From an obituary for William Provine (1942-2015), a naturalist atheist who hung out with ID types, by Anya Plutynski:
Life may have no ultimate meaning, but I sure think it can have lots of proximate meaning. Free will is not hard to give up, because it’s a horribly destructive idea to our society. Free will is what we use as an excuse to treat people like pieces of crap when they do something wrong in our society. We say to the person, “you did something wrong out of your free will, and therefore we have the justification for revenge all over your behind.” We put people in prison, turning them into lousier individuals than they ever were. This horrible system is based upon this idea of free will. More.
This is a sad contribution indeed to Provine’s legacy. Practically every good thing in the world has come from a belief in free will. But then, Provine might have endorsed this stuff.
Anyway, opening all the prisons is most assuredly not the road to freedom.
See also: Provine found that 78% of evolutionary biologists are pure naturalist atheists. Diversity at work, right?
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