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I argue that acknowledging Hume as a doxastic naturalist about belief in a deity allows an elegant, holistic reading of his Dialogues. It supports a reading in which Hume's spokesperson is Philo throughout, and enlightens many of the interpretive difficulties of the work. In arguing this, I perform a comprehensive survey of evidence for and against Philo as Hume's voice, bringing new evidence to bear against the interpretation of Hume as Cleanthes and against the amalgamation view while correcting several standard mistakes. I ultimately isolate the interpretation of Philo's Reversal at the end of the Dialogues as of paramount importance, and show how my naturalistic interpretation makes this, and other notoriously difficult passages, unproblematic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I argue that a weak, attenuated belief in a deity is a natural belief for Hume, that is, a belief provided naturally rather than by reason. The main opposition to this reading comes from the fact that such belief is not universal, as is the case with other types of Humean natural belief. I therefore first engage the standard criteria for natural belief, showing that they are flawed in requiring universal instantiation of natural beliefs. Instead, I appeal to Hume's ethics to show that it is the propensity to believe rather than the belief itself that must be universal. Once this is realized, I show how a stripped down belief in a creator deity fulfills this weaker criterion, and how such an interpretation of Hume fits well with a holistic reading of his Dialogues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]