"Liberal humanism is a secular rendition of a Christian myth, but the truth in the myth has been lost on the way. The biblical story of the Fall teaches that evil cannot be rooted out from human life. Humans are radically flawed — a perception expressed in the doctrine of Original Sin. It is not error or ignorance that stands in the way of a better world. The human-animal may yearn for peace and freedom, but it is no less fond of war and tyranny. No scientific advance can alter the contradictions of human needs. On the contrary, they can only be intensified as science increases human power." (Atheist Professor John Gray, former professor of European Thought at the London School for Economics)
"The belief that liberal values are on “the right side of history” is a confession of faith, asserted against an accumulating body of evidence. Liberal societies are by-products of western monotheism, which underpinned the practice of toleration with the belief that it was mandated by God. Generations of secular thinkers have attempted to detach liberalism from its theistic base. But decoupling the universal claims of liberalism from monotheism is easier said than done. Secular liberals believe history is moving in the direction of their values. Yet without a guiding providence of the sort imagined by monotheists, history has no direction." (
Atheist John Gray, former professor of European thought at the London School for Economics, 9/4/18)
"...despite a majority no longer self-identifying as Christians, the way of thinking and the world view of the vast majority of post-Christians – whether they are out-and-out atheists or people who would describe themselves as agnostics – is still shaped by Christianity, or more generally by Western monotheism, than by anything else...Most of the central traditions of atheism have been a continuation of monotheism by other means. Certain beliefs are rejected but the way of thinking that monotheism embodies can still go on in other ways. For example, pretty well all contemporary atheists subscribe to a view of the world in which humankind has some of the functions of the deity that they’ve got rid of, because they imagine that there’s something you could call humanity or humankind that acts as a sort of collective moral agent." (
Atheist Professor John Gray, former professor of European thought at the London School for Economics, 11/28/18)
“Humanism is not science, but religion - the post-Christian faith that humans can make a world better than any in which they have so far lived. In pre-Christian Europe is was taken for granted that the future would be like the past. Knowledge and invention might advance, but ethics would remain much the same. History was a series of cycles, with no overall meaning. Against this pagan view, Christians understood history as a story of sin and redemption. Humanism is the transformation of this Christian doctrine of salvation into a project of universal human emancipation. The idea of progress is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence. That is why among the ancient pagans it was unknown.” (Atheist Professor John Gray, former professor of European Thought at the London School for Economics)
"The totalitarian regimes of the last century embodied some of the Enlightenment's boldest dreams. Some of their worst crimes were done in the service of progressive ideals, while even regimes that viewed themselves as enemies of Enlightenment values attempted a project of transforming humanity by using the power of science, whose origins are in Enlightenment thinking. The role of the Enlightenment in the twentieth-century terror remains a blind spot in western perception." (Atheist Professor John Gray, former professor of European Thought at the London School for Economics)
"The social justice warriors who denounce Western civilisation and demand that its sins be confessed and repented would not exist without the moral inheritance of Christianity...Bien-pensant atheists who bang on about how much more civilised we would be if only Christianity had not existed have not asked where their conception of civilisation came from. Nietzsche was closer to the truth. If you regret the rise of Christianity, you must regret the rise of liberalism, human rights and belief in progress as well." (
Atheist John Gray, former professor of European thought at the London School for Economics, 9/18/19)
