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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 nevertheless devoutly religious. Like many natural philosophers associated with the Royal Society, they rejected traditional rationalist proofs of God's existence and instead espoused the '''design argument''', supposing that the experimental method could demonstrate with probability that the universe was an artifact crafted by a cosmic Designer. Hume's ''Dialogues on Natural Theology'' (1779) was a response to such hopes, and was to raise devastating objections to them. Unlike Locke, Hume saw that empiricism must place God's existence among those speculative questions to be eschewed. [[CiteRef::Hyman (2007)]] Doubts about God's existence also arose among French intellectuals in the mid-eighteenth century, with the first to openly proclaim himself an atheist being Denis Diderot (1713-1784). [[CiteRef:: Hyman (2007)]][[CiteRef::Bristow (2017)]]
|Major Contributions=Hume's main philosophical contributions were made via several works. The first was ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' published in three volumes in 1739 and 1740, when Hume was 29 years old. It Since it sold poorly, and Hume lamented that the work fell "deadborn from the press". [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)|p. 4]] It is however, today regarded as a major and important work. Hume recast the material into two later publications, ''Enquiries concerning Human Understanding'', published in 1748, and ''concerning the Principles of Morals'' published in 1751. Because of its controversial nature, Hume had ''Dialogs concerning Natural Religion'' published posthumously in 1779, three years after his death. [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]][[CiteRef:: Norton (2009)]]
=== Hume and Moral Philosophy ===
The ''Dialogues'' is written as a conversation between three characters; ''Cleanthes'', a proponent of the design argument, ''Demea'', a mystic, and ''Philo'' a religious skeptic generally supposed to be Hume's spokesperson. Philo argues that the analogy between the universe and a designed artifact is weak. For example, we experience only one universe and have nothing to compare it to. We recognize human artifacts by contrast with non-artifacts such as rocks. He also notes that we have no experience of the origin of the universe, and that causal inference requires a basis in experienced constant conjunction between two things. For the origin of the universe we have nothing of the sort. ''Demea'' deems ''Cleanthes'' concept of God as cosmic designer to be anthropomorphic and limiting. In a discussion of the human condition, ''Philo'' asks why an infinitely wise, powerful, and good God would permit human suffering. By the end, Hume's characters arguments lead the reader to the conclude, with ''Philo'', that God's nature seems inconceivable, incomprehensible, and indefinable and therefore the question of God's existence is rendered meaningless. [[CiteRef::Hume (2015)]][[CiteRef::Oppy (1996)]][[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)]]
|Criticism=, and Hume lamented that the work fell "deadborn from the press". [[CiteRef::Morris and Brown (2016)|p. 4]] It is however, today regarded as a major and important work. Historically, due to the threatening nature of Hume’s distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact, particularly to Newtonian physics, as well as his problem of induction there have been many critics of Hume. One of the most prominent critics to criticize Hume on the account of his distinction between the types of propositions was [[Immanuel Kant]]. Kant criticized Hume, seeking to validate Newton’s propositions about the world which could never be meaningful under Hume’s distinction. Kant theorized that the world was interpreted through sensory and intellect and thus there must exist some sort of ''a priori'' synthetic proposition.4 The existence of such a proposition would of course result in a proposition that fit both categories of Hume’s distinction. Unfortunately, Kant’s ''a priori'' synthetic proposition was debunked with the arrival of probabilistic determinism.
As for criticisms on Hume's Problem of Induction, there are quite a few cases. One of the more notable cases was the critique [[Karl Popper]] had towards Hume, stating that induction is a myth.[[CiteRef::Popper (1959)]] Popper argued science is created by conjecture and criticism rather than reference to the past, and that the main purpose of observations wasn’t to make inferences about the future but to refute present existing theories. Popper was committed to the idea that Hume had incorrectly orientated himself towards a means of justifying knowledge. Popper, instead, preferred to look for a process by which to correct errors.[[CiteRef::Popper (1963)]]