AN ATHEIST'S HISTORY OF BELIEF – UNDERSTANDING OUR MOST EXTRAORDINARY INVENTION

Matthew Kneale grew up in what can be termed a non-religious family yet found himself surrounded by structured belief systems, including having to recite the Lord's Prayer at school assembly. This continued to make him feel uneasy, and his An Atheist's History of Belief is a result of that unease. Drawing on the works of numerous specialist scholars he has pulled together a fascinating and well-written account of what people have believed and, in particular, how those beliefs evolved in a wide range of religions. Although he speculates on what religions might have been like as far back as 33,000 years ago, and then touches upon many cultures from China, India and the Middle East to the Mayans, Aztecs and Incas, he looks extensively at Christianity and its parent, Judaism. Some political creeds such as Marxism are also briefly looked at because their ideologies seem to be derived from earlier religious beliefs not readily associated with 20th-century politics. Kneale first outlines what he considers to be the prerequisites of any religion, with the need for reassurance being evident from the earliest of times. It was important to keep fears at bay, he says, the nature of these fears changing over the course of time. It is interesting that the existence of a heavenly afterlife only reachable by adhering to the rules of a given faith and code of moral behaviour are concepts that are relatively new, though these two aspects were to become the bedrock of virtually all current religious belief. Other religious inventions, seemingly created to control, include martyrdom which was (and seemingly still is for Islamic fundamentalists) seen as a fast track to salvation, and end-of-the-world prophecies designed to foretell the demise of current enemies – the author gives the Book of Revelation being an example of such a text. He goes on to trace the early creation of Christianity stemming from the belief that Jesus had been resurrected, although Gnostic Christians did not believe that he had been physically resurrected. Kneale identifies St. Paul as playing a major role in the shaping of Christianity, who, as Kneale describes him, became a sort of rogue preacher, reinventing Christianity as he saw fit, demanding strict adherence or acts of penance where necessary, to ensure absolution. Intolerance of beliefs other than one's own is common among adherents of most religions and is probably the most obvious cause of 'holy' wars, and this intolerance was present in St. Paul's version of Christianity where divergent beliefs within the church were deemed unacceptable. Kneale concludes that all people broadly have the same uncertainties and will seek to reassure themselves by cloaking themselves in beliefs, thus confirming the notion that "religion is a kind of mirror, reflecting the things about which we are most anxious". The subject of this book is more than just some academic debate, as religious beliefs are a real-world issue in all sorts of ways, and increasingly so nowadays. Even while reading this book for review, various examples of this have sprung up. In January this year, Tony Blair, Middle East Envoy in recent years, opined in the media that he felt extremist religions were a growing threat. Many people would probably agree, but it is always other people's religions and beliefs, not one's own. Blair is a Catholic, a religion with some pretty unsavoury skeletons in its closet, but it is common with "people of faith" (any faith) that they unconsciously exclude their own religion when critiquing worldviews. One only has to think of the direct influence of extremist right-wing evangelical Christians on American politics. Christians in the UK and USA complain that they are marginalized, yet so too are atheists – no atheist could ever become a US president, for example. And students from London South Bank University got into trouble in February this year when they displayed a satirical religious poster promoting their Atheist Society. The poster was removed by student union officials for being "religiously offensive". One of the members of the students' atheist society remarked that "religious sensibilities" were "trumping all other rights". Finally, an interesting paper1 has emerged that challenges the resort to Biblical claims to a "greater Israel" used to justify the appropriation of Palestinian lands by Jewish fundamentalists. The seemingly innocuous paper offers proof that camels weren't domesticated in the eastern Mediterranean until the 10th century BC – several centuries after the time they appear in the Bible. This inadvertently supports earlier studies that have challenged the Bible's veracity as a historic document. And so it goes – no religion is blameless with regard to the denigration of other faiths, or of atheism, while automatically assuming its own unquestioned superiority. It is perhaps important to state that it is not the case that believing in anything is necessarily bad, but it is important to be able to question things if they do not seem right, for whatever reason. Before accepting something, it is wise to understand its origins, especially in the case of religions, as it is not to confuse spiritual propensity with religion – the latter is man-made, the former is part of our nature. To my mind, An Atheist's History of Beliefs is a timely, 'must read' book for the inquisitive and open-minded, whether atheist or believer.

• Lidar Sapir-Hen and Erez Ben-Yosef, "The Introduction of Domestic Camels to the Southern Levant: Evidence from the Aravah Valley", Journal of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, Vol. 40, 2013, 277-285.