Why is there less violence today than in the past?

[Danmark]

In a response at http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 659#647659
McCulloch cited a very interesting book:
The Better Angels of our Nature

Pinker presents some astonishing numbers. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia.....What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment? ....Pinker argues the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

http://stevenpinker.com/publications/be ... our-nature
The questions for debate are: Has there been a dramatic decrease in violence and if so, to what do you attribute it?

[Bust Nak]

I see no evidence that the world is a less violent place. In fact, the 20th-century was the bloodiest one on record.

Had bronze age tribes man had access to machine guns; had medieval warriors had access to nukes; there wouldn't be any of us left to witness the 20th-century.

[Ooberman]

I see no evidence that the world is a less violent place. In fact, the 20th-century was the bloodiest one on record. And that's because of atheistic regimes -- Soviet Union, China, Nazi Germany, etc.

If you think that Christianity should have "fixed" the world, did you ever think that maybe it hasn't because people like you fail to subscribe to it and live by the "love your enemies" statement that Jesus commanded? Did you ever think you might be part of the problem rather than part of the solution?

Some points.

1. The Great Purge, WWII and Maoist china were 2.7 generations ago.

Since then, there has been a remarkable lack of violence, comparatively.

I suppose this is where Christians will want to claim credit...

2. Atheists make up a tiny percent of the world. They clearly can't be the problem.

3. Many atheists do live by the "love you neighbor" concept. It's built in to most social species.

Why can't Christians simply say "Sure, our religion has led to some bad stuff. Sorry. We'll try to do better."?

I know that's how most of the atheists I know feel.

[Jashwell]

The 20th century is the bloodiest on record because of the significantly advanced technology, the significantly higher population, and the fact that most sides were more or less evenly matched.

It's ad hoc to say it's because they happened to be atheists.
They weren't motivated by atheism.

If they were motivated by hatred of theism like stalin, that's anti-theist motivation, not atheist motivation.

There was a lot of propaganda, indoctrination and fearmongering, techniques to sustain ideologies which had long been perfected by religions - intentionally or not.

[cl]

In a response at http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 659#647659
McCulloch cited a very interesting book:
The Better Angels of our Nature

Pinker presents some astonishing numbers. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia.....What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment? ....Pinker argues the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

http://stevenpinker.com/publications/be ... our-nature
The questions for debate are: Has there been a dramatic decrease in violence and if so, to what do you attribute it?

I think you got hold of a poorly documented argument there, buddy. The statistics are all wrong.

The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in all of human history. Discounting the first great European war fought to end all wars (that was a joke, wasn't it?), everything from 1936 forward was a blood bath in the extreme.

Stalinist Russia was responsible for over twenty five million deaths and that was before Herr Hitler decided to come for a visit. (Actually the numbers are rather conservative. Many estimates are much higher).

The National Socialist policy of industrialized extermination took out twelve million souls. Half of them were of Jewish ethnic origin, but the other half which aren't usually bemoaned for their loss were politicals, various Christian groups, mentally and physically handicapped (by the busload), homosexuals and pretty much anybody that didn't march in the parade to support the national fascist agenda.

Bottom line on the European war is a conservative estimate of sixty million dead. Add that to the Soviet numbers and a trend begins to emerge - ya think?

On the other side of the globe, Hirohito's endorsement of Tojo's invasion of Manchuria resulted in ten to twelve millions of dead on mainland China before the Imperial Japanese Navy fired up its boilers to attack Pearl Harbor, Indochina and the Phillipines. Add another thirty million - give or take five million or so depending on what book you read (to this day the Japanese government has not officially admitted defeat......so maybe there wasn't a war after all....)

Post war China saw the marching hoards of Chairman Mao Tse Tung seize power. Government policies in the 1950's resulted in the deaths of between 25 and 35 million Chinese people (then again there are no hard and fast numbers....these are all conservative estimates).

Forward to American aggression in SouthEast Asia in the late 1960's and 1970's where a mere five million deaths were recorded from industrialized mechanized war in the sky and jungle. Political aftermath in the killing fields of Cambodia and the persecutions of Pol Pot and company led to millions more death.

But here in our comfortable apartments and homes safely sheltered from all the world's unpleasantness we can safely peruse the propaganda of those who deny the reality of the modern industrial age.

All the nations of the world are happily churning out weapons as fast as they can - and using them on every innocent man woman and child that gets in the way.

(And did I mention Africa or South American wars of ....whatever....That's for another time, I think.)

Hopefully the reader gets my point. The same machinery that makes a better life for some also grinds out the means to murder millions.

No sir, violence is definitely on the rise. Don't believe me? Take a stroll some dark night down a deserted city street and see what happens.

[Danmark]

In a response at http://debatingchristianity.com/forum/v ... 659#647659
McCulloch cited a very interesting book:
The Better Angels of our Nature

Pinker presents some astonishing numbers. Tribal warfare was nine times as deadly as war and genocide in the 20th century. The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today. Slavery, sadistic punishments, and frivolous executions were unexceptionable features of life for millennia.....What led people to stop sacrificing children, stabbing each other at the dinner table, or burning cats and disemboweling criminals as forms of popular entertainment? ....Pinker argues the spread of government, literacy, trade, and cosmopolitanism, we increasingly control our impulses, empathize with others, bargain rather than plunder, debunk toxic ideologies, and deploy our powers of reason to reduce the temptations of violence.

http://stevenpinker.com/publications/be ... our-nature
The questions for debate are: Has there been a dramatic decrease in violence and if so, to what do you attribute it?

I think you got hold of a poorly documented argument there, buddy. The statistics are all wrong.

Please give a citation for the figures you are using to dispute Pinker's.
For example he wrote: "The murder rate of Medieval Europe was more than thirty times what it is today." Can you cite to the current murder rate in Europe for comparison.

[McCulloch]

I think you got hold of a poorly documented argument there, buddy. The statistics are all wrong.

You may accuse Steven Pinker of many things, but being sloppy with statistics is not one of them. In his book, he goes into painstaking detail (about the first half of the book) with the statistics. I'll simplify for you. If you were to compare the level of violence between a city of one million people and a village of one thousand, how would you do it? Let us say that in a year, the city had one hundred murders and the village had ten. Would you say that the city was a more violent place? The murder rate for this city would be 100/1,000,000 or one for every 10,000 people. The murder rate for the village would be 10/1,000 or one for every hundred people. You can see that comparing the absolute numbers of incidents of violence is inappropriate. In 1950, the world population was about 2.5 billion. In 1500, the world population was about 500 million. So if the absolute number of victims of violence stays the same or even increases, while the proportion decreases, something important must have changed to allow all those extra people to grow up free of violence. The way that Pinker looked at the different eras was to ask, "If I were one of the people who were alive in a particular era, what would be the chances that I would be a victim of violence?" From that perspective, the last hundred years, even including the second world war, has been the least violent hundred years in history.

The twentieth century was the bloodiest century in all of human history. Discounting the first great European war fought to end all wars (that was a joke, wasn't it?), everything from 1936 forward was a blood bath in the extreme.

Certainly the Second World War killed very many people. But the later half of the twentieth century has seen a decline in deaths due to war.

[heavensgate]

[Replying to post 16 by McCulloch]


You may find this reference useful
http://soci.ucalgary.ca/brannigan/sites ... -crime.pdf
Eisner was one of the people who did the hard work behind some of Pinkers stats.
What Pinker does not mention (because that would be embarrassing) is that Eisner in part attributed much of the softening of the human propensity towards violence, to the Reformation in the underlying ethics of the bible and the transference into general society in the workforce and specific causes.
Pinker as I have stated has a reasonable number of (non Christian) adversaries that do not agree with his synthesis. A Google will do it for you.
Pinker has interpolated his thoughts over much hard work done by others, and in some cases makes a mockery of it. What the chart shows, and bears up in the Christian viewpoint that the high points of violence in the past century are easily attributable to atheism.
Where on that chart by the way is the monstrous death toll by Stalin, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Min?

[Strider324]

heavensgate scribed:

What the chart shows, and bears up in the Christian viewpoint that the high points of violence in the past century are easily attributable to atheism.
Where on that chart by the way is the monstrous death toll by Stalin, Pol Pot and Ho Chi Min?

As long as you lack an understanding of what Atheism is, you will continue to stumble into these erroneous claims.

Nothing done by Stalin, Pol Pot or Ho Chi Minh was motivated or attributable to Atheism. Atheism is simply an absence of belief in any gods. You will find no sacred texts, screeds, protocols, or even fervent writings on cocktail napkins tying Atheism to any form of violence, any cheerful calls to smash babies heads in, or otherwise kill people because they don't think as some self-righteous group does.

For those violent connections, you'll have to read the bible.......

[Wootah]

Personally I think the world is very close to war right now.

First reason is that war is probably cyclical. We are losing the memory of the horror of the wars of last century. So we might be nearing the next war. I find this reason a bit depressing if it is true.

Second reason I think is nukes. It's hard to win through war when they can nuke you.

Third would be US military dominance. Since WW2 has controlled the use of war.

Fourth would be global trade is probably at an all time high.

Fifth socialism has been at an all time low since the end of communism.

[Bust Nak]

...
Second reason I think is nukes. It's hard to win through war when they can nuke you.

Third would be US military dominance. Since WW2 has controlled the use of war.

Fourth would be global trade is probably at an all time high.
...

Surely these are reasons why we are LESS likely to have wars?