AbstractsPhilosophy & Theology

The following project contains an investigation of the philosopher David Hume’s arguments for and against religious beliefs in his book Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. The project contains a historical analysis of the 18th century, as well as a personal profile of David Hume. This was done in order to give a better understanding of his motives for writing the book, as well as to provide some historical context for the Enlightenment period. Furthermore, we focused on analysing the main arguments in the book in order to show what religious and philosophical views are attributed to the three main characters: Cleanthes, Demea and Philo. This was followed by an investigation of the key themes of contemporary atheist Christopher Hitchens’ book god is not Great , which were then compared and contrasted with Hume’s views. This was done in order to show the similarities and differences between the two, and also to demonstrate how scepticism has changed from the 18th to the 21st century. From this, we concluded that although Hume’s form of philosophical scepticism is not as extreme as Hitchens’ atheist stance, there are many similarities in the way they argue their philosophies. Advisors/Committee Members: Blackburn, Patrick (advisor).