 Hume’s Scottish contemporaries were heavily involved in the general British debate between “religious philosophers” and “speculative atheists.” Prominent Scottish defenders of Clarke-inspired cosmological arguments included Andrew Baxter, and prominent Scottish defenders of design arguments included the Newtonians George Cheyne and Colin Maclaurin. There is little doubt that Hume was well aware of these figures; he was a student at Edinburgh University in the 1720s, where Maclaurin was professor, and as a young man he lived in the Borders area of Scotland, where Baxter was active.