The Advancement of Human Flourishing

Steven Pinker argued about the cause of human progress:

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. The book argued that humans have clawed increments of progress out of an indifferent universe only through the development of refined tools of reason, of institutions like science that incentivize the struggle towards truth, and of a moral commitment to enhancing human flourishing as the ultimate good (rather than religious dogma, national glory, and other distractions). The “Now” in the title emphasized that progress can continue only if we redouble our commitment to these fragile ideals against the constant drag of authoritarianism, tribalism, superstition, and zero-sum thinking that are legacies of human nature.

Pinker has a lot of sensible views, but he is a Jewish Atheist, and does not want to credit Christianity.

Peter Frost responds:

Steven Pinker argues that we humans have advanced by refining our capacity for reason, by building institutions that incentivize the struggle for truth, and by becoming morally committed toward "human flourishing as the ultimate good (rather than religious dogma, national glory, and other distractions)."

First, let's be precise in our language. By "humans," we don’t mean all humans or even a majority of them. We mean Western Europeans and a trajectory of cultural evolution that began among them and spread to the rest of the world. This spread was not a passive diffusion of Great Ideas. Western Europeans literally took over the world and still dominate it economically and politically.

Second, we now have good evidence that this trajectory of cultural evolution acted as a template for genetic evolution. Humans adapt to their cultural environment just as they adapt to their natural environment. ...

Suffice it to say that progress has not been confined to the realms of culture, ideas, and politics. It has also affected flesh-and-blood humans.

One story is that in the European Enslightenment of about 1700 AD, intellectuals rejected religion and adopted science, leading to an explosion of human progress.

Another story says that about a millennium earlier, the Catholic embarked on a eugenic program for the White race to evolve into a superior race. White Europeans evolved genes for cooperation and collective intelligence. They then built universities, invented technologies, advanced math and science, created great art, music, and literature, and did everything else to make Christendom the greatest civilization ever, by far. By the XX century, the center of these activities moved to the USA.

You will probably say that the latter theory is racist and ridiculous, but there is a lot of evidence for it. Most intellectuals did not reject religion during the Enlightenment, and did not until about 50 years ago. The creation of universities and market economies happened many centuries earlier.

It has been argued that the Church policies only accidentally improved humans but Frost writes:

Did the Church have that goal in mind? Early Christians certainly understood that some lifestyles are more procreative than others. They also had a basic understanding of population genetics: 1) humans inherit not only physical traits but also mental and behavioral ones; 2) such traits vary not only among individuals but also among populations; and 3) selection for certain mental and behavioral traits will, over successive generations, change the moral character of a population.

These principles of genetics were set forth by Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253 CE), a theologian who wrote over two thousand treatises on many subjects. Of course, the term “genetics” did not yet exist. He spoke instead of logoi spermatikoi – “the organizing principles of the seed.” As he explained it, “the seed of someone has within itself – still immobile and placed in reserve – the procreator’s organizing principles” (Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, XX, 3).

This is surprising. That understanding of population genetics is lacking in most educated people today. If more people believed it, then our immigration policy would favor those with the genetics for desirable physical, mental, and behavioral traits. Yes, immigration is changing the moral character of the American population.

Some might still argue that it is desirable to import people who are suited for particular types of labor. That was the rationale behind he slave trade of the 1700s, and today for importing Mexican farmworkers, Indian programmers, and Dominican baseball players. Even if that is true, we need an analysis of the long-term population genetics implications.