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Award-winning novelist and non-believer Matthew Kneale argues that religion is not simply an expression of unreason but the greatest creation of the human imagination. He looks to history rather than science to disprove religion, arguing that religions are far less original than they claim to be and that most are a hotchpotch of ideas stolen from other beliefs. Religions, he says, evolved over time in response to believers’ needs and, once you understand that, you can never see them as truth again.

Kneale is author of several novels including English Passengers, winner of the Whitbread Award and shortlisted for the Booker.