Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Steven Pinker: Progress, Despite Everything" video.

55:10 - the atomic bomb had more to do with the move away from large-scale war, rather than the United Nations or universalism.
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47:04 - The idea that the European wars of religion are in any way "unprecedented" betrays Pinker's blinkered perspective. This idea comes to us from the selection bias of Enlightenment thinkers, for whom these were recent history. A longer view of human history shows that these wars were not in any way "unprecedented". Serious any bloody wars are seen throughout European and world history. Indeed these wars don't even have root causes that are primarily religious in nature. The 30 Years War, for example, was a dynastic struggle between the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons, with not only religious overtones (an argument severely undercut -- destroyed, even -- by Cardinal Richelieu's support of Protestant Sweden) but by nationalist feelings as well.
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59:44 - ANY believer in the Kantian Enlightenment of throwing off the guardians of the intellect, must refuse to kowtow to Political Correctness, as PC culture IS a guardian of the intellect.
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47:36 - The idea of human rights springing from humans as divinely touched, starts from David's respect for old king Saul as God's anointed. By the late middle ages these gradually extended to the aristocracy as well, Chivalry took hold, and by 1600s, these rights are extended to the nobility at large. (The assassination or other mistreatment of the Elector of the Palatinate could have taken one major causus belli out of the 30 Year's War, but somehow the only major figure of the time who suffered assassination was Wallenstein, a commoner.) Radial egalitarianism took hold as well, founded on Judeo-Christian religious imagery -- "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?" was a question introduced in the 14th century, in Europe -- but not the rest of the world. So yeah, Pinker's perspective is severely truncated by a dogmatic refusal to allow any possibility that Christian thinking had any role in anything he considers good. This is bias, which can fairly be described as bigotry.
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