Steven Pinker: Why Rationality Reduces Violence

Freethought Radio

Freedom From Religion Foundation

Religion, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 578 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2012

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Wishing all you heathens, skeptics and hell-bound atheists a happy new year! Steven Pinker is quite the thinker. The Harvard professor and evolutionary psychologist has a new book on the decline of violence. We'll hear from Prof. Pinker and the good news of why rationality reduces violence.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Free Thought Radio with co-host Stan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor, Irreverent Views, News, Music, and Interviews.
0:18.8	Imagine there's no heaven.
0:21.6	It's easy if you try.
0:27.6	No hell below us, above us only sky.
0:41.3	I'm Annie Laurie Gaylor and this is the Freedom from Religion Foundation's first slightly irreverent broadcast of the new year, Free Thought Radio, and we wish you a very safe and secular 2012.
1:07.7	And I'm Dan Barker, your friendly neighborhood atheist. This is the weekend of January 7th and 8th, 2012.
1:16.2	Free Thought Radio is broadcasting and streaming from the Mike 92.1 in Madison, Wisconsin.
1:22.6	And hello to listeners throughout the known and unknown podcast universe and those listening to the broadcast
1:30.3	in other cities, such as Grand Rapids, Monterey, New York City, and in Milwaukee.
1:36.3	Feed That Radio is the weekly production of the Freedom from Religion Foundation.
1:40.3	Which, by the way, is the nation's largest association of free thinkers. That means atheists, agnostics, and
1:47.8	others who use reason informing your opinion about religion.
1:53.4	FFRF is also a state church watchdog, which last year ended more than
1:57.3	100 First Amendment violations through educational means, as well as litigation.
2:03.0	And we like to say we're like the Ninth Circuit judge, I think his name was Reinhart, in 2002,
2:08.0	who voted that under God and the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional, and he did an interview.
2:13.1	He was a Methodist, but he said when it came to the First Amendment, he was a fundamentalist,
2:18.6	and that we are purists when it comes to the Estabishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution,
2:24.8	which, as Thomas Jefferson noted, erects a wall of separation between church and state.
2:31.3	And that metaphor has been used by the Supreme Court to explain the separation of religion and government, and Justice Hugo Black commented,
2:39.0	that wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. I love that phrase.
2:47.0	The First Amendment acknowledges those fundamental freedoms that we all possess.
	...

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