Does Science Deserve Credit for Moral Progress?

I'm always amused by the assertion that advances in contemporary morality are somehow thanks to science.

Michael Shermer'scolumn in Reason will serve as an illustration. He notes that IQ scores have been rising and correlates this with a higher morality, presuming that one leads necessarily to the other.

Shermer categorizeshuman thinking as either "concrete," which he sees as regressive and the cause of brutality,or "abstract," which he claims to be "scientific" and supposedly is more progress...