly good). Isaiah 61:1 The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.