[grey_whiskers]

This guy is a few punch cards short of a full program. :-)

Cheers!

[Fifth Business]

In the first paragraph, Dawkins admits that retributive justice is believed and practiced universally and has been since ancient times.

Then in the second paragraph, he states, "Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour."

Perhaps there's something wrong with the science?

[A. Pole]

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.

The guru of secular materialism has spoken.

[Crush T Velour]

A but Mr. Dawkins, since every word out of your mouth is determined by your genes, why do you present brute babbling as objective reason?

You know that every thought in your head and every word you write is pre-set by your genes.

[beckett]

Here's a relevant recent article on Dawkins.

Terry Eagleton on Dawkins and religion, Lunging, Flailing, Mispunching.

[r9etb]

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'.

Starts with a strawman and goes downhill from there....

As it happens, I don't favor the death penalty, but I'm a big fan of long incarceration. Why? Because I don't want monsters roaming the streets.

[Tench_Coxe]

"Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." - Euripides

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.

[Dumb_Ox]

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?

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.

[Natural Law]

I liked him on Family Fued.

[Maeve]

Richard Dawkins' brain is a font of sewage, same as it ever was.

[editor-surveyor]

BB, where are you? This seems to be right up your alley.

[Dan Evans]

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution.

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.

[D-fendr]

Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers…

Not because they're actually bad and ugly and wrong, argues Dawkins. They would be good and right and beautiful. If only that were of benefit to the gene taxis, er, humans.

Dawkins is unschooled and ignorant in philosophy and religion. Why he isn't laughed out of his position at Oxford is a cruel mystery.

[onedoug]

...For later read....

[onedoug]

"Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes...."

Punishment.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution.

Or maybe we just want to stay alive and want dangerous animals removed from society. Has this goof been quizzing 10-year-olds?

[headsonpikes]

Lord God, is Dawkins really so dim as to be unaware of the irrationality of his reductionist materialism?

Pathetic, really - reminds me of Bobby Fischer or the Unabomber.

[Boiler Plate]

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.

Dawkins is an idiot if he believes this. Punishment is a deterrent, but in the godless world he lives in, there is no such thing as responsibility, except to ones own self.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

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.

re: "As scientists, we believe..."

Mr. Dawkins needs to go back to college and take a good course in philosophy. Saying "as scientists, we believe" has no logical or sensible meaning even according to his own reductionist scientific materialism.

And there rests the problem with secular humanist dorks like Dawkins: his scientific atheology is not grounded in sound logic and cogent reasoning.

Always amusing to read the latest about the evolving "beliefs" of secular humanists and scientific materialists.

[cornelis]

Retribution as a moral principle is incompatible with a scientific view of human behaviour.

When all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail.