Steven Pinker: Why Rationality Matters

Time magazine has included distinguished evolutionary psychologist and Harvard Professor Steven Pinker in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world today. Pinker has written bestselling books such as "The Blank Slate", "How the Mind Works", "The Language Instinct" and "Enlightenment Now." FFRF has awarded Pinker its Our Emperor Has No Clothes Award and is honored to call him its honorary president. Pinker talks on “Freethought Matters” about his hot off-the-press book, "Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters." “It’s just a phase where I think we are always pushing back against elements of irrationality that are kind of baked into us and that probably served us well before we had modern science and math and journalism and recordkeeping — but that are always there as part of human nature,” Pinker tells “Freethought Matters” co-hosts Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor. “And some people used religious arguments in favor of bad ideas — for example, there were religious people arguing in favor of slavery, using the bible. And there are a lot of religious people in a pandemic who are saying, well, ‘My God will take care of me.’” Learn more about the Freedom From Religion Foundation at ffrf.org.