One of the oldest questions humanity has ever asked is also one of the most personal.

Are human beings fundamentally good?

Or fundamentally violent?

Modern psychology has wrestled with this question for decades.

In The Better Angels of Our Nature, the psychologist Steven Pinker argues that although human beings possess deep capacities for violence, history also reveals an extraordinary expansion of empathy, cooperation and moral restraint. Across centuries, he argues, many forms of violence have declined as societies have developed stronger institutions, commerce, education and the rule of law.

Whether one agrees with every aspect of Pinker’s thesis is almost beside the point.

His central observation is profound.

Human beings possess competing moral instincts.

The question is not whether one exists.

The question is which one we cultivate.

Remarkably, this is almost precisely how the Qur’an introduces humanity.

Before humanity is created, the angels ask God:

“Will You place upon it one who will spread corruption therein and shed blood, while we glorify You with praise and sanctify You?”

It is one of the most extraordinary conversations in Scripture.

The angels are not asking whether human beings will be intelligent.

Nor whether they will build cities.

Nor whether they will compose symphonies or discover mathematics.

Their first concern is violence.

From the very beginning, the Qur’an acknowledges something uncomfortable.

Human beings possess an extraordinary capacity for destruction.

History suggests the angels were not entirely wrong.

The twentieth century alone witnessed two world wars, the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, Cambodia, Bosnia and countless other atrocities.

Modern technology magnified not only our ability to heal.

It magnified our ability to kill.

God’s answer is equally remarkable.

“Indeed, I know that which you do not know.”

The Qur’an never explicitly tells us what the........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)