ahanu

We are in the beginning of a new universal cycle, an age when humanity can usher in a age of peace and stability. Is there evidence of this? According to Steven Pinker, yes, there is. According to a blogger for Bigthink.com who uses Pinker's ideas, there are multiple studies that point to the decline in violence.

One is the Flynn effect, which tells us IQ has risen steadily since IQ tests where first introduced to the world. "And what's more, 'the gains are not small: an average of three IQ points... per decade' [p.651]. To grasp the scale of this, Pinker writes that an average person from 1910 would test out as having an IQ of 70 today - the borderline of mental retardation," writes Lee. The blogger dives into the problems with measuring intelligence, but he points out that abstract reasoning shows the most improvement.

While the causes have not been indentified for sure, Lee says Pinker shows the effects of higher IQs in the recent decades with a decrease in what he calls moral stupidity, believing that other groups of people are somehow less human than you. According to this blogger, "In short, Pinker's argument is that reason inevitably brings people to realize the benefits of cooperation versus the riskiness, wastefulness and stupidity of violence. To support this, he cites several different lines of evidence, including that people with higher IQs are more likely to choose cooperation in a Prisoner's Dilemma game set up by psychologists, and that smarter people are less likely to commit violent crimes even when controlling for socioeconomic status."

Another reason for the decrease in violence has to do with feminism. Pinker observes: "The one great universal in the study of violence is that most of it is committed by fifteen-to-thirty-year-old men." Pinker investigates evolutionary psychology to make more sense of this. Status is very important--especially establishing a position as an alpha male. Violence is a way a male can increase his reputation. Women, on the other hand, spend more time caring for their children, so they have a tendency to avoid risks. According to the blogger, if you do not accept these ideas, empirical studies back up the idea that most violence is caused by men: "For example, in a computer experiment that simulated war games, giving players the options to negotiate with, threaten or attack each other over disputed resources, the overconfident players who engaged in unprovoked attacks or triggered mutually destructive retaliation were almost exclusively men [p.513]." How do we decrease the violence? As a society, once more women gain power and influence, violence decreases: "Historically, women have taken the leadership in pacifist and humanitarian movements out of proportion to their influence in other political institutions of the time" [p.685]." Lee knows this doesn't mean all women are peacful; it just means that "a society where women and men wield equal power will tend to be more peace-oriented than one where men predominate." More rights for women has decreased marital rape and intimate-partner violence.

So, to recap, two factors show a decline in violence: higher IQs in the past decades and feminism.

Blogging Better Angels: The Escalator of Reason | Daylight Atheism | Big Think

I hope you guys don't mind that this comes from an athiest's blog.

Fadl

I highly recommend Pinker's book. A must read for Baha'is, and very much supports the Baha'i world view, IMHO.

ahanu

Well, some parts of the book do. For example, the post about the decline in violence supports the Baha'i view, but Pinker also seems to think religion was not a tool for peace in the past. If you click on the link I posted above, you will see there are other posts related to Pinker's book, and one of them discusses religion and violence. This will definitely be a good discussion if you want to talk about it. Have you read Pinker's book? I have not because I don't have the time, but I have read reviews from others.

Fadl

Yes, I've read it. Although Pinker does not sympathize with religion for the most part, the statistics and evidences he uses support Baha'i views largely although I'm sure he doesn't know it and might not approve. ;-)

Guns germs and steel is another recent classic that really is the science behind our faith.

It's fun being a Baha'i. It's almost as if all created things bear witness to this most great revelation.

Pete in Panama

GG&S did have a heck of a lot going for it, but not everyone's bought completely into it because of its fatal flaws. The worst of which is that the entire tract is prisoner to the discredited materialist/economic determinism that all but the most dedicated political hacks have long since fled. Maybe Diamond's next book will be "GG&S and Divinely Inspired Individuals".



One can hope...

ahanu

Okay. I found the quote I was looking for from a previous blog post. Pinker writes:

"The theory that religion is a force for peace... does not fit the facts of history."

This isn't the Baha'i worldview, for the Baha'i worldview is this: religion, in its pure, uncontaminated form, is a force for peace. Then, again, maybe we could argue the Baha'i worldview states: religion is most often darkened into a force for evil. However, Steven Pinker seems to be saying that, quintessentially, religion is evil. Slight difference.

Zhang

Very interesting bro, 谢谢.