Episode Details

A committed secular humanist, two Christians (and a Jewish rabbi) compare perspectives on their agreed claim that human morality has been on the upswing.

A year ago, we did an episode with a Jewish rabbi and scholar — Dr. and Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson — exploring the claim that human morality has been trending upwards, in large part due to a Judeo-Christian influence on modern Western society: that we’ve been climbing the evolutionary ladder, not just in a biological and cognitive sense, but also in a moral and ethical sense.  A lot of people really struggle with that claim, largely because they look at headlines in the newspapers and say: “You’ve got to be kidding me!”

Another leading scholar who’s very skeptical and resistant to religion — Dr. Michael Shermer — made the same claim about human morality, although he believes science and reason are the driving force behind the increase (and very much plays down any positive contributions from religion). 

We thought it would be fun, and enlightening, to compare notes with Dr. Shermer.

One of the points that we agreed on is that news headlines can be very misleading if you’re trying to find a trend: those are snapshots in a very dynamic situation, very much like the daily status of the stock market. In Michael’s words: “three steps forward but two steps back.”  You need to look at the overall trend.  It’s like compound interest.  Even historical retrospectives looking back over a few centuries are too myopic.

We discussed a variety of scientific and political developments and societal factors which are contributing to this trend and the volatility masking it:

• polarization of society around the world
• increased attention to human rights over the past 1000 years
• liberalization and the recent introduction of democracy (up until 2 or 3 centuries ago, countries have always been run by emperors, autocrats, theocracies, dictators, etc.), but a democracy also comes with more intervention by radicalized individuals
• the bipolar potential of the internet, AI, genetics and nuclear technology (to name just a few)
• the business model driving social media and