Did the Enlightenment cause a global decline in violence? (No.)

...2. If there is a decline in violence, it is due to Christianity.

By now, mainstream historians are slowly waking up to the realization that almost everything we like about the Enlightenment, from the rule of law to the scientific method to capitalism, had its roots in the extraordinary civilization of the Middle Ages.

Why is it that we modern persons are so much more squeamish, so much more likely to be stirred by the idea of harm?

One answer might be that our civilization had, for a millennium, at the center of its moral imagination, the battered and broken figure of a slave hanging from a gibbet, condemned to die by all rightful authorities and abandoned by his friends.

And it is worth noting that the increase in squeamishness in the West dates back from the takeover of the Roman Empire by Christianity.

A key indicator of cultural squeamishness is how a society treats children. As the historian O.M. Bakke shows in the tellingly-named book How Children Became People: The Birth of Childhood in Early Christianity, Pagan society considered children as little more than objects, with consequences of — to us post-Christians — astonishing cruelty. The practice of abandoning newborns was widespread and not frowned upon. While most abandoned infants died, those who did not were typically "rescued" into child sex slavery, which was a legal and thriving industry. The sources report that sex with castrated boys, in particular, was considered very titillating, and there are reports of babies castrated to serve that purpose. These were all practices that Christians famously condemned, and Bakke nicely traces how phrases by Jesus holding children up as examples and insisting on care for the "least of these" caused emerging civilization, for the first time in the history of the West, to regard children as full human beings endowed with rights.

Another good indicator of squeamishness is the treatment of slaves. While only by the High Middle Ages was slavery over in the West — the first time in all of human history that a culture had abolished slavery — as soon as Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire rafts of unprecedented laws were passed to reform the institution of slavery, typically "squeamish" laws such as banning sexual relations between slaves and masters, making it illegal to break up slave families, banning the branding of slaves (first on the face, and later anywhere). The first condemnation of slavery as an institution in all of recorded history was made by the Catholic bishop and Church Father Gregory of Nyssa, in strikingly "squeamish" terms, exhorting his congregation to see in their slaves the same image of God that dwells in them, and to free them.

Because human hearts are so hard and crooked, this rise in squeamishness was infuriatingly slow and incomplete (and still is), but if there is one starting point one could name, it would be the rise of Christianity. If the Enlightenment did anything, it was only to accelerate a process that had been ongoing for centuries.

3. The modern age doesn't look so hot when you count abortion.

Abortion is a typical "squeamish" issue, where mere squeamishness leads us astray. It's harder to get squeamish about a "clump of cells" than a live baby, even though there is no conceptual difference between the two. When it comes to disabled children in the womb, we all too often get squeamish in exactly the wrong way: we get squeamish about the pain they will endure, instead of getting squeamish about the idea of snuffing out innocent life. "Care/harm" makes us empathize more with those we recognize as our alter egos, but make us empathize less about those we do not include in our circle of fellowship.

According to the U.S. Abortion Clock there have been 55 million abortions in the United States since abortion was legalized in the U.S., and more than one billion abortions worldwide since 1980. One billion. If abortions are counted as homicides then the modern age sure doesn't look so hot...

I don't agree with his concluding enthusiasm for the Enlightenment, but otherwise this is a truly outstanding piece. Read it all here.

See also this longer and very powerful rebuttal of the new article of Whig orthodoxy.