What is evident in Scottish history is, which not many people know about, is the culture of challenging religion. For example, the famous occultist Aleister Crowley had a property on Loch Ness, which he apparently summoned the devil in. There is a culture of witchcraft and the last known person to be burned alive in the British Isles for witchcraft; a Mrs. Janet Horne came from the Highlands, Dornoch specifically. The last person to be executed for blasphemy, in 1697, in the entire British Isles, a Mr. Thomas Aikenhead was a student from Edinburgh. The Aikenhead trial was pioneering because it led to leniency in religion, the Scottish enlightenment would not have happened, because the whole endeavour was to veer people away from the Bible. David Hume's contribution to atheism, in his published work Dialogues and Natural History of Religion, was the biggest contribution to atheism prior to Darwinism.
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