optimism and reason

I love the reason and optimism presented in the book. Thd content is fundamental for a young person to identify and shape its moral code avoiding pitfalls of religion. Fantastic for older ones to confront their systems.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

90% excellent but a little biased at the end

I found the subject matter very interesting, but I think it's largely a retelling of Steven Pinker's 'Better Angles of our Nature". Personally, I preferred Better Angles, but that may be because I listened to that one first. Also, I feel this one shows the author's biases in the last few chaptets.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

Scholarly and Optimistic - but oddly biased.

The moral arc of the title is Peter Singers concept of a series of concentric "circles of care" with self & family in the centre, moving outward to friends, colleagues, tribe, Nation, other groups, other humans, animals, the environment etc.

This book sets out to establish two main claims: The first is that human history is a story of moral as well as intellectual progress - an upward and outward extending of the moral arc. The second is that our moral progress is a consequence of our intellectual progress, especially in Science.

For the first, Michael Shermer is very much extending the arguments put forward by Stephen Pinker in "The Better Angels of our Nature", for which this book is a kind of sequel, and he addresses (I think convincingly), the objections raised by sceptics such as John Gray, as to evidence of our moral progress.

Shermer convincingly goes on to argue that advances in Science and technology, involving better education methods, higher literacy, greater cognitive conceptual ability (Flynn effect), lower child mortality, improved physical and psychological health etc. and the spread of Enlightenment values have resulted in an upward curving of the moral arc., He takes great pains to show how an "ought" can be derived from an "is" (Humes fork), and thus moral progress is inevitably linked to progress in understanding. Indeed, he even goes so far as to assert that evil is the result of factual error, corrected through Science, and Voltaire's "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities" becomes something of a central theme.

His thesis is only slightly undermined by the fact that many thousands of animals are maimed, mutilated, and killed each year, to satisfy our curiosity in the name of Science, whose mechanistic modelling of biological organisms may assuage the obvious cognitive dissonance aroused. Unfortunately, in the chapter on "A Moral Science of Animal Rights", he only tangentially addresses this obvious contradiction.

More disappointingly, having written one of the best secular books on the biology/psychology of religion in "The Believing Brain", his chapter on "Why Religion is Not the Source of Moral Progress" is a most disappointing "straw man" argument. For Shermer religion is clearly a case of believed "absurdity", leading to atrocity.

But was religion really the cause of World War I, because German soldiers had "Gott Mit Uns" on their belt buckles? Was the American Civil War really a religious war because Christians fought on both sides?

I have to admit, I looked forward to a nuanced examination of the evolutionary rationale for religion such as David Sloan Wilson gives in "Darwin's Cathedral", or analysis such as Joshua Greene's "Moral Tribes". For, having convincingly established our "moral progress" over the course of history, Shermer's case against religion seems largely to rest on the barbarity of ancient laws and peoples in the Bible judged by modern standards. Why didn't the Bible forbid slavery? Why did Yahweh encourage so much genocide? Wouldn't an alternative 10 commandments be better? Leviticus especially is highlighted as full of cruel and unusual laws, executing recalcitrant teenagers and ways to sell your children as slaves.

Great stuff, if the debate was whether the Bible is a rule book written by God! However, that's not the issue. As it has all the hallmarks of being written by humans - about God, one might expect it to be full of messy contradictions, outdated tribal mores, in places seeming nonsense, and in places timeless wisdom. I felt I was trapped in the worst sort of fundamentalist bible class, with no attempt to understand, interpret or explain within a historical or geographical context.

But, all this theologising in the book is beside the point, which is whether religion has been a source of moral progress. Greene in his book, usefully differentiates between me vs. us, and us vs. them. In most cases religion promotes prosocial "us over me" behaviours but too often exacerbates "us vs. them" sectarian divisions, while Wilson compares harsh desert conditions where danger and competition may favour harsh religions promoting strong group tribalism (think IS), with more liberal religions thriving in less perilous, more affluent temperate zones. I really wanted Shermer to have provided some similar level of intelligent objective analysis.

Moreover, the missing central element of the whole book is cultural evolution. While Shermer does a great job explaining the dilemma of collaboration vs. exploitation in terms of genes, it is surely through a process of cultural evolution - the spreading of knowledge, skills, values and ideas and the competition and selection between them, that we are evolving ethically. Of this he says almost nothing.

I feel I've been quite critical, and overall it is a well researched book, containing lots of insights, research data and theory, covering a wide remit. I really liked the contrapuntal readings by the author and Melody Zownir, a technique which has worked well for Richard Dawkins in his audiobooks. In the end, the message is optimistic and celebratory. As we widen the global network of relationships, and progress in science, education and literacy, our moral arc will continue to broaden and curve upwards. The evidence is overwhelming that we are becoming more reasonable, ethically aware and humane, showing concern for the welfare not only of our own species, but for non human animals, ecology and the planet.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Narrator, very poor.

The narrator, Melody Zownir, performs little better than an Automatic reader. Annoying, and extremely detracting from enjoyment.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

Not very original.

What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?

This is not Shermer's best work.More original material would have improved this work rather than much of it being a compilation of the work of others. The first half especially seemed to drag in interminably. There was some improvement in the second half and it became less noisome.I would sincerely recommend that Shermer employ a professional to read his work aloud. The voice of the female performer was all but indistinguishable from that of Siri on the iPhone. This was especially evident in her inability to pronounce several words properly.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!