Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Torture, don't do it!

I've been thinking a bit about torture. On one hand Sam Harris author of "The End of Faith" makes an argument that torturing religious folk is acceptable, as they are fanatics and you have to measure the common good versus individual human rights and realize fanatics with nukes should be tortured to get information that will save many lives. He compares torture to war and points out that war is much worse. That said he has a whole section about how torture during the inquisition got a lot of false witches and was one of the worst things to happen in history. So is seems to Sam torture by religious folks is bad, torture of religious folks is good. Obviously this position doesn't seem right to me by any stretch of the imagination. On the other hand there is this Ivin's column. It makes me want to do some sort of civil disobedience, but I don't know if I have time to as I'm traveling all over, doing a heart checkup, and flying out of the country in a couple of days. Also I am not familiar enough with all the positions out there, specifically I am very annoyed with my party because they're views on torture don't seem to be getting the same kind of press that the McCain/Bush bash is. Any thoughts on torture would be appreciated. Peace, Chris

3 comments:

Andy Kaylor said...

I think it's just plain indefensible. To pretend that non-religious idealogues are less dangerous than religious idealogues is just denying the obvious (not that our policies are being set by non-religious idealogues).

Unless I badly misunderstand the situation, torturing terrorists just makes more terrorists. If our enemies hate us for being the schoolyard bully, beating people up isn't going to fix the problem.

Christopher said...

Agreed, it seems that torturing people in ways we condemned the Vietnamese for doing to people like John McCain during that war is a really bad way to make friends and influence people, so to speak. It is just making more people feel like we are the great satan etc (not that some need an excuse to feel that way, but I think emperical evidence supporting that kind of reasoning doesn't help out case).
Peace,
Chris

Judah Gabriel Himango said...

I agree, torture really seems wrong. Certainly something our Messiah would not approve of in the least.

Hey Chris, I wrote up a little article on my blog, I'd like to hear some feedback on.

Talk to you later man. God bless.