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So I think we're just talking by one another and about different concepts entirely. I'm not questioning whether punishment as a deterrent works at all. Obviousl

So I think we're just talking by one another and about different concepts entirely. I'm not questioning whether punishment as a deterrent works at all. Obviously it does. I guess my emphasis on the morality imperative implicitly led people to believe I was indeed questioning the notion of punishment as a deterrent. I think, given a better medium and more time, we could have cleared this up much better. At any rate now I'm actually interested in how you arrived at your prison views, since religious rationalizations puzzle me endlessly and I'm always out to see if a religous person who arrives at a good conclusion in my view has any insight to offer me in convincing other religious people to change their ideas as well.

geofft 9y ago
> At any rate now I'm actually interested in how you arrived at your prison views Three things (and, note, I currently hold this position weakly and welcome further thoughts that either oppose or support it): 1. There is no story in the Bible, to my knowledge, of prison being used by people the Bible calls good. There are a few places where someone is imprisoned and God uses the situation for good - Daniel in the lion's den, Paul and Silas in the prison of Phillipi, etc. - but you never see e.g. Moses or David or anyone say to build a prison or to put someone in confinement, as far as I recall. 2. Nothing in Mosaic law (again, that I know of) talks about prison as a means for punishment / correction. You put people to death for offenses that we wouldn't consider capital today, sure. You exile them. You certainly have them pay restitution. But there's no Biblical command that a moral society should even have a prison. 3. There are plenty of passages like Isaiah 61, "to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound," Matthew 25, "I was in prison and you came to visit me," etc. that seem to have an underlying assumption that everyone who is in prison is there unjustly. Even if they're meant to be read metaphorically, the metaphor only works right if you think of prison as unequivocally bad. There's no sense that some people deserve the experience of being in prison, or that justice requires leaving some people in prison. Therefore, I have trouble seeing a society that puts people in prison and calls it moral as in accordance with a Biblical view of morality. Of course the whole idea that Western civilization is built on "Judeo-Christian" morals is flimsy in many ways, but for prison in particular, there seems to be a particular lack of support.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  Prison—as distinct from captivity that is primarily slavery for the benefit (economic or, for some high-status captives, prestige) of the captor—is a fairly modern thing, and economically unviable in ancient societies independent of its moral dimension.

geofft 9y ago

> At any rate now I'm actually interested in how you arrived at your prison views Three things (and, note, I currently hold this position weakly and welcome further thoughts that either oppose or support it): 1. There is no story in the Bible, to my knowledge, of prison being used by people the Bible calls good. There are a few places where someone is imprisoned and God uses the situation for good - Daniel in the lion's den, Paul and Silas in the prison of Phillipi, etc. - but you never see e.g. Moses or David or anyone say to build a prison or to put someone in confinement, as far as I recall. 2. Nothing in Mosaic law (again, that I know of) talks about prison as a means for punishment / correction. You put people to death for offenses that we wouldn't consider capital today, sure. You exile them. You certainly have them pay restitution. But there's no Biblical command that a moral society should even have a prison. 3. There are plenty of passages like Isaiah 61, "to proclaim liberty to the captives and the opening of the prison to those who are bound," Matthew 25, "I was in prison and you came to visit me," etc. that seem to have an underlying assumption that everyone who is in prison is there unjustly. Even if they're meant to be read metaphorically, the metaphor only works right if you think of prison as unequivocally bad. There's no sense that some people deserve the experience of being in prison, or that justice requires leaving some people in prison. Therefore, I have trouble seeing a society that puts people in prison and calls it moral as in accordance with a Biblical view of morality. Of course the whole idea that Western civilization is built on "Judeo-Christian" morals is flimsy in many ways, but for prison in particular, there seems to be a particular lack of support.

dragonwriter 9y ago
Prison—as distinct from captivity that is primarily slavery for the benefit (economic or, for some high-status captives, prestige) of the captor—is a fairly modern thing, and economically unviable in ancient societies independent of its moral dimension.