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Although little is known of his activities during his schooling and afterwards, he would have spent the fourth year of the curriculum at Edinburgh studying natural philosophy, and would have been exposed to experimental natural philosophy, including the theories of [[Isaac Newton]] (1643-1727). [[CiteRef::Harris (2015)|p. 38-40]] Newton had published his ''Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica'' (''Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy'') in which he put forth his '''laws of motion''', '''law of universal gravitation''', and his inductive '''experimental philosophy''' more than thirty years earlier in 1687. [[CiteRef:: Westfall (1999)]][[CiteRef::Janiak (2016)]] By about 1700 Newton's theory had become accepted in Britain. [[CiteRef::Barseghyan (2015)|p. 210]] Like many of his times, Hume revered Newton, calling him "the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species". [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] The works of other experimental philosophers were also available to the young Hume. The natural philosophy library at Edinburgh, to which Hume is known to have contributed, contained an extensive collection of the works of Robert Boyle(1627-1691), as well as the works of [[Rene Descartes]] (1596-1650), and [[John Locke]]'s (1632-1704) ''Essay Concerning Human Understanding''. This work, published in 1689, propounded Locke's '''empiricist''' view of human knowledge. The library included some controversial works, such as those of the '''materialist''' Thomas Hobbs (1588-1679). [[CiteRef::Harris (2015)|p. 38-40]][[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]] Boyle, Newton, and Locke were all associated with the Royal Society of London, which was founded in 1663 and sought to promote the experimental method and the new natural philosophy. [[CiteRef::Uzgalis (2016)]][[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]]

By the time he started work on ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' at the age of 23, Hume had become skeptical of religious belief. [[CiteRef:: Morris and Brown (2016)]] The term '''atheism''' was coined by Sir John Cheke almost two hundred years earlier in 1540, to refer to a lack of belief in divine providence. The term assumed its modern meaning of disbelief in the existence of God, as divine non-existence emerged as a disquieting possibility in the seventeenth century. [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]] Although Descartes' rationalism had a proof of God's existence at its foundation, it was nonetheless a challenge to the theological methodology established by Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274). This methodology stressed the limitations of human reason, and the necessity of reliance on divine revelation and the text of the Bible. Descartes instead stressed the human capacity to know God and nature through reason alone. Descartes' rationalist argument for God's existence and guarantorship of the certainty of scientific knowledge was soon rejected as circular. [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]][[CiteRef::Cottingham (1992)]] It was supplanted by Newton's experimental philosophy and Locke's empiricism, both of which stressed experience and observation as sources of the limited knowledge to which humans could aspire. It eschewed metaphysics and speculative hypotheses. [[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]] Though they held non-standard beliefs, both Newton and Locke were devoutly religious. Like many natural philosophers associated with the Royal Society of London, they rejected traditional rationalist proofs of God's existence and instead espoused the '''design argument''', supposing that the experimental method could demonstrate that the universe was an artifact crafted by a cosmic Designer. Hume's ''Dialogues on Natural Theology'' (1779) was to raise devastating objections to such hopes. Unlike Locke, Hume saw that empiricism must place God's existence among those speculative questions to be eschewed. [[CiteRef::Hyman (2007)]]

  Religious skepticism and atheism were unheard of in Europe prior to the seventeenth centuryBy Hume's time, but became more common in the wake of the rejection of Aristotelian Scholasticism and the rise of Newtonian natural philosophy and the experimental philosophy. [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]] [[Aristotle]]'s (384 BC-322 BC) teleological account of causation was teleological, and included material, formal, efficient, and final causes. It had, by Hume's time, been rejected in favour of the '''corpuscular mechanistic''' view of causation espoused by Descartes, Locke, and the experimental natural philosophers of the Royal Society of London. In this view, derived from ancient atomism, material bodies are made of invisibly small particles, called corpuscles, and interact with one another mechanically by physical contact. The only form of causation is mechanical, by direct physical contact of bodies or what Aristotle would have called efficient, causation. their constituent corpuscles [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]] Hume enthusiastically espoused Newton's experimental philosophy, which rejected speculative hypotheses and sought to found knowledge on observation, experience, and inductive and deductive reasoning. Although many early eighteenth century thinkers regarded Newton's theories and Locke's empiricism to constitute a unified system, there was a distinct tension between them, which Hume recognized. Newton had been unable to explain his gravitational force in terms of corpuscular mechanism. He saw his inductive method as an alternative to the demands of a corpuscularism that stood in the way of the acceptance of a mathematically lawful gravitational force on its own terms. Although Newton's theories and Locke's empiricism were seen by early eighteenth century thinkers to constitute a unified system, this system was not without problems. Locke retained on the other hand, made the popular notion of a hypothetical hidden corpuscular microstructure and the associated notion of a metaphysically necessary connection between cause and effectcentral to his system. [[CiteRef::DePierris (2006)]][[CiteRef::Rogers (1982)]] Hume's Newton inspired skepticism of speculative metaphysical hypotheses led him to call corpuscularism and accepted notions of causation into question.