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Conscientious Unbelievers
How, a century ago, radical freethinkers quietly and persistently subverted Scotland’s Christian establishment
The raid on Finlay’s home, which he later recalled had left the ‘innermost corner of my dwelling ransacked, and the very locks of hair of my departed father and mother strewed about’, duly uncovered numerous blasphemous books and pamphlets. Rather than stressing the limits of humankind’s ability to definitively determine anything about the nature and existence of God, they favoured deism or atheism and were thus more attracted to the bold writings of French Enlightenment philosophes such as the materialist Baron d’Holbach. Their cases prompted English freethinkers to rally to Edinburgh, including Thomas Paterson, who provocatively established a ‘Blasphemy Depot’ near Robinson’s shop, and Matilda Roalfe, who set up another radical bookshop on Nicholson Street, close to the original site of the Zetetic Society.
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