(Image via Friendly Atheist)

So, last week I happened to stumble upon an old Unreasonable Faith post celebrating the firebrand atheism of Charles Chilton Moore, whose turn of the century Kentucky newspaper, The Bluegrass Blade, was like the Pharyngula of its time. (Moore even did a stint in jail for scandalously claiming that “Jesus Christ was a man exactly like I am and had a human father and mother exactly like I had.”) Little did I know at the time that just a week later, Thomas Lawson would publish a book of letters to The Bluegrass Blade, called Letters from an Atheist Nation in which everyday atheists from every walk of life in 1903 explain in their own words how and why they became atheists. (No-God must have guided me to this most serendipitous coincidence because No-God would clearly want a book like this to be widely read.) I have not read the book yet, but the publishers’ product description sounds really interesting and worth recommending to your investigation:

In 1903, the “Blue Grass Blade,” a Kentucky/Ohio-based freethought newspaper, which started as the only Prohibition newspaper edited by “a Heathen in the interest of good morals,” requested letters from its readers describing how and why they had become atheists. Lawson has meticulously transcribed these letters from the digitized copies available at the Library of Congress’s “Chronicling America” website and has edited them for a 21st-century audience. He touches on the stigma that has been placed on atheism in America and why atheists feel they have to hide their true personalities from their closest friends and family. Like today’s atheists, the writers of these letters hid behind initials and “nom de plumes,” and Lawson has done us a great service by deciphering many of the letter writers’ mysterious pseudonyms to reveal their true identities. Will you find a branch of atheism in YOUR family tree? The phrases and voices in these letters are over one hundred years old, but the thoughts and sentiments have changed very little, unlike the dogmas and doctrines they were hoping their descendants would have abandoned by now. Their thoughts could be pulled from the latest blogs of non-believers, but these are not merely letters from scientists, scholars, or intimidating intelligentsia, no, these are personal revelations from physicians, lawyers, dentists, veterans, pioneers, settlers, farmers, tradespeople, teenagers, and housewives. These letters are ironically Bible-like in that they are lyrical, repetitive, prophetic, and poetic, but the “revelation” will be left to the reader. If these century-old thoughts sound familiar, it would appear that there is nothing new about OUR century’s “new” atheism.

The book is here .

UPDATE (10/8/11): PZ has been inspired by this book to solicit your letters about why you are an atheist and publish them on Pharyngula as a regular feature.

Your Thoughts?