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Medved, Berlinski Take on Steven Pinker and Whig History

Photo: Fire at Notre Dame Cathedral, by manhhai, via Flickr (cropped).

On a new episode of ID the FutureHuman Nature author and polymath David Berlinski and radio host Michael Medved discuss everything from human depravity, the burning of Notre Dame, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine to the Big Bang and a quixotic century-old pact to ban war. Download the podcast or listen to it here.

Berlinski argues that the case for the death of God and the case for the impending demise of human depravity have been greatly exaggerated. Taking issue with Steven Pinker, Berlinski insists that there is little if any evidence that human evil is being steadily rolled back by the spread of secular values. Further, the idea that science has disproven God flies in the face of trends running in the opposite direction, perhaps most dramatically in the triumph of the Big Bang theory over an eternal universe model. Berlinski, who himself is not religious, insists that optimistic Whig history is bankrupt and that anyone imagining that human depravity and the God hypothesis are things of the past are themselves living in the past.