Steve Pinker defends his view on holding on to reason:"Carl and Winegard argue that we are not on “some teleological path to inexorably greater fulfillment.” To say this is a straw man would be to do a disservice to straw. It’s a notion I repeatedly and vehemently reject, starting with my title Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. The book argued that humans have clawed increments of progress out of an indifferent universe only through the development of refined tools of reason, of institutions like science that incentivize the struggle towards truth, and of a moral commitment to enhancing human flourishing as the ultimate good (rather than religious dogma, national glory, and other distractions). The “Now” in the title emphasized that progress can continue only if we redouble our commitment to these fragile ideals against the constant drag of authoritarianism, tribalism, superstition, and zero-sum thinking that are legacies of human nature. Speaking of which, Carl and Winegard should have taken their puzzlement that the author of The Blank Slate lacked a realistic view of human nature as a prompt to think twice about their own understanding. A peek into Enlightenment Now or The Better Angels of Our Nature (with its extensive history of human atrocity and its ninety pages examining our “inner demons”) would have disabused them.

Just as fantastical is the suggestion that the encouragement of progress aims at a world with “no danger, conflict or hardship – when all our material needs are met and every intellectual problem is solved.” Carl and Winegard’s fretting about what we’d do if we reached that state is like worrying about what harp music to bring to heaven. My books explain why any such Utopia is impossible (indeed, dangerous to pursue). Perfection is precluded, among other reasons, by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the competitive nature of natural selection (with the constant menace of pathogens, as we’ve recently been reminded), the demons of human nature, the arduous and fallible workings of science at its best, the diversity of human individuals and cultures, and the many tradeoffs inherent to policy such as between opportunity and equality, freedom and public health, and security and individual rights."