Three Essays on Religion - Paperback

by John Stuart Mill (Author)

The Design argument is wholly grounded on experience. Certain qualities, it is alleged, are found to be characteristic of such things as are made by an intelligent mind for a purpose. The order of Nature, or some considerable parts of it, exhibit these qualities in a remarkable degree. We are entitled, from this great similarity in the effects, to infer similarity in the cause, and to believe that things which it is beyond the power of man to make, but which resemble the works of man in all but power, must also have been made by Intelligence, armed with a power greater than human. -from Theism One of the foremost figures of Western intellectual thought in the late 19th century, John Stuart Mill offered up examinations of human rights, morality, personal and societal responsibilities, and the striving for individual happiness that continue to impact our philosophies, both private and political, to this day. In these three essays, not published until 1874, a year after the author's death, Mill explores concepts of religious belief that have shaped modern atheism and humanism for more than a century. In "Nature," "The Utility of Religion," and "Theism," Mill criticizes idealized and uncritical belief in a benevolent and omnipotent deity, challenges traditional assumptions for the existence of God, and challenges believers to come to a new understanding of the purpose of religion that puts the needs of people first. Powerfully and compellingly argued, this is essential reading for those wishing to understand the basis for today's critiques of religion.

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In these three essays, "Nature", "The Utility of Religion", and "Theism", published between 1850 and 1870, English social and political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) gives his most sustained analysis of religious belief. Though not prepared to abandon the idea of an overall design in nature, Mill nonetheless argues that its violence and capriciousness militate against moral ends in nature's workings. Moreover, any designer of such a world as we experience it cannot be all powerful and all good, for nature is "too clumsily made and capriciously governed". However, since humankind, by and large, cannot, it seems, be deprived of religion, Mill espouses what he calls a "religion of humanity", whose concepts of justice, morality, and altruism are based on classical models and on the New Testament Sermon on the Mount rather than on the vindictive God of the Old Testament and the world-hating doctrines of St. Paul.