In making the case for an Enlightenment newly recharged for the 21st century, Pinker shows how we can use our faculties of reason and sympathy to solve the problems that inevitably come with being products of evolution in an indifferent universe.

But the way to deal with them is not to sink into despair or try to lurch back to a mythical idyllic past it's to treat them as problems we can solve, as we have solved other problems in the past. The challenges we face today are formidable, including inequality, climate change, Artificial Intelligence and nuclear weapons. These are the values of the Enlightenment: of reason, science, humanism and progress. Such progress is no accident: it's the gift of a coherent and inspiring value system that many of us embrace without even realizing it. If you follow the trendlines rather than the headlines, you discover that our lives have become longer, healthier, safer, happier, more peaceful, more stimulating and more prosperous - not just in the West, but worldwide. Yet Steven Pinker shows that this is an illusion - a symptom of historical amnesia and statistical fallacies.

If you follow the headlines, the world in the 21st century appears to be sinking into chaos, hatred, and irrationality. Is modernity really failing? Or have we failed to appreciate progress and the ideals that make it possible? In this volume, Dabholkar discusses god, religion, secularism and rationalism, and attempts to understand what it will take for society to transcend the infirmities that misguided religious faith imposes on society.Īrgumentative and illuminating, this book is a guide to the thinking of one of India’s most independent, important voices-available for the first time in an English translation.'My new favourite book of all time' Bill Gates The Case for Reason is available in two volumes, the second of which-A Scientific Enquiry into Belief-delves into the anatomy of faith.

A few days after Dabholkar was shot dead by religious extremists in 2013, the Maharashtra government issued an anti-superstition ordinance that was in essence a tribute to Dabholkar’s life-long struggle. In Dabholkar’s view, it is the constitutional duty of every Indian citizen to develop a scientific temper, and the Andhashraddha Nirmoolan Samiti’s (ANiS) campaigns have made this the central argument of their work.

Originally published in Marathi as Timiratuni Tejakade, rationalist and activist Dr Narendra Dabholkar’s magnum opus, The Case for Reason is both a vision document for, and a chronicle of, the battle that he and his co-activists waged against obscurantism, superstition, pseudo-sciences and blind faith in the scriptures.

The case for reason