Crime, Punishment, and the Insane Suppression of the Truth

Richard Dawkins, in an embarrassing attempt to respond to the death penalty or prolonged punishment for criminals in general, has shown that God has truly made *mincemeat* out of the thinking of the world:

***QUOTE***

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.”

***END-QUOTE***

The definition of justice is, “Giving every man what he is due.” The principle of justice is based upon balance: when someone wrongs another, he has created a moral imbalance and is due punishment. Therefore, even from a secular perspective (or from the founding fathers or any book with the title Crime and Punishment), the concept of justice (on which the whole system of the courts is based) emphatically disagrees with Dawkins’ position.

The Christian, however, has a much more objective basis for crime and punishment. The one who bears “the sword” is “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Romans 13:4). This is, of course, an issue of worldviews; and when it comes down to presuppositions, the frank conclusion is that Dawkins has absolutely no rational basis for his utilization of the judicial system. But the least he could do is represent the Christian position accurately, that is, if he is going to randomly attack it in his response to punishment.

***QUOTE***

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.

***END-QUOTE***

The amount of presuppositions in this single paragraph should be noted:

1. Dawkins considers humans and machines to be on the same moral level
2. Dawkins believes that wrongdoing is simply a malfunction in the “computer” of the mind
3. Dawkins believes that the judicial system is meant to “fix a problem” rather than punish crime

But Dawkins fails to justify any of these presuppositions. Rather, he continues to assert these presuppositions throughout this entire article.

***QUOTE***

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?

***END-QUOTE***

Well, as Dawkins asserts his presuppositions, he shows his irrationality. To Dawkins, the mechanical make up of a car is equal to the mind of a human. But there are many things that we punish humans for that we don’t punish cars for.

In any case, I am fine with “correcting the problem.” But let’s not make that our basis for the judicial system. The fact is that all humans have been diagnosed with the problem called indwelling sin. Government exists because it knows that man possesses this problem. The purpose of government is to both punish wrongdoing and reward good. Yes, government seeks to make life peaceful. But ultimately, government is based upon morality. Any other conclusion would not be rationally based. Dawkins later states:

***QUOTE***

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.

***END-QUOTE***

Dawkins asks, “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?” The rational mind responds with, “Why should we?” He has not told us why we should “simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing.” He has merely assumed it, and from that principle based his entire position. The whole thing crumbles because of this one unjustified assumption.

Evan May.

[HT: James White]