There, I attended three guest lectures by world-class philosopher and atheist public intellectual, Peter Singer. King’s is known for its secular ideology and my perception of Christianity fitted well with the views of my fellow students: Christians were anti-intellectual and self-righteous.Īfter Cambridge, I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Oxford.
As an undergrad, I won the University Medal and a Commonwealth Scholarship to undertake my Ph.D. My identity lay in academic achievement, and my secular humanism was based on self-evident truths.
I knew from the age of eight that I wanted to study history at Cambridge and become a historian. I grew up in Australia, in a loving, secular home, and arrived at Sydney University as a critic of “religion.” I didn’t need faith to ground my identity or my values.
