>> and eileen would probably no more than i, but i think eunice got president kennedy. i think eunice got the president to pay attention to this issue. >> absolutely. >> kate, i would like to salute your beautiful, fantastic book. besides the problem, this could be to make awareness of this book to many other problems in the united states with disability. i respect and thank you so much. >> thank you. [applause] >> well, if there is not anything else, there was a question, we are thrilled that you came, delighted that you participated, and

our author will be outside signing books. >> thank you. [applause] >> is there a nonfiction author or book that you would like to see featured on book tv? send us an e-mail. tweet us, or post a comment on our wall. c-span.org/book tv. >> host: and you are watching book tv on teewun. we are in las vegas attending the freedom fest interviewing authors out

here. joining us now is someone who has been on book tv before for previous books. the book is called the moral arc. in this book you write that during the years i spent researching and writing this book, whenbook, when i told people that the subject was moral progress, to describe the responses i received as incredulous would be an understatement. most people thought i was hallucinatory. >> that's right. well, the problem is, of course, like everyone else, i, two, watch the news. if you only watch the news it seems like things are bad and getting worse, but what i am trying to and getting worse, but what i am trying to do is track long-term historical progress over centuries and millennia, not days, hours,

weeks. in other words, follow the trend line, not the headline. if you think about it for one 2nd and take the bigger picture, the abolition of slavery, illegal in every country in the world, even though it is practiced in a few, even though it is practiced in a few corrupt governments, practiced nowhere in the western world anymore. the abolition of torture is now illegal in all western democracies, the right to vote by blacks, women everywhere in the world and all democracies, the spread of democracy itself is a form of moral progress. there are now 118 democracies are now 118 democracies in the world. in 1900 there were only a couple. the united states was not even really a liberal democracy until 1920, so that is the kind of they progress steps i ami am talking about, the civil rights movement, same-sex marriage is now legal, barely a week and a half. >> host: and that you include? >> guest: absolutely. >> host: some people would say no. but they are traditionalists who want to conserve the old hierarchical, you know, sort of class -based society

whereas the long-term trend is to grant more individuals more autonomy and freedom and liberty over there own body, their own mind, in other words, here we are at freedom fest and this is what it is all about, my mind and body and i can do whatever i want and you can't tell me what to do as long as i am not hurting anyone. two people that are in love and want to get married, who cares. none of your business, none of my business. that is the kind of step in the right direction. having that as a standard that is the rights of an individual to have the power and autonomy and choice over his own mind and body is what has been happening, expanding the moral sphere to include more people over the last 250 years or so. >> host: is the moral arc the same as morality? >> i am doing two things, tracking the fact that things are getting better and changes happened, and grounding it based upon

what? well, the survival and flourishing absentee and beings is my moral starting point, making sure since he and beings like us and other higher animals like primates don't suffer. jeremy bentham, one of the great utilitarian philosophers started out by saying about animal-rights, it is not can they think, can they talk, but can they suffer. we begin with the suffering of other people. so you not causing somebody else to suffer is a moral decision. and i make the argument for free will even though most scientists, most of my scientists friends believe in determinism. morality requiresmorality requires moral choice. you could have done otherwise, harm somebody and chose not to. that choice is where the moral decision comes from. and so what we have been doing as a society since the enlightenment and the

founding of the united states, the idea of the constitution with the bill of rights, is that worth saying everyone should be treated equally under law? that is a new idea, only a couple of centuries old. rights were invented in the late 18th century and have taken off ever since. >> how did the enlightenment began? >> with the idea that we can use reasons and logic and empiricism can't science to answer questions about the world. it really began with galileo and newton and the scientific revolution, the the.of that was that the universe is governed by natural laws and principles that can be discovered and applied to change the world. physics, biology, medicine.

before the enlightenment there was no economics. what is wealth and where does it come from? we want more of it for more people. out of weout of we do that. there must be some principle behind it that we can discover and then applied to government societies to increase the prosperity of everyone in society. everyone has been doing that since then. jefferson's idea of structuring can't increase prosperity, happiness, that is the idea, a scientific

pursuit. >> host: from your book, book, the bible is one of the most immoral works in all literature. >> that is a pretty strong statement. >> yes. >> and i don't like to offend my religious friends, but the point of that statement is if you turn to the bible strictly speaking as a literal readinga literal reading by today's standards, especially the old testament is a pretty immoral book. no one practices any of the laws in leviticus and deuteronomy, for example, death penalty for disobedient children, nonvirtual lives, you know, mixing cotton and linen, working on the sabbath, laws sabbath, laws that were written for another time and another people, and i would put the abomination of same-sex relationships in that same category. we really do not need to be following that.

we can do better and have already done so. most of the founding fathers of the united states were not religious. they were deists at best, but the.of the constitution and the bill of rights, it does not matter your religion or if you are not religious at all. these are the law of the land in the rights that everybody gets regardless of what there religion is and who is the dominant religion in the country. we do not care about that. >> host: has the us been a proponent or advocate of a more moral society? >> for the most part. of course we have setbacks, slavery is the obvious one, but we abolished it. granted, it took a war and 660,000 dead to me -- ultimately abolish it, the mistreatment of the native americans, granting of rights to women to vote in 1920. take over a half a century. and so we are slow, but we

get they're along with other democracies. free market and liberal democracies are the two best combinations that we have for a country to shift from a theocracy, hierarchical structure where most people are poor and impoverished and have freedoms to were everyone in society is fairly prosperous and has liberty. the united states is one of the champions of that, not the only one, but the constitutional republic -- >> host: what is thought process? >> guest: well, you want to generate more prosperity, that makes life better for everyone. everyeveryone. every economist knows that is the best way to increase prosperity not just for the 1 percent of the top but for everyone at the bottom, but more importantly and psychologically, this breaks down tribal barriers. ii don't know you, but if you and i swapped money for

goods or services, i don't care what race or tribe or religion, it does not matter. you have traded me properly. by contract i have treated you properly. and thatand that is one of the big benefits of trade. it is a little bit like travel, having open borders. and they tend to be more liberal in terms of freedom and tolerance of differences. it is that encountering other people that are different from you in which you do not have to kill them or enslave them but can do something that benefits them that also benefits you which has been one of the great benefits of capitalism that almost no one sees. most app -- academics are liberals do not see capitalism is a good thing,a good thing, but it is one of the best things ever invented. >> host: you worked on this book for several years? >> guest: it has been a long time dealing with

topics i did not know much about, the history of four, what causes a carnivore. it seems like all you hear about is people fighting. what is the last time any of the great powers went to war? 1985, the last time the proxy wars, decreasing, although it is true that there are still a few genocides, nothing like the holocaust with the tragedies of mao and stalin, you know, pol pot and so on, anomalies compared to today even though there are still bad things that happened. isi s is bad, but it is tiny so what someone a century ago might have done.done. we are getting a handle even on the bad guys. when i talk about moral progress, two steps forward, one step one step back. there will always be enough bad things to fill the evening news that if you are a pessimist you have no trouble finding evidence for your pessimism. if you pull back and take the long view,

trendlines, not headlines, things really are getting better. >> host: you have obtaining your lapel this a skeptic. >> the name of my magazine. we are a science magazine that investigates all kind of controversial claims, global warming, you know, just terrorism. terrorism as a as a threat to our new issue. there are a lot of myths. we arewe are the mythbusters, as it were. >> host: what do you teach? >> guest: skepticism 101, how to think like a scientist and not be a geek is what it is called. basically i'm take 18-year-olds right out of high school and teaching them how to usetheir brains, turning their brains promotion to critical thinking machines at go on what does it mean to think scientifically? >> using a reason, thinking scientifically, not

accepting claims on the face, ask for evidence, challenge, ask critical questions about any claim that anyone has command think for yourself. >> host: who is your favorite philosopher? >> guest: if you count him, thomas jefferson, thomas hub. i think the great enlightenment philosophers, voltaire, the people that really opened the doors up. adamup. adam smith, david hume, they started the rational skeptical scientific movement. >> host: a lot of people here like john locke. >> guest: absolutely in the top five. >> host: the moral arc is the name of the book. justice and freedom. here is the cover. michael shermer is the author. >> you're watching book tv on c-span2 with top nonfiction books and authors every weekend. book tv, television for serious readers.