Condemn Torture, Then Define It

TO BIOS:
1
You are correct that we Christians see, in humanity, both good & evil tendencies. Some of us call it "critical realism."
2
Torture is the inflicting of avoidable (& therefore unnecessary) or excessive pain. An instance of avoidable: a dentist who skimps on anodyne. An instance of excessive: a parents who beats a child instead of giving only enough spanking to get the job done. Long solitary confinement is torture.

TO LEWAML:

My title is "Condemn torture, then define it." John McClain said that the worst torture he ever experienced was solitary confinement.

Your moral absolutism seems to me arrogant & unchristian. Do you really believe that solitary confinement is, under all circumstances, torture & therefore wrong?

The accomplishment of ANY desired end - no matter how laudable - is NEVER justified when the means employed to accomplish that end are questionable at best. I am a christian and I am sickened to learn, according to a recent Pew Research Poll, that there are many American christians who apparently deem the use of torture appropriate in some instances. It is the torturer who loses his/her own soul and it is an indictment of any society that supports its use as an instrument of public policy. This president has got it exactly right: the use of torture has a corrosive effect on the soul of a nation. Democracy is frequently a messy and inconvenient enterprise. But Lincoln was exactly right, for all time and forever, when he said: " Let us strive to learn that it is right that makes for might." God help us all, if we succumb to the temptation to take some convenient "short cuts" in the search for the "evil doers" and attempts to bring them before the bar of justice. For in the doing, we will have become just like them! The moral high ground is the only viable position for us to take as a nation, seeing as how we have been crowing about our own exceptionalism for a very long time.

I basically agree w/Pagan, specially concerning item 3 and I would like to highlight and repeat after her, the tendency of humans is not to “evil”. This is definitely one of those old die-hard convictions that religion has been so successful at inculcating.
Humans have been for the most part in their history, trying to survive, living in fear, hunger, cold and sickness. What evil did they do then? ....So this means that doing “evil” is something “newer”, that did not exist then but it does now?

Torture is cruel and I don’t think more cruelty is the only solution to any of our problems. Like Pagan says below, torture breaks people. It’s not even a suggested method to get the truth out of someone. There are numerous accounts of people lying under torture only to alleviate the pain. So the torturer does not get the truth and the tortured already lost. Which means that at the end of the day, it’s a lose-lose situation.

I’m glad to hear that your church has a record of opposing torture and takes a strong stance against it, Mr. Elliott.

Defining torture should prove interesting. I get the feeling you already have a definition, would you care to through it out?

It's a tough topic for me, Reverend, if you couldn't guess, but bear with me, here:

"3.....But besides being ambiguous, torture is paradoxical. The human tendency to evil needs restraint, one means of restraint is extracting information indicating evil intent, and torture to extract such information "

This... Is your problem. The 'tendency' of humans is *not* to 'evil.'

'Evil to him who thinks evil.'

Evil is born from *fear* of evil.

People don't do torture in any form without being scared or alienated from their humanity.

Torture comes from the idea 'Evil must be restrained.' Then people become 'evil' to you, people end up chained in dark places... hurting them makes you feel a little powerful a while, but doesn't take away the fear, so clearly more extreme methods are needed...

And you become monsters. It's true in metaphor as it is in unfortunate direct reality.

"(1) has evil effects on the torturers and their societies, and (2) is itself difficult to restrain, especially when driven by fear or vengeance."

This much is true. But it's not going to get any less 'difficult' if you cling to the fear of 'evil' while trying to figure out when to use such methods and say 'On the balance, good.'

It's *not* good.

No excuses.

Ever-loving Goddess of Mercy, can't you *see* that?

"1.....Senator John McCain admits that under torture, he betrayed his country. This proves that (1) torture for information sometimes is successful, and (2) those who claim that torture never works - never obtains valuable information - are wrong. Torture is ambiguous, its value is challenged, and its use should be restrained, by its violation of some essential human values."

Actually, Reverend, McCain 'betrayed' his country by *doing and saying what the torturers wanted him to do.*

Torture works fine for *that,* it just doesn't yield as reliable intel as other forms of interrogation. To wit, the cruelty's unnecessary, and for the most part, is only good for getting someone to say what the torturer wants to hear. Good for getting people to 'confess to religions,' ...not so good at all at 'saving lives from ticking bombs'

It's only good for *breaking* people. I'm not even *talking* about just *tuning someone up* or 'scaring or beating the truth out of em' ...if that works, it works immediately, and that kind of stuff doesn't hold up in a court of law for a lot of good reasons.

'Torture' in practice isn't a bit out of an hour's TV drama, it's a pretty diabolical practice of cruelty ...it can go on for hours or days or more... when people *think* it's justified, most especially by *religion,* but also other fears... and I think the drama about it confuses people We like to think it's about the bold hero standing up to the pain and privation, or, alternately, the fanatical villain finally yielding to base fears and being 'defeated' by the righteous, but it's not that.

It *causes* you to *dissociate.*

(As does a lot of fanatical training, apparently)

It's not good, sir. One of those memories I don't want anymore in the next life is someone demanding a 'confession' out of me, ...I couldn't even fricking remember what I'd been accused of. Maybe if I could, I would have done so.

They couldn't have gotten the last week's *lunch menu* out of me if I had really wanted to give it to them. And, I really didn't. The rest of the world was pretty much gone and those doing it were not my friends.

There's no 'truth,' no *virtue,* no justification, it's just cruelty. Ends up so the people *doing* it are the ones most affected, cause once they're in so deep in that dark place, there *must* be some good reason for it, right?

I think that's one thing you Christians don't understand, with your 'judgmental' God of justifications and confessions.

It's not *even* so much about what's done to the tortured. Or how to excuse it. It's what happens to the torturer.

Lady knows there's *something* they can't take away from you. But that thing is not words or information.