The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom by Michael Shermer.
I bought this book because I heard about it on Michael Medved’s show and he said it was a good book. I guess that this is the last time I take a recommendation from Mike. Actually the real reason that read this book is that I’ve always kind of thought that it was actually the decoupling of State and Religion was brought about by atheists, or deists that turned into atheists, and not by religious people. Also, it seems to me that the world has become a much better place, at least parts of it, and this is another argument that Mike and the author made on the show.
Because this book was plugged by Michael I found one part of the book funny. Dr. Shermer talks about how he tells his friends in Europe about how a talk show host in the US starts his show by saying that “American is the greatest nation of Gods green Earth.” He then goes on to say that the Europeans just roll their eyes. The funny thing about this is that Michael Medved is the talk show hosts that says that. Dr. Shermer then goes on to do something that I always find disingenuous. He pulls out some reports that talk about how European nations have higher and better living standards. What Dr. Sheerer, and others who make these claims, don’t point out is that the US is a country of 300+ million people, which has taken in all sorts of nationalities. The US has raised all these people to an incredible living standard. Comparing the US to small European nations that have a mono culture is like comparing apples and oranges. How about comparing the US to other large nations that are multicultural, like China, India or Russia. How does the US compare then? Or barring that how about comparing US states that almost have mono cultures like Utah, or Minnesota or another state. That’s never done by europhiles like Dr. Sheerer. I always wonder why europhiles like Dr. Shermer don’t emigrate to one of those other nations? Oh yeah I know. Dr. Shermer probably realizes that since he wasn’t born in one of those nations he finds so salutary. He knows will never be accepted as a native because, while you can become an American by coming here and working hard, you can’t become a Frenchman or any other type of European unless you’re born there.
I’ve read some some articles by Michael Shermer and his articles seem fairly balanced. This book however makes me reconsider my opinion of Dr. Shermer. He now seems like another atheist that hates Christianity and anything that comes from the Bible, and he does what most atheists do is to cherry pick things out of the Bible to make people who believe in the Bible look like idiots. He does the same thing with Christian History. The same thing could be done in the reverse. There is no equivalent to the Bible that atheists accept that can be cherry picked and mocked. The same is not true with famous athiests in history. Take the secular atheist saint Margaret Sanger who started Planned Parenthood. She's never presented as a mad women who believed in eugenics and started Planned Parenthood as a way to kill African American babies. That's because eugenics is now consider a pseudoscience that is disavowed by all atheists like Dr Shermer. However practically all atheists and progressive thinkers in the first half of the 20th Century used to think eugenics was a great thing, and lets face it, if breeding works with animals, shouldn’t it work with humans if we're just progressive enough to think the unthinkable? The only thing that caused the progressive atheists to disavow eugenics is that the mad man Hitler, the Nazi’s and the Germans showed what a terrible idea it was. But atheists today pretend atheists would never have believed something that stupid, but they did.
Pretty much all of Dr. Shermer's treatment of the Bible was shallow and is practically a straw man argument the way it is presented. Only ad idiot would not see this, and I'm sure Dr. Shermer is not an idiot so he must assume that his readers are.
I’m LDS and I found one part of the book exceptionally insulting. Dr. Shermer showed his "deep" knowledge of LDS theology by showing how ridiculous he thought it was. And what was his point? Apparently that LDS theology changes! However when atheists stop believing what the progressive atheists believed last century, like the belief in eugenics, they are progressive, while when a religion changes it's doctrines they are hypocrites. I guess what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander.
Another thing that really annoyed me is the lightness he made of Dr Stark’s idea that Christianity led to the discovery of science, the enlightenment, and Western Civilization in general. He's written a number of books that lay out his arguments and ideas. I've read most of Dr. Starks books and it think he makes very good points. Dr. Shermer quotes one paragraph from one book and then all he does to discount the fact that Western Christianity led to our Western Civilization was to point out that there were great civilizations in China and India. Wow! That's some great reasoning and I'll bet Dr. Stark never realized there were great civilizations in China and India. Let me boil Dr. Starks idea down. Did India and China have astrology? Yes they did. Did they develop astronomy? No they didn’t. Did India and China have alchemy? Yes they did. Did they develop chemistry? No they didn’t. And that’s the point of Dr. Starks books that Dr. Sheerer dismisses in a paragraph. Why didn’t any other society ever develop science? Well they didn’t because they didn’t have Christianity. Take my word for it Dr. Stark has a compelling reason why Christianity led to what we have in Western Civilization. However, another way to look at this is as a compliment to Dr. Stark because he's discounted like the Bible with the same straw man arguments that only idiots will believe.
Dr. Shermer made a big deal about how bad slavery was, which everyone agrees was a bad thing. I kept wondering about how he was going to deal with the fact that it was Christians in general that led to the abolition of slavery, and a specific Christian that led to the abolition of slavery in Britain. Well Dr. Shermer does give credit to William Wilberforce for bringing the abolition of slavery in Britain as a bill to the English parliament for 27 years until slavery was legally abolished. But then he does his best to discount the work that William did trying to portray him as a regressive prude for getting King George III to issue a proclamation against vice. He doesn't mention anything about the "Clapham Sect", which was a group of people in The Clapham area of England which started and moved forward most of the social programs in England such as better working conditions for children and miners, cruelty to animals and other projects that seem they would be close to Dr. Shermer's heart. What Dr. Shermer tries to do is to claim that enlightment French philosophes such as Voltaire and Diderot are the ones that helped rid the world of slavery by quoting some things that these men wrote. However, that's all they ever did was write things. The French never abolished slavery until forced to due so because of English warships enforcement of anti-slavery by raiding slaving ships and it became embarrassing to keep supporting it. Was there a movement to abolish slavery during the French Revolution, that was supposedly based on the ideas of the Enlightenment? No. Did Napoleon abolish slavery as he tried to take enlightenment ideas to the rest of Europe as he built his empire. No. All atheists do is talk.
This fact that all atheists do is talk was made clear to me once when I was on Christian discussion board and was visiting the atheist section, which is something I liked to do back then. Someone had started a thread and was railing that it was embarrassing that during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina there were hundreds of Christian organizations that were down there helping people and not a single atheist organization. I couldn’t resist asking him why he didn't organize a group of atheists and take them there. I don't remember his response but ever since then I've been amazed by the truth he pointed out. Where are the atheists hospitals? There are hundreds, if not thousands, of hospitals that have been started by Christian organizations. Most towns have at least one, and bigger towns have multiple ones. Then the are the Christian adoption agencies, etc. The atheists just don’t do things to help the world.
Dr. Shermer makes one claim in the book that I found absolutely astounding. He has a ton of data to show that wars became less common during the 20th Century. The data as far as I’m concerned is very compelling. Then he makes the arguments that wars have become less common because of science and enlightenment. Then he makes his astounding claim. He says that all wars before WWII were the result of religion!! Including WWI! This is the first that I’ve ever heard or read this claim. Most people that have talked about WWI have said that it was a tragedy and the end of the modern enlightenment. People were thinking that enlightenment and science were going to continue to make life better, and then the three nations that were the leaders of the enlightenment became locked in the most horrendous war the world had ever known. One of the sad facts is that all of the nations in Europe were Christian, and all prayed to the same God. That adds to the tragedy, but Dr. Shermer is the only person I’ve ever heard that has said it was a war of religion. Also, he apparently thinks that the civil war during the French Revolution was religion based. Were the Napoleon Wars? Dr. Shermer is making claims that are crazy to try and prove his points.
With all that I did like parts of the book. His writing is very engaging so it was easy to read, at least the parts that weren’t infuriating. He brings a lot of statistics to the book to show that the world is much less violent today than it was before. I just think that his reasons for why it is are wrong. However, I still think that science and the enlightenment and the types of governments that have risen since then contribute to the fact that the world is a better place. I wish he had made some better arguments for why this has happened.
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