The Moral Instinct

By STEVEN PINKER
January 13, 2008
New York Times

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One of the dominant sources of destructive conflict within our society arises along the fault lines which divide secular and religious communities. Religious leaders commonly worry that a belief in evolution threatens to leave society without a moral compass capable of curtailing the human tendency toward unbridled greed and self gratification (with the associated threats of anarchy and human misery). This provocative book/article offers one of many lines of reasoning that suggest that secular philosophies do, in fact, have such a moral compass.

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Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it's an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in "I Hate Gates" Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?

Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the "Green Revolution" that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.

The rest of the article is available from the New York Times.