We are sitting back and watching this happen. We have to kill them. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Michael sherman is discussing how science influences the way he think about human rights democracy, freedom, education and prosperity. This program is next on booktv. Welcome to the the Cato Institute. It is my honor to introduce and moderate this program. We hear a lot these days for the past few decades, about moral decline in america or the world, and covers a lot of different eras. Not clear that those are always the most relevant areas to what we might consider public mortally. Bill bennett made a career out of talking about moral decline. Lots of radio talk shows have it as a common theme. Most days there is an opted in the Washington Times decrying moral decline in america. And indeed i saw as a poll that said three quarters of americans think we are in a period of moral decline. So it seems pretty con advance advance convincing but there is an arm fe argument we are in an area of moral progress. And i think more people are speaking up on the side of moral progress and economic tangible progress in the world. As i point out in my forthcoming mind the libertarian mind we have seen a reduction in the world in war slavery, violence a tendency toward individual rights Economic Freedom democracy. Those are important elements of progress including moral progress. The new issue of cato policy support, the news letter for cato sponsors includes a transcript of a speech given by Steven Pinker in which he said the world is Getting Better and better so why is everyone pessimistic. And the Cato Institute created a website called humanprogress. Org with seven sets of data on his website. Everything from child birth to womens right toes democracy that suggest a great deal of progress in the world rights to i am not sure the website tells you why this progress has come about. And that is one of the topics in a new book from henry holt. Pup pooh publishers we will talk about tonight. The writer here is a regular con tributer for magazines. And he authored the believing brain from ghost to god to policy and conspiracy theories and how we we enforce the truth. The mind of the market on evolutionary economics. Why darwin matters. And the skinscience of good and evil. Please welcome, the author of our book we will talk about today, michael shermer. Thank for having me. Thank for it snow. It was 80 when i left Southern California and i forgot a jacket. I dont have a jacket. Just this. You make adjustments. The Human Progress website is really good. There is quite a few of us talking about moral progress. It is not really poplar. There is reasons why being a pessimist sells better than being an optimistic. Science and reason is my thing and i have written and talked about pseudo science and science and religion and science and morality and what extent science can have anything to say about morality and it has nothing to say about right and wrong and human values. That is part of thunone of the theisis in my book. My title comes from the inspiration speech probably the second greatest speech, Martin Luther king gave and the march from selma which is in a film now. I thought it was a great story of watt it was taken. The speech wasnt on the steps of the capital. Everything says from the selma march he gave the speech on the capital steps but he didnt. They had to do it on the back of a flat bed truck parked in front on the street. He was in a 19 getahth century creature named Theodore Parker and he said his eye reaches little ways and i cannot tell but it looks like the arc of the moral universe bends toward just. It worked. The Civil Rights Movement the demanding of equal rights resulting in the Voting Rights act of 1965 and about four or five months later you can see doctor king looking over his shoulders. And granting the franchise to all adults in a society is what we mean by a liberal democracy where everyone votes. I will have a few data sets here and it shows there were none in 1800. It wasnt until after the first and second world warp was there a burst in democracy. Some are more transparent and some more corrupt. Money doesnt influence ours you know. I think mish america shred from an eight to a seven. That is a sign of moral progress if you think expanding the spear to let more people have equal rights that is a part of it. The womens rights and the franchise granted to women is another part of this. I have the slide clicker thing here. Do i need here we go. Sorry about that. That is okay. I am just use my hands. You can see this isnt passed until 1920 but we are ahead of everyone else. The areas in the 1800s where women were granted the right to vote. In pick island with 12 people there so it is easy toget. Now every country almost has it perhaps the Saudi Arabian area and i like the vatican said never. How do rights come about . They start from the bottom up. It is the process of the people that dont have the rights demand they have them. They march protest and say this isnt right and we will not put up with it anymore. I came across this amazing photograph of one of the early right revolution leader in a march in washington, d. C. In 1913 leading it on this white stallion. I would follow her anywhere on the white stallion. It would be hard to object and stand in front of that. Horses are big. And sense then i have chapter on civil, gay, Animal Rights and i will talk about those. But the turning point in the mid1990s when the percentage of 2425 2434yearold women with a klemm College Degree doped to a 7 gap ahead of men and crossed the line in the early 1990s. And having a College Degree correlated with the Economic Prosperity so the gap of the 2438 year olds. 67 difference in 1980 to 93 difference in 2012. You will see a smaller number hike 77 but that is because they are counting all age groups. What the rights revolution often happened is there is a gap demographicallycross time but this is the most important one that Shows Progress i think. Now we have in the middle of another rights revolution and we can see this unfolding and keep track of who is against it who is for it and how the change comes about. It started in 1979 in new york with the protests at stone wall and you can see the changing attitudes from the early 1970s when most people believed that gays should not have equal opportunity and gay marnl shouldnt be legal to a crossing over of 20most percent. Even the president changed his mind. In 2008 he said i believe marriage is between a man and a woman and i am not in favor of gay marriage. Now in 2012 he said i concluded it is important for me to go ahead and affirm i think samesex couples should be able to get married. You can see where it crossed. Right around the time he changed his mind that is of course, what politicians do but that is what everybody does. People just get swept along with the tide of the changing rights revolution. And chose a those opposed just quit talking about it. Rarely do you come out and say you changed your mind unless you are the president. In germany, gay marriage and samesex marriage and gay rights is not controversial. These are friends of my wife who is german. They got married and there is lots of seismsex marriage there. It is no big deal. No one talks about it. It is a nonevent and they look at us like we are barbaric for having the conversation. You can see how it comes about in age. People born after 1981 are in most favor. Generation x is slowly behind. The baby boomers are being slowly pulled on and the old school silent generation is holding on for dear life. Not like to give it up but they will be gone soon enough anyway. That is an old observation called the plunk problem that mark plunk observed in science revolutions only change when the old garde dies out. Whew poses this . Of course primarily religious fundamentalist and literalist. White evangelicals and catholics are largely against it. The revolution is led by the religiously unaffiliated and the secular jews and apis cupailians were in favor of jews long ago. And by the way, i have good news for you libertarians in favor of the legalization of pot and gay marriage i found biblical support for both. In luviticus, it says if a man lies with another man he must be stoned. [laughter] so other signs of progress, the abolition of torture collapsed by the mid19th century. The United States injunction against cruel and unusual punishment includes torture, not including enhances interrogation. Breaking on the wheel used to be common. After you poke him through of hol holes, burn him and strap him to a wheel. Impaying paling on a pole or scraping where you rip the skin off somebody. This happened not because of a new religious reading of the bible or a revelation from the diety. At. Thats is still approved by the way. Has well as the savior of the argument of the Death Penalty and in europe the Death Penalty is dead and in the United States is on its way to extinction. Here are the more corrupt cadres to miss a practice killing each other. The earliest portrayal of an execution ever found and it is interpreted as the execution of lying on the ground. And that is ours with hunters and gatherers. The reason for this is because to have the relatively and Peace Society to do with the bullies. And to embarrass them were not inviting them to your party. And those that play nice by the rules and almost every Group Practices capital punishment. And then by chance somebody who is a real bastard lot come around, really there are stories how they do it is an eye opener. Theyll have more remain techniques like a guillotine or firing squad or the electric chair or process of botched executions through drugs but is said they take amount for a hunting expedition and do not come back with them. , fill them with arrows, throw them over the cliff but that is a fairly barbaric way to deal with problems like that. In the United States the death sentence has been collapsing dropping dramatically since the mid 90s that was reflecting the crime wave of 70s and 80s as moret death penalties were handed out in behind better the executions actually carried out hour on the decline. Most criminals on death row die of old age before they are executed which is like 100 percent more cost to house someone on death row so i am predicting if you follow that curve and the way the rape the states are changing their stance it will be the mid 2025 there will be no more Death Penalty in the United States. That is my prediction. With the abolition of slavery of course, and is driven by quakers and mennonites but there were religious people who promoted the abolition of slavery but really look at the abolitionists they were inspired by the declaration of independence and the french revolution. So what you see in their literature and there is nothing then says that slavery is wrong. In that sense with the creator wrote of book as a guide to morality the not only is it not mentioned but how you treat your slaves it doesnt come about until enlightenment philosophers of equal treatment under the law that people should not be treated as a means to an end. So how far is that moral are bent . Todays conservatives a more liberal than liberals were in the 50s. Think about that. With social attitudes alone not policy but how they treat blacks and women and minorities and so forth. Compared to the 50s. There is exceptions. What about terrorism . Because it is in the news every day. Fisker i am not sure it is the problem really are what we should be concerned about all though it could work by terrorizing Government Spending trillions of dollars but supposedly the real threat was to quantify political scientist who had an amazing data sets of campaign for political change of violent and nonviolent to track those successful campaigns where about twice successful than partially successful then failed attempts at political change with filing campaigns are much more likely to fail. Tracking over time you can see where in the 50s it continues on much more genetically today. Pointing out that no terrorist organization has overturned a state to establish a new government for example,. The few are worried about terrorist taking over the country that will not happen. Even isis is not really a state but like a case of the nazis but it is different then the terrorist threat. As the existential threat unless you want to argue spending trillions of dollars but we have stories in the news Donald Sterling lyon from los angeles you know, the owner of the clippers he was in the news every night and leaders were calling for a crisis intervention and in private to his mistress complaining as the and men as gay. Weber not private inner pretty vocal. Not like Donald Sterling but they were not quiet about their attitudes it was understood that is how they thought and they dont think like that anymore. These are tragedies put on the other hand, with Police Brutality it was much higher than it is today also to attract optimistic trends with civilization with the data set with the late 1800s his heroes out remember interracial marriage was a controversy . I dont because it was so long ago but they would say that blacks and whites should not be allowed to marry. In 1959 i know anybody to even discuss is it any more. Although i am perplexed by the 87 percent figure that is 13 that said they would not approve of a marriage between a blackandwhite . Why not 100 percent . I dont know. I magazine publisher also dont really deal with his long to portray famous people and a nasty sarcastic way end as the real issue was about jesus days budapests arrives atheist rule so this is the elephant in the room. All of my friends are wringing their hands. Liberals are in favor of free speech sometimes they will conflict but to verify what we are criticizing whenever youre style but the ideas we should focus not the people but the problem is too broad so even religious extremist they are a way out there they will kill anything not even above. But in particular those believed to violence is a problem. With a part of the sharia law was so we should be focused on. The analogy and make it in the book is if you believe women cavorting with demons in the middle of the night causes bad weather and disease then you are insane or 500 years ago everybody believed that. They did believe theyre doing something to help our group and community but then to think of their cavorting it causes bad weather but to have a deeper principle of Human Flourishing in equal rights. But often moral problems people think this is a good way to treat people and it is not a real has been effective and it wont. As my friend said and islam is the mother lode of bad ideas. But few of those percentages with the moral the moral arc dening backwards but to get the general sense this is not a tiny handful of bad apples that we dont have to worry about. It is something to be concerned about. The higher support for sharia law is higher or islam is a favored religion. 91 in malaysia they are not trivial numbers even though it is the real world but word of god so it goes backwards against the indictment idea not the guys radio of how that works and those to leave on the right for corporal punishment. You can see these nine new to where the guy is sitting there bent over so it is not really punishment. But there really is painful and destructive. But the moderates are enabling the extremist. Host i believe is sharia law does somebody else says i believe it also. It is the small step once you believe the bad idea that is why we should be focused on these bad idea is if you shall not murder our freedoms. And the independents had this powerful bull europeans ever doing anything remotely like this so from the land of free speech people are terrified about offending people. That is a concern that is a debatable subject. So we publish the things thats how we make progress. The second part of the talk is what caused all of this good news. So for the most part it is spending. With the expanding laurels ear concern for the self when going now to your extended family the basic evolutionary model goes out to the curve with the first moral principle is to help in the seconded is reciprocity. So that takes care of everybody but youre teams are more likely to be propagated by helping to be genetically related or friend that will help you when you are in need. That has been worked out mathematical biologist. , we have a dark side by the bullies and the free riders. So we have a dual nature of good and evil Cooperative Bank competitive altruistic and greedy that we have better angels and you were demons now i will show you a video clip that captures the dual nature that we have the sense of wanting to help somebody not hurt but impose justice on somebody who hurt somebody else. One day i a stumble across this short video clips it is only 20 seconds while i was watching cat videos. [laughter] you will see the three people talking for but i think it is in europe somewhere he reaches out to shoveler backwards she stumbles back the guy misses her and then she goes. Then he stops then another urge bubbles up like that no good bastardy and he called cocks the guy. Twice. Then he says looks like summer also was supposed to be in peoples morale of the pit. He asks her if she is okay i will show with twice because there is a guy at the top of the screen looks the key is running to help but then all the sudden he turns and chases the guy. Here we go. Fifth so we have this sense of justice that things have to be made right to this is part of our nature. So of course, we had a sense of helping and altruism but it makes the argument is part of our nature this is an experiment and you may have seen this before which the capitular and monkeys are taught to associate these little pebbles with food that they like. It is like money then they have a dollar than