Richard Dawkins Writes About Human Responsibility In Light of Darwinian Evolution

EDGE -- World Question Center ^ | Richard Dawkins

[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.

[Thalos]

Have you ever read "A World Out of Time"? Awesome novel. It opens with a criminal having his malfunctioning personality "repaired" by being completely replaced with a dying cancer patient's personality.

[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.

[WKB]

Yes I know that many Christians claim the *law* was fulfilled but they are wrong.

.

So Jesus when Jesus said "It is finished" he wasn't quite through.

"Matt. 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. "

[SirLinksalot]

When and only when Richard Dawkins can show me a car that has free will,

That seems to be his point -- we are simply several orders of magnitude complicated machines. More complex than cars, but basically, like cars.

[SirLinksalot]

Isn't this guy one of the heroes of the evo crowd?

Yes, his first and most popular book was THE BLIND WATCHMAKER. It was then followed with THE SELFISH GENE. This latest book -- THE GOD DELUSION is of course the logical consequence of the premises laid down in his first two books.

[Just mythoughts]

What law did Christ fulfill???? He fulfilled the law that required a 'blood' sacrifice for forgiveness. He became the final perfect blood sacrifice and no longer are we required to sacrifice a lamb to gain forgiveness. Repentance is what is required since the sacrifice of Christ.

If there is no law there is no sin, thus no need for repentance which is what Christ taught.... repentance.

Those Ten Commandments still stand this day. Further no where was the 'swine' cleansed as food to be eaten. Yes I know some claim Peter cleaned it but Peter never partook of the swine or the other unclean flesh, and the vision was about the gentiles no longer being call common they had the same right to Christ as the Israelites had.

[WKB]

"but Peter never partook of the swine or the other unclean flesh"


I wonder what Peter was eating here that Paul got in his
face about. Potato Chips?

Gal. 2:11 When Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong. 12 Before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group.

[WKB]

What law did Christ fulfill????


I would say ALL of them

Matt. 22:36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’£ 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’£ 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”


Christians do things and don't things because they love
Jesus NOT to keep the law.

[SirLinksalot]

The way I see it, either the Ultimate Reality is purely deterministic or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then intelligence is an implicit feature of ultimiate reality. If it isn’t deterministic, then whatever non-determinstic forces exist (impossible to imagine), they “chose” (what else would you call it?) to have the universe come to be the way it is.

Water doesn’t run uphill, and intelligence cannot come from non-intelligence. We are the product of something far beyond Dawkin’s hand waving attitude seems to allow for.

Energy, matter, intelligence. Rodgers and Hamerstein had it right when they wrote in the Sound of Music : “Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.”

[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.

[SirLinksalot]

SEE LINK IN POST #10

I am still trying to understand Dawkins when he said to Colbert : "Evolution is ‘ Not random plain dumb luck’".

What exactly does he mean as a naturalistic evolutionist ?

If we did not get here by random chance, then how exactly did we get here ?

[Just mythoughts]

Eating is NOT the subject, if you note in Galatians 2:4 And that because of false brethren unawares brought in, came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage:

5. To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour; that the truth of the gospel might continue with you.

6. But of these who seemed to be somewhat, (whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me; God accepteth no man's person:) for they who seemed to be somewhat in conference added nothing to me:

7. But contrariwise, when they saw that the gospel of *UNCIRCUMCISION* was committed unto me, as the gospel of the *CIRCUMCISION* WAS UNTO Peter;

8 (For He That wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the *CIRCUMCISION* the same was mighty in me toward the Gentiles:)

Not talking what food was eaten but that some wanted to adhere to the law of circumcision, which was not required of the Gentiles to be Christian.

It is the 'false brethren' that caused the dust up. Notice what verse 14 says.

[bobdsmith]

Does water flow downhill via random dumb luck?

Neither does it flow via intelligent intervention.

Those are not the only two options

[WKB]

I tell you what, you keep TRYING to keep the
law I'll just keep loving Jesus.
Have a nice day.

[SirLinksalot]

Those are not the only two options

I was talking about the origin of human life of earth. If it isn't by intelligence or by random luck, we'd like to know what other options there are.

[Just mythoughts]

Take a look at the Ten Commandments, Christ quoted the Ten Commandments because the first five are specifically about "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind"!!!

Now check out the last five commandments and note they are specifically about "loving your neighbor as yourself". Now if the law is fulfilled then how is it possible to follow Christ's own instruction??? How much clearer can Christ's words be "All the LAW and the Prophets hang on these two commandments"????

[WKB]

See #75

[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.