# Hume and necessary causation



## Mathetes (Sep 28, 2007)

> The Idea of Necessary Causal Connection
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> Hume begins Chapter VII of the first Enquiry with a hunt for the impression behind our idea of causal power. This has been interpreted as an attempt to specify the parameters of the concept of causation — i.e. what we mean when we deploy causal terms — and the traditional analytical take on Hume’s answer is that it is to be found in the regular succession of certain of our impressions; their ‘constant conjunction’. On this interpretation, Hume is basically saying that when we make statements of the form "X caused Y", or "Y happened because of X", we just mean that X happened, then Y did, and that X-like events always precede Y-like ones.
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David Hume - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've been wondering lately if this challenge to causation poses a problem for the theist. Just about every Christian short of Deists believe in some sort continuing divine causation. And something like the Kalam Cosmological argument relies exclusively on divine causation.

So on the one hand, the Christian has an argument for causation - there is a Divine Agent that effectively causes things to occur, and as such, we can explain why an action being followed by a subsequent effect is more than just an illusion or projection.

But what about, on the other hand, if divine causation is the very thing in question, such as in the kalam argument? Would there be any way to demonstrate causation to an objector without begging the question?


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