Religion after Hume: Tightrope Walking in an Age of Enlightenment

Abstract

Mark Twain once described a certain man as having no more religion than a billy goat. I think of myself as like that man and thus to some extent as like that billy goat, but I am unlike that billy goat, not only in not sharing a taste for tin cans, but in having some idea of what religion is and what it is to see the world from a religious point of view. Mine is a spectator’s view of the business and not that of a participant. From that spectator’s angle I want to examine some of Hume’s views about religion and the problems he raises for religion and then go on to discuss how, following suggestions of Wittgenstein, those problems might be overcome.