Here is a great Survey from Faith in Public Life
The poll released Thursday, commissioned by Faith in Public Life and Mercer University, found that 57% of respondents said torture can be often or sometimes justified to gain important information from suspected terrorists. Thirty-eight percent said it was never or rarely justified.
But when asked if they agree that "the U.S. government should not use methods against our enemies that we would not want used on American soldiers," the percentage who said torture was rarely or never justified rose to 52%.
"Presenting people with this argument and identifying with the golden rule really does engage a different part of people's psyche and a part of their heart, their soul, and really does shift their views on torture," said Robert Jones, president of Public Religion Research, which was commissioned to conduct the poll.
A lot of this also comes down to "Turning the Other Cheek." Another Christ-like principle many Christians struggle with.
Torture covers a whole lot of ground in terms of what is torture and what is not. So, for me, I first have to know where the line is. Some things should not be OK. Some things are in the gray area and others aren’t really torture at all. It really becomes at what point do the means no longer justify the ends? As American Christians, we need to remain aware that we are Christians first and Americans second. The need for national security cannot override the need to be humane and to treat all people as redeemable.
I don’t know why this post hasn’t gotten more love.
I will say that I think that torture is wrong under any circumstance; that it is my personal conviction I could never, as a Christian, torture another person no matter the cause. Even if torturing said person would prevent the deaths of hundreds of others, I still don’t think the end justifies the means.
If it is okay for a Christian to torture a man, to bring a man to the precipice of dying to gain vital information, then where do we draw the line? Is it then acceptable to kill a man if you know that in the future, he will cause the death of many others? Is that what God wants? If he wanted to, I’m sure God could’ve sent people to kill men like Nero before they even got a chance to burn Christians alive for torches in his garden.
Andrey: one big part of the debate is where is the line drawn? I am not always sure what people are describing when they use the word. It can mean so many things. I need to construct a statement of principle. Without definition the question just sort of hangs there for me.
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It seems in this context that they’re using torture to mean inflicting emotional and/or physical pain on an enemy to attain information. Our country ambiguously calls “cruel and unusual punishment” against an American citizen off-limits, but torture, by nature of being used to extract information, must be cruel and unusual.
I think that a line being drawn anywhere other than the beginning represents a compromise, and it is nothing more that a slippery slope from there. To say that “torture form a” is acceptable, but “torture form b” is out of bounds is similar to the argument that stealing is ok, so long as your steal less than a certain net worth of items (say, for the sake of argument, steal less than $50 worth of stuff).
The other argument would be that because it affords us vital information about locations of enemy forces and their plans, it is a necessary evil in war. This is the argument that I was alluding to in my former post. To follow along with the stealing analogy, this would be like saying that you were justified in stealing food because you were hungry and left your wallet at home.
The long and the short of it is that war is a nasty business, and there is no rationality to it. Woodrow Wilson thought that we had fought the war to end all wars after World War I, but human societies seem to find it necessary to send young men in the prime of their lives out to fight and kill other young men in their primes to prove the supremacy of their ideals. It’s a nasty business that I think no Christian should ever take the burden of starting, though Georgie seems to disagree.
So, how much sleep deprivation becomes torture? How long can someone stay in solitary confinement before it is torture? How about cycles of light and dark? How bright can lights be in a room? How much food with what nutritional components? What methods of mental/emotional pressure can be used? How cold can rooms be and how hot? How often and quickly can these things be changed? How much labor can be required before it is a form of torture? At what point is blasting or simply playing music 24 hours a day torture? What is allowable in the content of sound pumped into a prisoner’s quarters?
I could go on and on with questions about things that are not clear about where the line is for torture. There are things that normal people do everyday that could become torture if extended for long periods of time. Sure beating is torture and wrong. That is easy. But there are so many other ways to manipulate a person and break them down without ever touching them or putting their physical life at risk.