I think that Chaol's information is beyond the perspective that involves religion or atheism. Those are non-issues in this study.

Here is something that I've considered: Chaol says that his world and this world diverged just before the Industrial Revolution. Supposedly, that would mean that we share the same history up to that point of divergence. In that case, Chaol's history would include the heavy influences of religion and religious beliefs, just like ours. His world would have experienced ancient myths, paganism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the Roman empire's official religion (The Holy Roman Catholic Church), the Crusades, and all of the other episodes pre-dating the Industrial Revolution. This makes me think that Chaol's world must still contain traces of the old belief systems, although his world may very well have learned to deal with fanaticism and has developed past all of that. He has already hinted that the people in his world who "believe" and those who do not believe leave each other alone; that they understand "perspective" and simply accept others as having a different viewpoint.