erroneous Christian notion of humans as morally autonomous beings categorically different from other animals. This belief, and the corresponding idea that history makes sense, or is progressing towards something, is in Gray's view merely a Christian prejudice. In Straw Dogs he argues that the idea that humans are self-determining agents does not pass the acid test of experience. Those Darwinist thinkers who believe humans can take charge of their own destiny to prevent environmental degradation are, in this view, not naturalists, but apostles of humanism. He identifies the Enlightenment as the point at which the Christian doctrine of salvation was taken over by secular idealism and became a political religion with universal emancipation as its aim. Communism, fascism and "global democratic capitalism" are characterised by Gray as Enlightenment "projects" which have led to needless suffering, in Gray's view, as a result of their ideological allegiance to this religion. Agonistic liberalism The term agonistic liberalism appears in Gray's 1995 book Isaiah Berlin. Gray uses this phrase to describe what he believes is Berlin's theory of politics, namely his support for both value pluralism and liberalism. More generally, agonistic liberalism could be used to describe any kind of liberalism that claims its own value commitments do not form a complete vision of politics and society, and that one instead needs to look for what Berlin calls an "uneasy equilibrium" between competing values. In Gray's view, many contemporary liberal theorists would fall into this category, for instance John Rawls and Karl Popper. Agonistic liberalism is an alternative to Berlin's theory of value pluralism and liberalism. While Berlin claimed equal validity for conflicting liberal views, agonistic liberalism holds that over time solutions may be found that determine which values are correct. Agonistic liberalism is the theory that conflict rather than discussion is the basis of social change. Reception Acclaim Gray's work has been praised by, amongst others, the novelists J. G. Ballard, Will Self and John Banville, the theologian Don Cupitt, the journalist Bryan Appleyard, the political scientist David Runciman, investor and philanthropist George Soros, the environmental scientist James Lovelock and the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Friedrich Hayek described Gray's 1984 book Hayek on Liberty as "The first survey of my work which not only fully understands but is able to carry on my ideas beyond the point at which I left off." Gray has discussed James Lovelock's new ideas on evolution's next step: