Richard Dawkins Writes About Human Responsibility In Light of Darwinian Evolution

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.

Let's back up here to see why Peter was given the vision.

Matthew 10: 1 And when He had called unto Him His twelve disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.

2 - 3 - 4 names of the twelve apostles

5. These twelve Jesus sent forth, and *commanded* them saying, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not:

6. But go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

This was the standard set by Christ Himself.

Interesting trip that Christ took described in John 4:5 And He must needs go through Samaria.

5 Then cometh He to a city of Samaria, which is called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour.

7. There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water:

Jesus saith unto her, "Give Me to drink."

8. (For His disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.)

9 Then saith the woman of Samaria unto Him, "How is it Thou, being a Jew, asked drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? (for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.)"

10 Jesus answered and said unto her, "If thou knewest the give of God, and Who it is That saith to thee, "Give Me to drink;' thou wouldest have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water."

11 The woman saith unto Him, "Sir, Thou hast nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then hast Thou that living water?

12 Art Thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle?"

13 Jesus answered and said unto her, "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again:

14 But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

The story continues and in verse 27 And upon this came His disciples, and marveled that He talked with the woman: yet no man said, "What seekest Thou?" or, "Why talkest Thou with her?"

Now Peter and the unclean meat vision begins in Acts 10 describing Cornelius who was not of Israel. In verse 5 Cornelius is told to send men to Joppa, and call for one Simon, whose surname is Peter: which is whom is being referred to in verse 9 that you started with... "On the morrow, as they went on their journey, and drew nigh unto the city, Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour.

verse 17 Now while Peter doubted in himself what this vision which he had seen should mean, behold, the men which were sent from Cornelius had made enquirey for Simon's house, and stood before the gate,

19 While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, "Behold, three men seek thee...

The vision was that no longer were the Gentiles to be considered unclean or common they were given the same opportunity to salvation - Christ as were those of Israel.

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not?

Hey editor-surveyor! (I've been away for the past few days.) Please note the above italics. :^)

The answer to Dawkins' disingenuous question is: Yes, the scientific mechanistic view does make nonsense of the very idea of personal responsibility.

If man were merely a machine, incapable of exercising free, rational decisions (machines do not modify their own programs as a rule), then the whole idea of personal responsibility and legal sanction for wrong-doing is absurd.

Plus Dawkins seems to indicate that the "program" that governs the human machine is an "accidental" result of Darwinian evolution over a very long period of time. He says that "we scientists believe..." this. Well, that's a faith statement pure and simple. He can conjecture all he wants to; what he can't do is offer any evidence to back up this claim, or notion.

The fact appears to be that Dawkins simply prefers to think of human beings as not possessing reason or free will, for whatever reason. On his view (the observer problem rears its head here), we humans and all other living creatures are simply cogs in a universal clockwork and, as such, differ little from one another in principle. In fact when you boil it all down, Dawkins seems to recognize little if any distinction between the living and nonliving worlds. And yet nowhere does he come to grips with the problem implicit in saying that a clockwork can spontaneously construct itself (this problem has something to do with the second law of thermodynamics, which seems incapable of generating formal causes).

Plus if reason and logic are but the outcomes of random development, why should we find them trustworthy? And if they are not trustworthy, then neither is anything built on them -- and science itself is a splendid edifice raised on the foundation of reason and logic.

Dawkins isn't "doing science" in this essay. He is doing something else entirely.

Well, FWIW. Thanks so much for the ping, editor-surveyor!

Thank you so much for your outstanding essay!

Indeed, Dawkins is not doing science in his essay - it sounds like he is prostelyzing for his own atheistic beliefs. On my reading of his works, atheism is his primary objective, not science.

Exactly! "Doctrinally pure" atheism requires an infinite past, no direction, no distinction between life and non-life in nature, strong determinism (predestination) and no free will.

Thank you for your reply and questions!

me: "Doctrinally pure" atheism requires...... an infinite past

you: Why? Aren't there atheist who believe in a Big Bang?

All physical cosmologies (inflationary, multi-verse, multi-world, imaginary time, ekpyrotic, cyclic, etc.) require an uncaused cause for physical causation itself (space/time), a prime mover, existing existence, i.e. God.

In the face of evidence from measuring the cosmic backround microwave radiation (the universe is expanding and thus had a beginning) - only a purist atheist would believe in an infinite past, i.e. a steady state multi-verse.

me: ... no direction

you: What do you mean when you speak about a "direction"?

Teleology, purpose for which "all that there is" exists - final cause in Aristotlean parlance, the last of four.

me: ... no distinction between life and non-life in nature

you: Why? Aren't there atheists who know the difference between their dog and - let's say - a salami...

Try getting a doctrinaire atheist to give you a straight answer to the question "what is life v. non-life/death in nature"

me: ... strong determinism (predestination)

you: Why? Isn't quantum mechanics enough to crush the idea of strong determinism?

As with Chaitin's Omega (random number generator) - they are only pseudo-random (term coined by Wolfram), the effect of a cause.

Of a truth, one cannot say a thing is random in the system when he does not know what the system "is." And that is where the purist atheist falls flat on his face because he declares that all that exists is matter in all its motions, microscope to telescope.

me: ... no free will.

you: Why? Why no free will?

It is the logical consequence of strong determinism or predestination. The will, mind, consciousness, soul, spirit, etc. is merely an epiphenomenon of the physical brain in that philosophy/theology. An epiphenomenon is a secondary phenomenon which can cause nothing to happen.

At the root, atheism fails on causation across the board. It is not a rational philosophy, it is a statement of faith - a waving of the fist at God.

Thanks for the good-sounding reply.
All physical cosmologies ... require an uncaused cause for physical causation itself ...
Almost lyric, but a kind of personal opinion...

only a purist atheist would believe in an infinite past, i.e. a steady state multi-verse.
Thats your idea what an purist atheist should do. I'd say you're lacking imagination, these purist atheists are a creative bunch and can make up a god-less model for a non-steady-state universe...

ST: What do you mean when you speak about a "direction"? AG: Teleology, purpose for which "all that there is" exists - final cause in Aristotelean parlance, the last of four.
Ah, the "What is it good for" question... You are right, a purist atheist may just admire the beauty of it all.

In their worldview all that exists is matter in all its motions, which is to say the dog and the salami are made of the same quantum components and phenomena and nothing else, i.e. there is no "ghost in the machine."
But even in this world-view, there are less complex and more complex machines, the most complex being the living ones. And even without a "ghost in the machine", this complexity is something with a value..

The two most common instances of randomness in nature cited (radioactive decay and virtual particles) are neither one random. The first is clearly the effect of a physical cause - and both fail under the causation form: "if not for A, C would not be" IOW, if not for time events would not occur, if not for space things would not exist.
There you lost me: Yes, radioactive decay is random, yes, it's a physical process. Do you think the decay of an atom is triggered by a kind of inner clock?

PS: if not for A, C would not be - where the hell is B? Isn't it A² + B² = C² :-)

Thank you for your reply!

Indeed atheists can justify almost anything to themselves (we call it "living in a second reality") - but that doesn't make them rational in the larger sense much less in their cosmology.

On the radioactive decay, I didn't mention clocks, I mentioned causation.

In the absence of time, events do not occur.

In the absence of space, things do not exist.

Atheism cannot stand in the face of either. Causation is the poison pill to atheism.

But of course atheists who have created their own hermetically sealed "second reality" to justify themselves cannot see that or anything else outside their self-imposed conceptual boundaries.

But of course atheists who have created their own hermetically sealed "second reality" to justify themselves cannot see that or anything else outside their self-imposed conceptual boundaries.

Nobody can see beyond this conceptual boundaries - that's what belief is for.

On the radioactive decay, I didn't mention clocks, I mentioned causation.

okay, not a clock, a kind of burning fuse - does this metaphor pleases you more?

Causation is the poison pill to atheism.

And the Copenhagen Interpretation is the poison pill to causation :-)

Indeed atheists can justify almost anything to themselves (we call it "living in a second reality") - but that doesn't make them rational in the larger sense much less in their cosmology.

Laplace said, regarding god: " Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là." And Laplace was quite a rational man. As a roman catholic I believe that god created the universe. As someone who likes science, I think it was done without posting a sign "I DID IT" at the beginning, so that our perception of the universe is - to abuse the phrase - independent of the axiom "there is a god". To quote an atheist - B. Brecht:

The question of whether there is a God
A man asked Mr. K. whether there is a God. Mr. K. said: “I advise you to consider whether, depending on the answer, your behavior would change. If it would not change, then we can drop the question. If it would change, then I can at least be of help to the extent that I can say, you have already decided: you need a God.”

A-G wrote: All physical cosmologies ... require an uncaused cause for physical causation itself ...

To which si tacuissem replied: Almost lyric, but a kind of personal opinion...

If this is a personal opinion, si tacuissem, then please note it's Aristotle's.

I have a friend who's an astrophysicist and loves cosmological speculation. He believes that the universe took its beginning from a random fluctuation in a false vacuum: On his view, that is the prima causa of all that there is. But there is no explanation of where the false vacuum came from; i.e., its cause is not accounted for. So in effect he really is ignoring the problem the first cause. But without a first cause, space and time would not exist, as A-G has pointed out; and so there could not even be a false vacuum in which a random fluctuation could occur: space and time are prerequisite.

You wrote: "...purist atheists are a creative bunch and can make up a god-less model for a non-steady-state universe..."

Well, sure they can. Hawking -- evidently shrinking from the obvious implications of a big bang/inflationary universe that he and Penrose and Ellis had mathematically modeled -- developed a cosmology of an eternal(uncaused) universe by stipulating imaginary time. One can have great fun with such pursuits; but at the end of the day the question arises: But is it true? The scientific consensus increasingly credits the big bang/inflationary universe model on grounds of observation and evidence; i.e., the COBE satellite data on the cosmic microwave background radiation for which John C. Mather and George C. Smoot were awarded the 2006 Nobel prize in physics. The Nobel committee cited their work especially for lending further confirmation of the big bang model, and for refining the age of the universe. The universe has an age because it had a beginning: Thus the universe is not eternal. For the reasons A-G cites, it must have had a first cause that is not itself "caused."

Aristotle also pointed out that an infinitely regressive causal series cannot account for logic or the lawful behavior that we observe in the natural world. You can't get from an string of "accidental" causes in an infinite past to logic and reason. No matter how many "accidents" you have, there is no principle whereby logic and lawful behavior can be the result.

AG wrote: Teleology, purpose for which "all that there is" exists - final cause in Aristotelean parlance, the last of four.

To which you replied: Ah, the "What is it good for" question... You are right, a purist atheist may just admire the beauty of it all.

Well, FWIW, it seems to me that if the purist atheist can admire the beauty of the world without wondering why something that ought to be random, accidental, chaotic, etc., etc., according to his own presuppositions, then he's not particularly inquisitive, not looking deeply enough into the issue of why there is beauty in the world, or how it got there. But if he's determined to resist the idea of God, he really can't "go there."

Lastly, the machine analogy for living beings works superficially, but quickly falls apart on closer inspection. Two points here: (1) machines are fully subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics, but living systems (to be living) are able to work against it (at least during their lifetimes); and (2) living systems are able to alter their paths away from the paths predicted on the basis of initial conditions and the laws of physics. That is, they are not completely causally determined; but the same cannot be said of a machine. All it can do is execute its program.

My two cents' worth FWIW. Thanks for this interesting exchange with Alamo-Girl!

[ The universe has an age because it had a beginning: Thus the universe is not eternal. For the reasons A-G cites, it must have had a first cause that is not itself "caused." ]

MUST be so to creature in a TIME box.. (that is a non eternal creature..)

But to an eternal "creature" something uncreated therefore "always was" is possible.. How long is always?.. Beginnings and endings is/are unique to this paradigm being time centered.. Its hard to get your mind around eternity.. Cause not only are there things that always will be there must be things that always were.. else what is eternity?..

Meaning; A Universe that always was should be possible.. and the Big Bang is a childish look at eternity..

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