When David Hume wrote his "Enquiries..." he hinted that the future of religion was glum, that it was going to eventually wither away, and, possibly, leave its position to science. This essay is going to examine Hume's point of view regarding the potential future of religion and show how this is not so.
Hume's take on religion was so negative was because he lived during the Enlightenment period, when the old social bonds of religion were breaking down: the passion that fuelled human faith in G-d died down, bringing forth a new guiding light - human reason. People were reasoning things out, rather than feeling them, and David Hume's "Enquiries...", as the chapter "Of Religion", is a perfect example of this approach.
"Of Religion" begins with the mention of a Dr. Tillotson's work, which attacks in vein similar to Hume's, the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. For his turn, Hume attacks not the Eucharist in particular, but the very concept of divine miracles, declaring, eventually, that Christian Faith itself is a miracle precisely because it defies all reason and common sense, implying subtly that a believer in any faith is an unreasonable person and an eccentric one as well. Consequently, from this statement it is not such a big stretch to conclude that Hume believed that as more and more people came to reason, the fewer of them continued to believe in the miracle-filled Christian Faith, until, perhaps, finally faith and religion will be replaced completely by science and reason.
Now, David Hume was right, to a point: as various scientific disciplines grew in numbers and strength, religion often suffered losses and had to retreat from its initial social domination. Nevertheless, contrary to Hume's forecast, religion, including Christian faith, did not die out in our present. The reason why lies in the very human nature itself.
Humans are governed by logic on one hand, but still hold faith in the other. Contrary to what reason and common sense tell us, people constantly need to believe in someone or something to feel whole and complete, whether a savior figure of the traditional faiths, or just a champion tennis player. In Hume's time and before, religion and faith were tightly connected to each other, but now it is not so, and people believe, or invest their faith, into anything, not just in salvation after dying, as it was the case with the traditional religion. A similar thing happened to miracles: now physical manifestations of supernatural in human lives are no longer treated as the only kind of miracles; now transcendent events can also be considered miraculous.
Therefore, religion has outlasted Hume and the other initial members of the Enlightenment period and has managed to survive, at the very least, in the modern society both directly and indirectly, as misdirected faith in all sorts of things, like tennis. Thus, Hume and his compatriots was proven wrong by the test of time, and so we, living over two centuries after Hume, continue to show the axiom that as long as people can live and think, they will continue to merely believe, not just think things rationally through, as Hume and his compatriots have thought.