Reason is the Most Important Driver of Human Moral Progress?

"Reason is the key driver of human moral progress."

EDIT: A more accurate summary of Newberger Goldstein's thesis might be, "Reason deserves the greatest credit for whatever moral progress we have seen and see in the world." Or -- not "reason is the key driver of human moral progress", but rather "reason is the single most important driver of human moral progress."

Comments?

Sunstone said:

"Reason is the key driver of human moral progress."

Comments?

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UMM Human moral is declining, Not Progressing in today's society

Amanaki said:

UMM Human moral is declining, Not Progressing in today's society

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In what way?
I see it as improving.

So after watching I'm left with the thought, 'Is reasoning really a moral acceptance of bad reasoning behaviorisms?'

No, no it is not.

Amanaki said:

UMM Human moral is declining, Not Progressing in today's society

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I dont see it, in fact, on the contrary.

Yes there are groupings in which self and greed are more important than morality. In general though i morality as changing, becoming more all encompassing more caring.

ChristineM said:

I dont see it, in fact, on the contrary.

Yes there are groupings in which self and greed are more important than morality. In general though i morality as changing, becoming more all encompassing more caring.

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I do not want to start an argument with you, but my question is, How can we see morality getting better in a world that constantly attack each other, Both in wars but also in politics or even daily life? Morality the way I understand it is to do our best to not harm others or own interests. But today we often see, that people get more and more greedy, hateful, dishonest, and full of egoistic way of living. In my understanding that is not good morality at all.
But you see it different then me i know

Sunstone said:

"Reason is the key driver of human moral progress."

Comments?

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It was a good video. It would be easier to comment if there was a written transcript or summary of their arguments, though.

Morality and religion are an oxymoron, imo. Many religious people wouldn't know the meaning of the word 'moral' if their behaviour is anything to go by.

JJ50 said:

Morality and religion are an oxymoron, imo. Many religious people wouldn't know the meaning of the word 'moral' if their behaviour is anything to go by.

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Maybe that says more about the people than the religious teaching? If human beings are immoral then it does not help no matter how good the teaching is, as long humans do not follow it even they claim to be within a religion

Sunstone said:

"Reason is the key driver of human moral progress."

Comments?

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Pinker is not a good thinker

Although there was an interesting comment on the YouTube page of this video:

It's a shame this dialogue ignores the current monstrosities of humankind - For the first time in history, we have the ability to live sustainably, end world hunger, improve literacy and numeracy rates globally, greatly reduce disease and subsequently save millions of lives per year. Instead we what? We create a system to live by which works for itself and allows us to say "That's just how the world works". We've not evolved, we've just changed the nature of our barbarism and categorised it as the nature of capitalism.

Amanaki said:

Maybe that says more about the people than the religious teaching? If human beings are immoral then it does not help no matter how good the teaching is, as long humans do not follow it even they claim to be within a religion

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There are some very immoral teachings in the Bible, imo.

JJ50 said:

There are some very immoral teachings in the Bible, imo.

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I know there are some teachings in the Old Testament, but those are not for the Christian people anymore, that belong to the old teaching. When there were other rules.
As far as I know the teachings for Christians it is only the New Testament that should count, not the whole bible of today. (i could be wrong of course)

Amanaki said:

I know there are some teachings in the Old Testament, but those are not for the Christian people anymore, that belong to the old teaching. When there were other rules.
As far as I know the teachings for Christians it is only the New Testament that should count, not the whole bible of today. (i could be wrong of course)

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Jesus was no saint if what was attributed to the chap was true. He played exorcism hocus pocus and frightened a herd of pigs over a cliff. There is no suggestion he compensated the owner for their loss. He also is quoted as telling people to leave their responsibilities and follow him, which is very WRONG indeed.

That idiot Paul in the NT made some pretty sick statements, imo, like suggesting women should be subservient where their menfolk are concerned, and being silent in church, he also condemned homosexuality.

JJ50 said:

There are some very immoral teachings in the Bible, imo.

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You believe people wrote the bible so what are you really saying? People came up with these immoral teachings.
You want to get rid of a book people wrote so that people can write their own new rules..... But people wrote the rules you hate what if the new rules are not to your liking or shall we just dispense with human morlaity altogether and make the individual sovereign? Good luck with that.

Of course if their is a God who is the universal sovereign your dilema disappears Gods morality trumps that of man.
I know all the talking points of your supposed moral outrage at the bible and they are very petty and answered by any entry level look at the question "Why does God allow evil"

You do realise that all the things you go on about were done by people not by God.
If christians actually did what the bible told them to do it would be a vastly different world. People kill the bible doesn't kill.

Here's a task for you.... Give me an example of atrocious christian behaviour in the first 300 years of christianity.
Any murder, war, rape, scandle anything you can find. If it's such a horrible book that inspires evil you should have no trouble filling pages. Although i think you will have a hard time finding anything bad pre 300ce. That was when politics and the world you support got its hands on the faith and did what men do... Any immorality comes from the political worldly influence of people not following the spirit of the religion.
If you think that the apostles of christ would have countanenced something like the crusades or any other number of evils then you are fearfully misinformed.

JJ50 said:

Jesus was no saint if what was attributed to the chap was true. He played exorcism hocus pocus and frightened a herd of pigs over a cliff. There is no suggestion he compensated the owner for their loss. He also is quoted as telling people to leave their responsibilities and follow him, which is very WRONG indeed.

That idiot Paul in the NT made some pretty sick statements, imo, like suggesting women should be subservient where their menfolk are concerned, and being silent in church, he also condemned homosexuality.

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Well even if you do not believe the pigs were demon driven and because Jesus was an Enlighten being he could see this, and according to the teaching it is not wrong to end demons. But I guess you will argue that there are no such things as demons. And that is ok, you do not believe in it.

Just because it does not say the farmer did or did not get any compensation, does it mean it did not happen?
I do not believe either Jesus or Buddha for that matter, said come with me or you are doomed. they never forced anyone to follow their teachings. And as you maybe know, to seek enlightenment/ wisdom is seen as the highest morality within Religions. But yes there will be those who do not seek an ascetic lifestyle to become enlighten too.

People are driven by personal bias all reasurch has shown this;

'Humans are not rational by definition, but they can think and behave rationally or not, depending on whether they apply, explicitly or implicitly, the strategy of theoretical and practical rationality to the thoughts they accept and to the actions they perform.'

I like Steven Pinker but he's wrong.

All knowledge begins with the senses. So, imagine our long-ago ancestors in a time before language was invented. Since they couldn't see, hear, taste or smell the difference between right and wrong, isn't it likely that they felt it?

Isn't it likely that they intuitively felt the guidance of conscience, warning them of wrongness, long before they could speak or write and use reasoning to write stupid moral rules like "Thou shalt not kill?"

And even dumber, our laws on killing are failed, useless reasoned attempts to write an absolute rule covering future situations of almost infinite variety when an unbiased jury given all the relevant facts could rely on conscience to make the right call.

When criminal laws result in judgments that agree with the judgments of conscience, they are coincidentally right the way a stopped clock can be right twice a day. When the law conflicts with the judgments of conscience, and the law prevails, injustice happens.

Moz said:

Pinker is not a good thinker

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Like to elaborate O great one?

Reason is very useful, as long as you reason using facts and sound premises. On the other hand, Fake news has demonstrated if you reason, using lies and false premises, you can lead people astray with what appears to be sound logic.

Remember the collusion delusion. If Trump had been working with the Russians, that would have been very serious for the country. This logic was sound, however, the premises and facts were false, so the logic did not add up to reality.

If I said the moon was made of cheese and if we colonized the moon and harvest the moon cheese we could feed the poor of the earth. This is logical, but it is type of logic that uses a single faulty cheese premise, to make the entire logic chain void. Logic is like a mathematical equation. If we input false data into the equation, it will still generate results. This is how the left wing base is fooled by its leaders with daily fake news.

Humans have been able to reason for centuries. What they lacked was not the ability to reason, but access to sound premises, due to not yet knowing all the facts of reality. If the earth was flat and finite it would have an edge. If you sailed to the edge you would fall off. This is sound logic but with faulty premises. Once we found out the earth was round, then the logic train changed, since the new premise led to different logical conclusions.