Friday, May 20, 2011

In today's Guardian (G2 section) I read of a young fellow named Thomas Aikenhead who was hanged for the offense of blasphemy in 1697. This was in Edinburgh where he was a student at the university.
Young Aikenhead was reported, apparently by a fellow student, as describing the Christian Bible as "a rhapsodie of faigned and ill-invented nonsense". He further described the New Testament as "the history of the impostor Christ", and asserted "that God, the world, and nature are but one thing, and that the world is from eternity".
"In all" writes Michael Hunter*, "Aikenhead was as complete a freethinker as any in early modern Europe, and he went further than most in averring that 'Christianity would soon be utterly extirpat' possibly as early as 1800."
Young Thomas was hanged, probably pour encourager les autres, as Hunter states that "irreligious opinions seemed to be becoming commoner in Edinburgh at this time."
Thomas Aikenhead, an early martyr in the cause of freethought.

*Michael Hunter, DNB, s.v., 'Thomas Aikenhead'.
Posted by at

3 comments:

Chris H said...

Not sure he was early. Around the time of the English Civil Wars there seemed to be an explosion of unorthodox and heretical thought regarding religion. Levellers, Ranters, Fifth Monarchists and plenty more sects and none appeared about this time. The concept of God becoming Reason, or somehow part of the world might have been common.

Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down is an excellent read regarding this period.

9:03 am
Jemmy Hope said...

You're right of course, Chris. I realised after that the early was a mistake and was thinking of removing it. Now your corrections posted I'll just leave it as it is.

1:36 pm
Anonymous said...

The sheer improbability that God spent millions of years making some marble in Carrera and delivered it for free to Carmarthen just in time for inscribing and mounting in the rock in Pembrey, to be unveiled on the IWW Centenary Day is amazing enough.

And then on the eve of the unveiling, that improbability is capped by the impossibility of a local Carmarthen Councillor, on being told of the next day unveiling of the Carrera Marble, having been to Carrera tells us that "Carrera is the only town in the world that ever had an Anarchist controlled Town Council". Everyone agrees that is an impossibility. Compounded Improbability with an Impossibility!!! The existence of the IWW centennial marble in Pembrey must be a miracle and so prove that God exists. It also proves that God is a fully paid up member of the IWW, and that God is an Anarchist.

Always let the Catholic Workers table at Anarchist and IWW events.

11:44 pm

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)