The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (1039 page)

(Kanna
a,
huli
, ‘tiger’, + Dravidian,
amman
). One of the innumerable
gr
madevat
s
of S. India. One major temple of the Goddess is found in Raichur, Kar
aka; it is associated with a special group of devotees—impotent or malformed men.

 
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Humanae vitae
.

An encyclical written by Pope Paul VI in 1968 addressing the question of birth control, following the report of the commission set up by Paul's predecessor, John XXIII, to study the question of artificial contraception, principally the recently developed contraceptive pill.
Paul repeats the traditional view that ‘each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life’ (§ 11). This is so because of the inseparable connection willed by God between the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act, which not only closely unites husband and wife but also enables them to generate new life ‘according to laws inscribed in the very being of man and of woman’ (§ 12).
The encyclical ends with an appeal to Catholics to follow and support its teaching on artificial contraception. However, its publication, while welcomed by some, was greeted with dismay and open dissent by many Roman Catholics, and its teaching on contraception has remained a matter of controversy, to the neglect of Paul's outline of the values of marriage and responsible parenthood.

 
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(1711–76).
Philosopher, religious sceptic, historian, and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.
His most important philosophical works were:
A Treatise of Human Nature
(1739–40),
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding
(1748), and
An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals
(1751). In them Hume took the empiricism of
Locke
and Berkeley a stage further, reaching sceptical conclusions about the foundations of our knowledge of the external world, about inductive reasoning and rational
ethics
(he pointed to the logical gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’), and about the existence of the self and a necessary causal nexus in nature.
A similar scepticism is seen in his works on religion. His
Natural History of Religion
(1757) foreshadows later anthropological accounts of religion in its investigation of the psychological and environmental factors influencing religious belief.
His essay ‘Of Miracles’ argues that an appeal to
miracles
cannot serve as the foundation of a religion, for it is always much more probable that our evidence for the universal and regular laws of nature will preponderate over the evidence for putative miracles, which Hume defines as violations of such laws.
Hume's most substantial work on religion is his
Dialogues concerning Natural Religion
(written in 1751–7, revised later, and published post-humously in 1779), much of which consists of a critique of Enlightenment
natural theology
, especially the
teleological argument
for the existence of God.
Thus already in the 18th cent. there is a radical questioning of the Enlightenment project of rational theism. Unlike many of the French
philosophes
of his own time, however, and also his own later followers, Hume did not claim to be an atheist, for he regarded
atheism
too as going beyond the available evidence.