IF I hear another presenter on TV describe the barbarians in Islamic State as “medieval,” I shall scream.

The papers are full of the same: “Isis – a medieval death cult”. Whenever modern types are looking for words to describe indescribable savagery, they habitually refer to the Middle Ages.

But may I be allowed to remind – or is it inform? – some of my colleagues in the media that the medieval period was a picnic compared with the 20th century?

Fact: there were more people slaughtered in wars in the last century than were killed in all the wars in all the previous centuries added together. And that’s before we even get on to those murdered in purges and genocides. Stalin is said to have murdered at least 20 million of his own people and Mao as many as 70 million.

Every time something of peculiar nastiness occurs, presenters and commentators fervently express their incredulity such an atrocity could take place “in the 21st century” – as if there were something particularly moral and virtuous about the times we live in, surpassing that of earlier generations. Our modern age has not abolished religion, but only replaced the old faith with a new one: and the new faith is in Progress.

And, as I have discovered, woe betide the man who blasphemes against this new religion. You will be called a dinosaur, a fossil, a throwback, Neanderthal and of course the ultimate term of condemnation, a conservative reactionary.

Never mind, I will confess to being a reactionary, for I vigorously react against the new superstition of Progress.

Of course, we have made progress in some things – principally in science and technology. And I am grateful for it. I wouldn’t like to have a surgical operation without anaesthetic and, if I were to contract severe bronchitis and pneumonia, I should be glad of a powerful antibiotic.

The electric light beats the smelly gas lamps every time, and I no longer have to put on an overcoat and take a torch for a visit to the outside lavatory in the middle of the night – as I did as a boy. It is our outstanding progress in the field of science and technology, I believe, which persuades us to think we are improving in ways which have nothing to do with science and technology.

But this is a delusion. We are no more moral or virtuous than our grandparents.

I think there is another cause for our Progress superstition – the idea we are getting better all the time – and this is Darwinism. Darwin taught us as a species we have evolved physically. True. But towards the end of the 19th century some of Darwin’s followers in the social sciences – such as Herbert Spencer and TH Huxley – began to preach the new gospel we are improving ethically and morally.

Novelist HG. Wells caught the Progress bug – but repented grievously towards the end of his life. Wells’ friend GK Chesterton commented on the doctrine of Progress: “Mr Brown asks whether the world is getting better or going to the dogs. What he should really ask himself is if Mr Brown is getting better or going to the dogs.”

The old religion taught we should not think too highly of ourselves. The new religion inverts this wholesome advice and preaches the psychotherapeutic virtue of self-esteem. Yuk! When we consider the notion of Progress, we don’t need to look far. I ask myself; am I a better man than I was last year? No, I am not.