Christianity and Positivism

From Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern, by John Gray (2003):

Enlightenment thinkers like to see themselves as modern pagans, but they are really latter-day Christians: they too aim to save mankind. The ancient pagans did not believe that the mass of mankind could be saved. Or, for that matter, that it was worth saving.

Believing that one way of life is best for all of mankind and viewing history as the struggle to achieve it, Marxism and neo-liberalism are post-Christian cults. Beyond Christendom, no one has ever imagined that 'world communism' or 'global capitalism' could be the 'end of history'. The Positivists believed that with the advance of knowledge humanity would come to share the same values; but this is because they had inherited from Christianity the belief that history is working to a finale in which all are saved. Take away this residue of faith, and you will see that while science makes progress, humanity does not.

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Positivism is a doctrine of redemption in the guise of a theory of history. The Positivists inherited the Christian view of history, but — suppressing Christianity's saving insight that human nature is ineradicably flawed — they announced that by the use of technology humanity could make a new world. When they suggested that in the third and final stage of history there would be no politics, only rational administration, they imagined they were being scientific; but the belief that science can enable humanity to transcend its historic conflicts and create a universal civilisation is not a product of empirical inquiry. It is a remnant of monotheism.