Posted on 10/20/2006 8:52:20 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Let's all stop beating Basil's car
Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give "satisfaction' to the victims of the crime or their relatives. An especially warped and disgusting application of the flawed concept of retribution is Christian crucifixion as "atonement' for "sin'.
Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour. As scientists, we believe that human brains, though they may not work in the same way as man-made computers, are as surely governed by the laws of physics. When a computer malfunctions, we do not punish it. We track down the problem and fix it, usually by replacing a damaged component, either in hardware or software.
Basil Fawlty, British television's hotelier from hell created by the immortal John Cleese, was at the end of his tether when his car broke down and wouldn't start. He gave it fair warning, counted to three, gave it one more chance, and then acted. "Right! I warned you. You've had this coming to you!" He got out of the car, seized a tree branch and set about thrashing the car within an inch of its life. Of course we laugh at his irrationality. Instead of beating the car, we would investigate the problem. Is the carburettor flooded? Are the sparking plugs or distributor points damp? Has it simply run out of gas? Why do we not react in the same way to a defective man: a murderer, say, or a rapist? Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? Or at King Xerxes who, in 480 BC, sentenced the rough sea to 300 lashes for wrecking his bridge of ships? Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?
Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me).
But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment. Don't judicial hearings to decide questions of blame or diminished responsibility make as little sense for a faulty man as for a Fawlty car?
Why is it that we humans find it almost impossible to accept such conclusions? Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live. My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment.
Just as Basil Fawlty beat the hell out of his car, Dawkins is beating the hell out of his strawman. There's no real debate here -- Dawkins is just angling for attention.
Google "toledoth" and "Tablet Theory". Also, "P. J. Wiseman"
Don't you think reference would have been made that Noah had with him on the ark any writings of Adam? I am doubtful that Adam penned any of Genesis simply because of what is said, although the English translations do not quite capture the whole story.
Noah may well have wrote I have no evidence to say otherwise, but everything I have studied seems to point to Moses being inspired to pen those first five books, especially with what Christ said about Moses. Also I have read that it is believed that Moses also penned the book of Job. Makes sense to me that Moses would have penned the book of Job considering how the story of Job does as much as any other book to explain Genesis and the players in time.
But I add I do not have a closed mind on the matter.
http://solagratia.org/Articles/New_Covenant_Theology_and_the_Mosaic_Law.aspx
I'm not smart enough to post this as a real hyperlink, so cut and paste into your address bar (if you're interested...)
"I'm not interested because I am saved to do good works
not by doing good works"
- which is not inconsistent with this author's view of Christ's fulfillment of the law...
which is not inconsistent with this author's view of Christ's fulfillment of the law..
GOOD
Sure he defines his terms. However, he has taken different definitions than some do and not told anybody what they are. If something he says leads to ludicrous conclusions it is likely that he has not been understood. Doesn't mean he is right or wrong. He is probably wrong about most everything and misunderstood on top of that so nobody even knows where he is wrong.
I was expecting the whooshing sound of wings as a horde of winged monkeys descended on this thread to defend the author, the article being so obvious in scientific foundation. And how dare anyone criticise the material of the article--only those determined to understand science or the scientific method should be able to criticize it. And, following the line of thought, those who understand science or the scientific method would find no criticism to hold against the author.
What an embarrassment. Dawkins has clearly gone off into the weeds--actually, past the weeds into the pond beyond. This guy holds the chair for the Charles Simonyi Professorship in the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford.
When a public scientist writes a bad essay and makes bad arguments, is he really reponsible for his errors?
Dawkins has laid the foundation for pre-empting any and all criticism. No wonder he's so shrill.
There's ALWAYS moral implications. It's just a matter of what authority you appeal to to support them.
I liked him on Family Fued.
The rest of Acts 10 and part of Acts 11 continues with the account.
I have been studying the Book of Genesis intensely for 4 years. My studies have led me to conclude what I wrote below. If you are interested in more information, drop me a line.
Richard Dawkins' brain is a font of sewage, same as it ever was.
The law lacks any provision requiring "fulfillment." The law is an accusation against sin; as long as we remain in sin, the law remains in effect. We can rise above the law only by rising out of our sinful condition.
Nuff said!
BB, where are you? This seems to be right up your alley.
I wouldn't have said retribution. The purpose isn't revenge, it is deterrence. Punishment 1) Serves as an example to others who may be considering criminal activity. 2) Puts criminals away so they can't commit crimes.
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