Is our fate determined?

2.4.4 Revenge and retribution Within this thought structure that must be looked at without inner emotions and prejudices, punishment should only be applied to the degree required to bring about the re-education of an individual. Punishment as revenge or retribution, ergo as something that goes far beyond the required learning process, is to be rejected because it is senseless. Revenge only makes people stubborn and it makes them unreasonable, it therefore effects the opposite from what meaningful punishment is supposed to achieve. Thoughts of revenge and retribution in regards to a disproportionate infliction of damage is a very powerful impulse that is deeply entrenched in all human beings. This impulse probably stems from the times (for instance whilst leading an animal’s existence) where legal norms did not exist and when revenge was the individual and private application of punishment on another individual. This individual was thereby informed that it would be advisable to not start a fight with the revenger. This impulse to take revenge and to retaliate has become superfluous in this day and age, it make living together more difficult and it must therefore be suppressed or supplanted through intensive learning processes. Every released prisoner can attest to how difficult this is, because they are snubbed or insulted by their environment, even though they have not reoffended. This is where the environment dishes out its private revenge and it often negates the intended effect of the punishment. 2.4.5 Forgiveness The Christian religion does not reject revenge and retribution to such an extent, and replaces them with forgiveness, without reason. But forgiveness is not a one-sided act in the form of an unconditional amnesty, ergo a simple abolition of forfeited punishment. Forgiveness presupposes a rueful judiciousness in regards to the abhorrence of the deed and the absolute will to improve. Therefore, the proviso for forgiveness is that the learning process that is normally set in motion through the punishment, has already been performed. Punishment has now become superfluous in this case. Its enforcement would be pure revenge. The evangelistic chaplain uses the following words of absolution after a confession wherein the misconduct has been acknowledged, regretted and a vow to improve given: Having gained this new insight, I proclaim to all those that heartily rue their sins, those that truly believe in Jesus Christ and that have made the serious resolution to improve their life, God’s grace and the forgiving of their sins. 2.5 Conclusions from a physical point of view The freedom of will has up to now been looked at from the point of view of physical legalities and the questions build into the processing of information. It has been explained that the course of physical laws during processes of life and processes of conscious decisions does not connote the absolute and predictable inevitability and complete determination for millennia ahead. The boundaries of the concept of causality and particularly that of micro-physics were demonstrated. The opinion of the physicist Pascual Jordan 12 should be cited here in conjunction with this. He writes: “’Quantum mechanics’, which ascertains the legal coherences completely and in a comprehensive way, 12 P. Jordan, born 1902, Professor for theoretical physics in Hamburg.