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I suspect most readers on HN will see this as a warning against religious tyranny when it's actually a warning against attempting to rehabilitate criminals rather than simply punishing them justly for their crime... Interestingly, the former is likely a rather popular notion here, while I imagine the latter viewpoint is fairly unpopular.

Here's the full essay: https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/churchman/073-02_055.pdf

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Interesting essay. More generally it seems to be a reaction against a perceived authoritarian-Leftist tendency to view people as programmable cogs in the machine of society. Cogs that can be reprogrammed to make everything run more smoothly. In some sense it strikes at the core distinction between deontological and utilitarian ethics (as I understand those terms).

I wonder what he would think of the "Bastoy" prison island in Norway: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/25/norwegian-pr...

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