Keith Devens .com

Ironhead Haynes' Nine Commandments

1. It's okay to call hooters "knockers" and sometimes "snack trays."
2. It is wrong to be French.
3. It's okay to put all bad people in a giant meat grinder.
4. Lawyers: see rule three.
5. It is okay to drive a gas guzzler if it helps you get babes.
6. Everyone should car pool but me.
7. Bring back the word "stewardesses"
8. Synchronized Swimming is not a sport.
9. Mudwrestling is a sport.

Why don't we laugh at a judge who punishes a criminal, just as heartily as we laugh at Basil Fawlty? ... Isn't the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

Yes, but by punishing them, we (1) temporarily or permanently remove this person from society (2) influence that defectiveness by pressuring them to change their behavior and (3) discourage other borderline-defective people from doing the same.

Dawkins's hypothetical premises are not incompatible with the value of a justice system.

Dawkins's hypothetical premises are not incompatible with the value of a justice system.

Indeed, but they highlight the incompatibility of worldviews like his with any coherent theory of justice, morality, or responsibility.

I briefly wondered why you had no comment on the "front page" of this entry--I'm not surprised that you were just giving Dawkins the opportunity to hoist himself on his own pitard and a particularly comical pitard it is. I send my broken, malfunctioning toaster to a crusher or some other disposal facility. I propose that we serve the purposes of justice, morality, and objective, mechanistic determinism by sending child molesters, murderers, and persons who deal hard drugs to juveniles and maybe some others to the same crusher my busted toaster will go through. I don't give the toaster 10 years of re-tries and minute examinations to determine whether I'm the one making a mistake when sparks and smoke come out every time I plug the thing in--I get rid of the thing before it burns more than toast and don't look back on my way to get another. That'll fix 'em and for good!

Indeed, but they highlight the incompatibility of worldviews like his with any coherent theory of justice, morality, or responsibility.

I should have pointed out, of course, that this includes a theory of justice or morality that would enable us to label such people as "defective". So, at best, his argument is incomplete. At worst, it begs the question.