No soul? No free will and no responsibility then, yet the latter's essential...

[possibletarian]

Interesting topic inst it, seems to me the debate has moved on from 'do we have free will' to 'is it better to believe in free will even though it may not be true'

On one side we have those who believe without free will (or at least the belief in free will) we will become monsters, not a belief i personally hold.
On the other that moving forward in our understanding of will (free or not) is vital to understanding ourselves.

I'm really interested where the science and observation on this debate goes

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We don't require brains to be able to do that to prosecute someone for assault - and even though we know that there are factors and circumstances which strongly correlate with future crime - we don't have to drop charges if we happen to find out that the defendant was mercilessly beaten as a child.

We think that this might have an effect on their free will™ just like so many other things does...right down to being hungry or having low blood sugar, but none of them save for a complete lack of fitness to stand is relevant to questions of guilt.  

Not having any free will, at all, might absolve a person of moral guilt, as another poster mentioned..but legal guilt is not moral guilt, and our system runs on legal guilt.  It's not necessary for our system to work as-is...but if we insist and if we want to consider it when we determine things like sentencing...that's fine.   I love desert.

I tend to agree, we still need to protect society from peoples harmful decision making, like someone who is constantly making poor driving decisions and causing accidents, we still need to take away the right to drive a car.