This might be a worthy read. There's an excerpt online as an article.

Quote Originally Posted by Chris Hedges
We live in an age of faith. We are assured we are advancing as a species towards a world that will be made perfect by reason, technology, science or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Evil can be eradicated. War has been declared on nebulous forces or cultures that stand as impediments to progress. Religion, if you are secular, is blamed for genocide, injustice, persecution, backwardness and intellectual and sexual repression. Secular humanism, if you are born again, is branded as a tool of Satan.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/80449/?page=entire

BTW, the author believes that utopian visions for societies in themselves breed danger, no matter what their content. He argues that while individuals can progress morally, the progress for societies in terms of ethics is non-linear and further argues that there might be no moral progress at all.

Oliver