QuestionsDoes God exist?Five common notions are enough: the religion all peoples recognise
Does God exist?DeismThe idea of God in us

Five common notions are enough: the religion all peoples recognise

Herbert of Cherbury's five articles; the "common notions" in religion

Edward Herbert de Cherbury 1583 · 1648Five truths about God, worship and virtue are recognised by all peoples: they are enough for religion.
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What it claims

These five articles make up the universal religion, and a particular revelation is not necessary: whatever is added has not the certainty of these five truths.

Why

Five truths about God, worship and virtue are recognised everywhere, and what all recognise comes from nature, which God made for all.

The same idea through history
Edward Herbert de Cherbury1624Herbert, a Welsh diplomat and philosopher, argues in De Veritate (Paris, 1624) that certain "common notions" are inscribed in every human being, and draws five articles of religion from them. He takes them up in De religione laici (1645) and looks for them among all ancient peoples in De religione gentilium (published in 1663, after his death).
Matthew Tindal1730Tindal takes up the idea and hardens it: the natural religion given to all is perfect, and revelation can add nothing to it.
In short

"Five common notions are enough: the religion all peoples recognise" is an argument by Edward Herbert de Cherbury (De Veritate, 1624; De religione laici, 1645; De religione gentilium, 1663, 1624) on the question "Does God exist?" (answer: deism). Its claim: These five articles make up the universal religion, and a particular revelation is not necessary: whatever is added has not the certainty of these five truths. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P3, P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

De Veritate, 1624; De religione laici, 1645; De religione gentilium, 1663
Valid with an implicit premise

Herbert of Cherbury lives in the age of the wars of religion. He asks what all peoples believe, whatever their Church. He finds five things: there is a supreme God; he must be honoured; the best worship is virtue joined with piety; one must repent of one's faults; there is a reward or a punishment after this life. These five truths, he says, are not learned from a tradition: they are written in everyone's mind by Providence. So they are enough, and particular revelations, received by only a few, cannot be imposed on all. Note that this deism keeps a judgment after death and does not deny that a God cares for human beings.

P1Five truths are recognised by all peoples at all times: there is a supreme God; he ought to be worshipped; virtue joined with piety is the best worship; one must repent of one's sins; there is a reward or a punishment after this life.
P2What all human beings recognise, by using their natural reason, does not come from a written or unwritten tradition: it is written in the mind itself, by heaven, as a natural instinct.
P3 · implicit premiseWhat God's universal Providence gives to all human beings is enough for them to honour God and be saved: God does not need to give only to some what is necessary to all.
P4 · implicit premiseIf these five truths are enough for all, no particular revelation is necessary to true religion.
Therefore these five articles make up the universal religion, and a particular revelation is not necessary: whatever is added has not the certainty of these five truths.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P3 and P4, the computer finds a case where the five truths are universal and come from a natural instinct, and yet a revelation remains necessary: for instance if that instinct is not enough for all.
The argument is valid with the two hidden premises. From P1 and P2, these five truths come from the natural instinct God put in everyone; by P3, that is enough for all; by P4, no revelation is then necessary. The objections target P1 (are the five articles really recognised everywhere?) and P2 (is a widespread belief innate for that reason?).
Analogy. Children all over the world learn to walk and to talk without a course: nature is enough. Herbert says the same of religion: its main lines are given to all, and the particular courses (the traditions) come afterwards.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

John Locke (Essay concerning Human Understanding) 1689 · attacks premise 1

Locke names Herbert and his five propositions: he finds them true but not innate. History shows men, and whole nations, who doubt or deny some of them. Navigation has even discovered peoples among whom there was no notion of God and no religion. A universal agreement that does not exist cannot therefore prove that they are engraved in us.

a defender replies
No reply possible: objection raised in 1689, after the author's death (1648).
Leibniz (New Essays) defender of the argument · 1704 · Leibniz concedes in part
Leibniz defends against Locke the existence of innate necessary truths, and links instincts with what is innate. But on these five propositions he agrees with Locke: they are not innate principles, because they can and ought to be proved. He does not reject their truth, he changes their foundation: demonstration, not instinct.
The debate goes on (our summary) Locke writes forty years after Herbert's death, so Herbert could not answer him. But Herbert had foreseen a neighbouring objection (De religione gentilium, ch. XV, English translation of 1705): against the claim that these truths were "involved and shrouded in lies and fictions", he answers they shine into the minds of all "where they did but exercise their natural use of reason". So he does not say everyone states them clearly, but that a reasoning mind reaches them.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: it is now agreed that these five propositions are not recognised everywhere in this form. The debate is about the distinction between a widespread belief, an innate belief and a belief that reason can establish, which Leibniz and Locke do not place in the same spot.
David Hume (The Natural History of Religion) 1757 · attacks premise 1

If we follow the history of human societies, from rude beginnings to a more perfect state, it is polytheism, or idolatry, that must have been the first and oldest religion of mankind. About seventeen centuries ago, he says, all mankind were idolaters. So the five articles of a single supreme God are not what peoples first recognised.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1757, after the author's death (1648).
The debate goes on (our summary) Hume writes more than a century after Herbert. Herbert had already said, in De religione gentilium, that wherever the pagans use the titles of "best, greatest, supreme", they mean the same God as we do, and that the priests added the superstitions. Hume sees on the contrary a religion born of fear, in which belief in a supreme God comes later.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: whether monotheism is an original or a late belief is still debated. Historians of religion today defend both views, and most think the oldest forms are very varied.
Joseph Butler (The Analogy of Religion) 1736 · attacks the conclusion

No serious man can think the light of nature sufficient if he looks at the state of religion in the pagan world before revelation, and the doubt of the greatest minds about things of the utmost importance. To say revelation is superfluous is to talk at random.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1736, after the author's death (1648).
The debate goes on (our summary) Butler writes more than a century after De Veritate. A possible answer for Herbert (our reconstruction): the presence of superstitions among the pagans does not prevent the five truths from being recognised there, since, according to him, they were always there under the errors. Butler draws the opposite conclusion from the same history: if they were so clear, the wisest would not have doubted them.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: both sides read the same history. For Herbert it shows truths always present under the errors; for Butler it shows that reason alone was not enough.
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