Book review: An Atheist's History of Belief, by Matthew Kneale

by Matthew Kneale
Counterpoint
3 stars
David Ulin

Matthew Kneale is a novelist, so it makes sense that he would frame faith as an evolving story we tell ourselves. Beginning 33,000 years ago, with the development of animal spirits and trance worship, he works his way up to contemporary movements such as Scientology and al-Qaeda, for which spirituality masks a more secular set of ends.

At the same time, his focus on institutions, or ideologies, illustrates a fatal flaw in his approach. The book presents itself as an investigation of belief and even more as an inquiry by a nonbeliever, but what Kneale delivers is a fairly straightforward, if selective, history of religion, which he depicts as an inherently political force.

"In a world where the gap between the poor and the rich was steadily widening, and where ostentation ruled," he writes of the early Christian church, "Christianity, uniquely, gave the poor a sense that they were winning the class war."

By calling the book what he does, Kneale is making a promise on which he never follows through. His account of humanity's religious history is matter-of-fact, taking us from ancient cave dwellers to the worshippers at Turkey's Göbekli Tepe, from the Mesopotamians to the Egyptians and the Jews, and exploring Christianity.

"Until now," he observes at the end of a chapter on Islam, "this book has concentrated very much on beliefs invented in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. I make no apologies for this fact, as this region was the seedbed for a remarkable number of key religious beliefs."