In this paper, starting from Condorcet's discussion on progress, the author analyzes the relationship between the decline of religions, the end of State paternalism and tolerance. The author underlines how history shows a different course with respect to illuminist previsions.Two hundred years ago, shortly before his death in 1794, the great philosopher Condorcet wrote his famous Esquisse d'un tableau historique des progrés de l'esprit humain (Condorcet 1798). In this discussion on progress, he attached particular importance to man's liberation from religion. According to Condorcet, the decline of Christianity was already well under way and soon reason would also triumph over non-Christian religions. Tolerance would reign supreme over the ruins of fanaticism. A great many progressive thinkers of that time shared this vision and continued to share it into the nineteenth century. An even greater number of conservative thinkers feared such a vision would be fulfilled if governments did not hold their peoples back from the precipice with a paternal hand. Different manifestations of the same belief have been held practically up to present times.Two hundred years have passed since then and in part Condorcet's vision has proved true. Massive movements towards secularization have greatly reduced Christianity's influence. At least in China the influence of nonChristian cults has also drastically diminished. According to the authoritative Enclyclopedia Britannica, approximately a quarter of the world population can be classified as "atheist" or "unreligious."As we know, in reality even the populations that officially practice a particular religion are becoming more and more secular. And yet, in spite of this, we have not seen that triumph of tolerance which should follow as a result of secularization. In the last eighty years we have seen Holbach's brand of atheism-which in Condorcet's times was free thinking par excellence-change into a state anti-religion of such ferocious intolerance that it sent Christianity back into the catacombs, so that it relived its past of persecutions of over a thousand years before. The intolerance of communist
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