Richard Dawkins' Faith In Free Will Is As Blind As A Christians To God

[Purple Rabbit]

You are all changing the topic!

Do we agree that Dawkins is showing blind faith?

What is your evidence that Dawkins is endorsing acausal free will?

Free will or choice can be short hand for "understanding that in contemplating the future one could causally form notions on preferred outcome and by reporting this to the self might indeed influence the way in which latent preferences would causally play out".

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If free will is proven to be untrue, and determinism correct, which I personally don't think is the case, would we have to then accept that a murderer was going to murder no matter what? So maybe he's really not responsible for his actions, he was destined to do it all along, how can we punish him?

For free will to be true in the traditional meaning you need a contra-causal mechanism akin to the supernatural uncaused soul. So indeed be sure what to want here, if acausal free will is true it proves determinism wrong and vice versa.

Bur determinism is not the same as predestination (the view that a specified outcome cannot be influenced before it has happened). Murderers can be influenced to not murder. Pointing a loaded gun to their temples usually suffices in the crime series on TV.

But there are considerable changes to the concepts of punishment and responsibility when you accept determinism. That is not to say that a murderer cannot be held responsible for the committed murder in that case. The concept of punishment loses meaning if it is aimed at done deeds instead of prevention of deeds to come.

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Hello.

Firstly, Richard Dawkins is great. I love reading his books and find him for the most part a very fascinating and charming man. If I was forced by some supernatural creature to criticise Dawkins personality or else die, all I would say is that his choice of pose for most photographs is a tad too 'Brent'.

Done some investigation on the subject you present. Dawkins does not endorse acausal free will:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LE4uu49S...re=related
(go to 2 m 8 sec to skip the Steven Pinker part)

My conclusion is that either you either are a fraud (probably a theist in disguise) or you have no clue what Dawkins actually is saying.