Discussion Outline – Prof. Pinker, Incompetent Auto Mechanic

[johnkarls]

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Discussion Outline – Prof. Pinker, Incompetent Auto Mechanic

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The title of Prof. Pinker’s book is “Enlightenment Now: The Case For Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress.”

Part I, comprising 3 chapters, is entitled “Enlightenment.”

Part II, comprising 17 chapters, is entitled “Progress.”

Part III is labelled “Reason, Science and Humanism” and comprises 1 chapter on each.


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Prof. Pinker, Incompetent Auto Mechanic

The reason for this title for the Suggested Discussion Outline is that Prof. Pinker is a fraud!!!

Yes, the “Age of Enlightenment” began with René Descartes who, BTW, was featured prominently in the Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz.

And yes, the “Age of Enlightenment” challenged and undermined the authority of the Roman Catholic Church.

And yes, enlightenment, reason, science and progress are all laudable goals. [NB: humanism is intentionally omitted from this list.]

HOWEVER, this list of 4 laudable goals NOT including humanism is like a set of spark plugs such as can be found in most automobile engines. Spark plugs are designed to work well together in harmony.

Prof. Pinker has defined “humanism” as “Good without God” or, more precisely, as atheism while still worshipping The Golden Rule which is common to all of the world’s 4 major religions, each of which has more than 1 billion adherents (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism).

It is respectfully suggested that it remains to be seen whether Prof. Pinker’s atheistic humanism will work well with the other 4 “spark plugs.”

After all, as pointed out in Yoram Hazony’s review of Prof. Pinker’s book, most of the progress that has been achieved since the Middle Ages was NOT the result of “The Enlightenment” and NOT the result of people who were not religious.

[Yoram Hazony’s review is available at viewtopic.php?f=622&t=2017&sid=07e76b39 ... 64928bfb67.]

Accordingly, it remains to be seen whether Prof. Pinker’s “sleight of hand” substitution of an atheist “spark plug” for a predominantly-religious “spark plug” will permit progress to continue.


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Suggested Order of Discussion

It is respectfully suggested that we discuss first, perhaps for the first hour, the “book ends” comprising Prof. Pinker’s polemic – Part I and Part III.

And then spend the last hour on Part II which comprises 17 examples of progress that Prof. Pinker claims to have been produced by his beloved atheism.


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Suggested Discussion Questions Re Part I and Part III

The following discussion questions come from the Short Quiz.

Their original numbers in the Short Quiz are preserved in case anyone wants to consult their Suggested Answers which are available at viewtopic.php?f=625&t=2024&sid=07e76b39 ... 64928bfb67.

NB: The Suggested Answer to Q-18 is included below because it contains a plethora of essential information.

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5. Does Steven Pinker posit that “progress” (the fourth element of his sub-title) is the goal of “reason, science and humanism?

6. Focusing on the first of Steven Pinker’s “Big Three,” is it distressing that “Big Tech” is, as we discussed at length in our Jan 13 meeting, trying to impose censorship on the nation?

7. Have we been witnessing for several decades now the eradication of “freedom of speech” in our nation’s leading universities?

8. Is the war against “freedom of speech” getting even nastier in the next evolution of censorship – “cancel culture”?

9. Turning to the second of Steven Pinker’s “Big Three,” is “science” effectively a “wholly-owned subsidiary” of “humanism” or “enlightenment” – or is it often diametrically opposed such as, for example, when it is used to create weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, radiological, chemical, biological, etc.)?

10. Isn’t then the key to Steven Pinker’s “progress” the ethics of the nation’s and the world’s leaders?

11. And shouldn’t the “bed rock” principle on which the other principles are built be “reason” for which the sine qua non is “freedom of speech”??? And not the censorship and “cancel culture” into which our nation has descended???

12. If our nation is able to restore “freedom of speech,” then is Steven Pinker correct that we should be guided by “humanism” which Steven Pinker summarizes most succinctly (p. 410) with a quotation from Spinoza – “Those who are governed by reason desire nothing for themselves which they do not also desire for the rest of humankind”?

13. Is this nothing more than a long-winded re-statement of “The Golden Rule” – “Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You”?

14. Is “The Golden Rule” the basis of all of the world’s major religions – defined as more than one billion adherents – Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism?

15. Does Steven Pinker want to promote “humanism,” which he describes (also on p. 410) as “good without God” because so many of the world’s religions have been occasionally used by evil people to promote temporal goals?

16. For example, Buddhism has perhaps the greatest reputation among the world’s major religions for being peaceful, but wasn’t more than 90% of the Japanese population Buddhist when Japan engaged in “the rape of China” kicking off World War II and when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor making World War II a truly “world war”?

17. Does Steven Pinker think that human beings are basically “good” so that promoting a new quasi-religion of “goodness” can’t possibly be perverted and can’t possibly fail to succeed in making this “vale of tears” a “heaven on earth”?

18. Does Steven Pinker mention “Lord of the Flies” – a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Goldring – whose thesis is that human beings are basically evil as he illustrates with a fictitious story of British school boys who are marooned during World War II on a deserted island when their airplane crashes killing all of the adults – and the British school boys immediately descend into murder, cannibalism, etc.?

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Suggested Answer to Q-18

No – he ignores the possibility that human beings are basically evil.

Which is surprising because “Lord of the Flies” was written a mere 9 years after World War II and the 70-80 million deaths it produced, including the millions in Hitler’s concentration camps.

Though “Lord of the Flies” was written approximately 2 decades after Stalin killed 25 million Soviet peasants in his attempt to “collectivize” Soviet farms. [NB: Stalin admitted to Churchill at Yalta that he had killed 10 million Soviet peasants in the collectivization effort, but Stalin’s solution to the disaster was to forcibly re-locate 25 million city dwellers to Kazakhstan to become farmers and, as the famous maxim goes – “actions speak louder than words”!!!]

HOWEVER, “Lord of the Flies” was written before Chairman Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” killed between 33 million and 55 million human beings 1958-1962.

AND “Lord of the Flies” was written before Chairman Mao’s “Cultural Revolution” killed as many as 20 million human beings 1966-1976.

AND “Lord of the Flies” was written well before post-Mao China’s brutal suppression of the millions of Tibetans and China’s on-going brutal suppression (including modern-day concentration camps) of its approximately 25 million Muslims.

BTW, there have been some famous psychology experiments purporting to prove that human beings are basically evil.

One would think that as a “Doctor of Philosophy of Experimental Psychology,” Steven Pinker would have conducted his own psychology experiments to prove --

(1) that Stalin, Hitler, Chairman Mao and the modern-day suppression of Tibet and China’s Muslims, etc., etc., are not so evil after all; or

(2) that in the cases of Stalin, Hitler and Mao, their actions were NOT supported by anyone else in their power structures; or AT THE VERY LEAST

(3) that ordinary people selected at random will not descend into the kind of uncivilized behavior exhibited by the characters in “Lord of the Flies” (and the kind of evil exhibited by Stalin, Hitler, Mao, modern China, etc., etc.)!!!

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19. So why does Steven Pinker think that human beings can be made to do “good” without being motivated by “The Fear of God” (or “The Fear of Allah” since “Allah” is the Arabic word for the God of Abraham and Moses)?

20. Or at least the “Fear of Re-Incarnation” DOWN the animal chain rather than UP THE ANIMAL CHAIN TOWARD NIRVANA (NB: re-incarnation is basic to both Hinduism and Buddhism which is not surprising since the first Buddha died still thinking he was a Hindu monk)?

37. So back to Steven Pinker – is he an atheist?

38. Isn’t atheism (the belief that there is no deity) ANTI-INTELLECTUAL because existentialist philosophers would say that THE ONLY INTELLECTUALLY-HONEST POSITION IS AGNOSTICISM (the belief that the existence of a deity can be NEITHER proved NOR disproved)?

39. So why does Steven Pinker think that the lack of “reason” that our nation is currently experiencing in the form of the LACK OF FREE SPEECH and the growing omnipresence of “cancel culture” does not mean that we are doomed?

40. And shouldn’t Steven Pinker welcome “The Fear of God” (aka “The Fear of Allah”) to support human beings in their “humanistic” quest to compel other human beings to “do good”?

41. And shouldn’t Steven Pinker also welcome the Hindu/Buddhist “Fear of Re-Incarnation” DOWN the animal chain rather than UP THE ANIMAL CHAIN TOWARD NIRVANA???

42. In other words, doesn’t “humanism” need all the help it can get???


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Suggested Discussion Questions Re Part II

It is respectfully suggested that each of the 17 subjects claimed by Prof. Pinker to comprise progress resulting from reason, science and humanism be considered in the light of these questions –

1. Is the claim credible that progress in this field was accomplished with essential help from atheism?

2. Is progress in this field likely to continue if atheism replaces religion? If atheism replaces religion, is the world likely to produce even more Stalins, Hitlers and Chairman Maos?

[solutions]

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---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Your Part II Challenge Question Whether “Progress” Had Essential Help From Atheism
From: Solutions
Date: Fri, February 5, 2021 4:57 pm PST
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Attachment:
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Dear John,

Your challenge in the penultimate sentence of your Suggested Discussion Outline was intriguing! --

“Is the claim credible that progress in [each of the 17 fields in Prof. Pinker’s Part II entitled “Progress”] was accomplished with essential help from atheism?”

Equally intriguing was the recollection that Prof. Pinker in his Chapter 6 on “Health” had listed (p. 64) 11 important medical discoveries together with the scientist(s) and the number of lives saved.

So I decided to accept your “challenge” and try to determine whether the scientists involved were religious or not – with several caveats:

(1) I added to the list two super-important scientists who were mentioned in the paragraph introducing the list – Jonas Salk who discovered the polio vaccine and Karl Landsteiner whose discovery of blood groups saved one billion lives (vs. only 5 million – 177 million for anyone on the list).

(2) I did NOT perform an exhaustive study which would have required reading all of the available biographies of each scientist and, for those still alive, attempting to interview them. My “study” in most cases was limited to consulting the scientist’s Wikipedia bio.

(3) I’m sure you would agree that a scientist who is religious might have been inspired by her/his religion to make the medical discovery/discoveries, but that it is unlikely that a scientist who was an atheist would have been so inspired by her/his atheism.

(4) I’m also sure you would agree that the inspiration of scientists in making their discoveries pales in importance to whether religion or atheism inspires the general populace to support a civil society.

(5) I’m also sure you would agree that even more important is the avowed atheism of such Communists as Stalin and Chairman Mao and the leaders of post-Mao China who have suppressed the predominant religion, Buddhism, and are busy eradicating the Islam of 25 million of their citizens. After all, Karl Marx was famous for calling religion the “opiate of the masses” and arguing that it had to be eradicated in order to get the proletariat to focus on this life rather than the next so that they would be motivated to revolt.

The results of my “study” follow immediately below. In brief -

• 7 of the 15 scientists appear to have been religious;
• An 8th was religious until “late in life” after he had made his discoveries;
• No information was readily available regarding whether the remaining 7 were religious; and
• None of the 15 appear to have been atheists, much less “humanists.”

Your friend,

Solutions

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Jonas Salk (1914-1995)
Polio vaccine
Untold billions of lives saved
Jonas Salk was Jewish

Karl Landsteiner (1868-1943)
Discovered blood groups
One billion lives saved
Converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism in 1890

Abel Wolman (1892-1989) and Linn Enslow (1891-1957)
Chlorination of water
177 million lives saved
Abel Wolman was Jewish
Linn Enslow – unclear whether he was religious

William Foege (1936-present)
Smallpox eradication strategy
131 million lives saved
Son of a Lutheran Minister and inspired by an uncle who was a Lutheran Missionary to New Guinea; served on the Board of Regents of Pacific Lutheran University 1997-2006

Maurice Hilleman (1919-2005)
Developed 40 vaccines, 8 of which are routinely recommended (measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, Neisseria meningitidis, Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haematophilus influenzae)
129 million lives saved
Life-long Lutheran until rejecting religion “late in life”

John Enders (1897-1985)
Measles vaccine
120 million lives saved
Unclear whether he was religious

Howard Florey (1898-1968)
Penicillin
82 million lives saved
Howard Florey graduated from Anglican schools but unclear whether he continued to be religious

Gaston Ramon (1886-1963)
Diphtheria and tetanus vaccines
60 million lives saved
Unclear whether he was religious, though most French of his era were

David Nalin (1941-present)
Oral rehydration therapy
54 million lives saved
Unclear whether he was religious

Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915)
Diphtheria and tetanus antitoxins
42 million lives saved
He was German-Jewish

Andreas Grüntzig (1939-1985)
Angioplasty
15 million lives saved
Unclear whether he was religious (his father, a teacher with a PhD in chemistry, died in WW-II as a Luftwaffe pilot)

Grace Eldering (1900-1988) and Pearl Kendrick (1890-1980)
Whooping cough vaccine
14 million lives saved
Unclear whether Grace Eldering was religious
Pearl Kendrick attended a Methodist college for a year before transferring to Syracuse U

Gertrude Elion (1918-1999)
Rational drug design – and development of the first immunosuppressive drug, azathioprine, to fight rejection of organ transplants – and the first antiviral drug, ACV, to treat herpes
5 million lives saved
She was Jewish