Always Progress
A friend of mine told me that he believes man is basically good. The evidence he presented for that was (surprise, surprise) the “progress of history,” the fact that practices like owning slaves were once thought perfectly fine but are regarded so no more.
“So we moderns know we are better than our ancestors because they regarded things like slavery as perfectly good and moral and we don’t?”
“Exactly!”
“By that logic, if future man comes to see slavery as perfectly good and moral, he will believe in moral progress, too, because his ancestors—us!—thought it was wrong.”
J. Douglas Johnson is the executive editor of Touchstone and the executive director of the Fellowship of St. James.
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more from the online archives
15.6—July/August 2002
Things Hidden Since the Beginning of the World
The Shape of Divine Providence & Human History by James Hitchcock
29.4—July/August 2016
on Noticing That Modern Science Has Rendered Atheism Irrational by Harry Biltz
31.6—November/December 2018
on Childhood Encounters with a Christmas Icon by Rebecca Sicree
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