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Over the past two hundred years philosophy has shaken off Christian faith. It has not given up Christianity's cardinal error -the belief that humans are radically different from all other animals.John Gray
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The Buddha promised release from something we all understand: suffering. By contrast, no one can say what was the original sin, and no one understands how the suffering of Christ can redeem it.John Gray
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The Buddhist ideal of awakening implies that we can sever our links with our evolutionary past. We can raise ourselves from the sleep in which other animals pass their lives. Our illusions dissolved, we need no longer suffer. This is only another doctrine of salvation, subtler than that of the Christians, but no different from Christianity in its goal of leaving our animal inheritance behind. But the idea that we can rid ourselves of animal illusion is the greatest illusion of all. meditation may give us a fresher view of things but cannot uncover them as they are in themselves.John Gray
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Those who ignore the destructive potential of new technologies can do so only because they ignore history . Pogroms are as old as Christendom , but without railways, the telegraph and poison gas there could have been no Holocaust. (.) Scientific fundamentalism claim that science is the disinterested pursuit of the truth. But to represent science in this way is to disregard the human needs science serves. Among us science serves two needs: for hope and censorship. Today only science supports the myth of progress. If people cling to the hope of progress, it is not so much from genuine belief as from fear of what may come if they give it up. .John Gray
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In the struggle for life, a taste for truth is a luxury--or else a disability.John Gray
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Modern humanism is the faith that through science humankind can know the truth- and to be free. But if Darwin's theory of natural selection is true this is impossible. The human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth. To think otherwise is to resurrect the pre- Darwinian error that humans are different from all other animals. (..) There is no mechanism of selection in the history of ideas akin to that of the natural selection of genetic mutations in evolution.(..) Among humans, the best deceivers are those who deceive themselves: 'we deceive ourselves in order to deceive others better'. A lover who promises eternal fidelity s more likely to be believed if he believes his promise himself; he is no more likely to keep his promise.(..) In a competition for mates, a well-developed capacity for self-deception is an advantage.John Gray