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Yep, retired you are not going to persuade someone who apparently won't even admit that torture is a thing that exists. Won't even use the word.

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I know. I'm just going to have to move on, as it is clear that some minds will not be changed.

What I find odd is I'm often derided for taking a literal reading of Christ's commands to turn the other cheek, not resist an evil person, take up the sword and die by the sword, treat others as you want others to treat you, and love your enemies, but I'm supposed to believe that the temple incident and a verse in Revelation about angels warring are supposed to justify torturing human beings.

Retired,

I get the apple and oranges. Can Police kill a school shooter to save lives?

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Retired,

I get the apple and oranges. Can Police kill a school shooter to save lives?

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What's this have to do with Christianity and torture? I think most know where I stand on this question, but this thread isn't about responding to an active shooter. Not to mention, that discussion has been had on multiple occasions on this board.

And that is where we disagree. You do not believe there is ever a case to protect the innocent, or self defense by killing another person. Information gathering/ Torture is the next step, how far are you willing to go to save lives?

I do agree with you the Advanced Interrogation/ Torture Techniques are a slipperly slope. I watched the movie " The Untouchables" with Sean Connery and in this fictious movie, they gather the necessary intelligence by scaring this man, by shooting a dead body. The man fearing for his life- spilled the beans.

Was this torture? Again- I am not an expert on the CIA, USA, UN guidelines.

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And that is where we disagree. You do not believe there is ever a case to protect the innocent, for self defense.

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This is just wrong, and a misrepresentation of my position that is getting tired. Of course we should protect the innocent. I don't believe violence should be used to do so. Nonviolence does not equal inaction.

Btw, at in-laws and about to start family event. You all have a great weekend.

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This is just wrong, and a misrepresentation of my position that is getting tired. Of course we should protect the innocent. I don't believe violence should be used to do so. Nonviolence does not equal inaction.

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Retired,

1) I think the problem with that is in certain instances it leads to ineffective action. Hitler is still in control and the school shooter is still shooting.

2) However, being Catholic we have the luxury of learning about the lives of the saints, who through their examples point us to Jesus. The vast majority do exactly what you are saying- they are nonviolent, die as a martyers. There are a few exceptions to the rule example- Joan of Arc.

3) Enjoy the time with family- Merry Christmas.

I am trying to understand the thought process of people like fahraint. It seems to be "I think torture enhanced interrogation is probably ok under certain circumstances. Did Christ specifically say torture is a no-no? No? Well then I will invoke the angry, wrathful, violent God of the Old Testament and then there is no violence that cannot be somehow justified."

And yet the same process does not apply to, say, abortion. Or possibly capital punishment. Then this cost-benefit analysis approach to violence and torture somehow no longer applies.

Somehow I have a hard time believing Jesus would use the metric of a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether it's ok to force hummus up someone's ass.

nm

I'd venture to suggest that most people that claim to be Christian often fail to follow the most basic of ideals that define the faith. I often find myself wondering if these people claim to be Christian when asked for the same reason people claim to have voted in previous elections - because it's what they think others want to hear.

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Yep, retired you are not going to persuade someone who apparently won't even admit that torture is a thing that exists. Won't even use the word.

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I know. I'm just going to have to move on, as it is clear that some minds will not be changed.

What I find odd is I'm often derided for taking a literal reading of Christ's commands to turn the other cheek, not resist an evil person, take up the sword and die by the sword, treat others as you want others to treat you, and love your enemies, but I'm supposed to believe that the temple incident and a verse in Revelation about angels warring are supposed to justify torturing human beings.

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Go ahead and shake the dust off your shoes at us. Your verses rely on a rigid interpretation of enemies and evil; essentially a presumption of malice on our part, rather than a love of life and motivation to save them.

You're supposed to acknolwedge that Jesus also spoke in parables, the extensions of which you are afraid to explore as it might contradict the beliefs you hold so infallible. If you had to choose between loving 1 neighbor if it meant 5 died or loving 5 with one being tortured but alive, you consider it a fair trade for the 5 to die (at least as it relates to the situations in which I would support such methods). Are you done whining about being persecuted?

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Go ahead and shake the dust off your shoes at us. Your verses rely on a rigid interpretation of enemies and evil; essentially a presumption of malice on our part, rather than a love of life and motivation to save them.

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He's making the point that we don't get to dehumanize the bad guy, even if lives hang in the balance. He's not ignoring the desire to save lives, or the importance of it.

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You're supposed to acknowledge that Jesus also spoke in parables, the extensions of which you are afraid to explore as it might contradict the beliefs you hold so infallible. If you had to choose between loving 1 neighbor if it meant 5 died or loving 5 with one being tortured but alive, you consider it a fair trade for the 5 to die (at least as it relates to the situations in which I would support such methods). Are you done whining about being persecuted?

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Again, loving someone doesn't mean you do nothing. Loving one neighbor does not mean 5 die. As proven in the linked documents in previous pages, torturing one person doesn't mean 5 live either.

religious republicanism is a sad thing. It's like people are so unable to entertain the idea that they are wrong they never even self examine their own arguments.

Let's take a look at what has been basically offered as a defense of torture. It goes something like this.

1. Torture provides information that saves lives
2. As many or more lives are saved than men tortured
3. base on a utilitarian moral worldview we can state that the ends justify the means. The "total good" of this particular evil act outweighs the bad.

Since we are good at pretending we will pretend that a poster didn't already provide a link demonstrating that point is almost certainly false. And since literally no one from the let's torture the *******s camp has addressed this it should be trivially easy. So we accept this as true for no damn reason.

Even then, I ask why an adult human being would accept this reasoning.

Let's reframe it in a way that virtually guarantees the maximum number of lives saved. Let's instead of torturing our captives for information, simply use them as guinea pigs for medical experiments.

1. Direct medical experiments provide information that save lives and does so much more effectively and cheaply than rigorous experiments on animals prior to human testing.
2. Virulent, bacterial, genetic and cancerous diseases cause dramatically more death and suffering that loony muslims.
3. base on a utilitarian moral worldview we can state that the ends justify the means. The "total good" of this particular evil act outweighs the bad.

Do you guys also support experimentation on prisoners?

Hey, experimentation was good enough for the CIA...

http://m.thenation.com/article/193185-cia-didnt-just-torture-it-experimented-human-beings

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This is just wrong, and a misrepresentation of my position that is getting tired. Of course we should protect the innocent. I don't believe violence should be used to do so. Nonviolence does not equal inaction.

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To be fair, retired, you continually give this protest but you never actually say what it is you would do.

I like the fact you don't believe in torture, but this thread should prove that "Christ's teachings" are a fairly weak way to argue your point.

Although I'm not sure there is an effective way to argue anything w people who ignore facts. Aggrad pretty much nailed it in his last post

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This is just wrong, and a misrepresentation of my position that is getting tired. Of course we should protect the innocent. I don't believe violence should be used to do so. Nonviolence does not equal inaction.

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To be fair, retired, you continually give this protest but you never actually say what it is you would do.

I like the fact you don't believe in torture, but this threammHg d should prove that "Christ's teachings" are a fairly weak way to argue your point.

Although I'm not sure there is an effective way to argue anything w people who ignore facts. Aggrad pretty much nailed it in his last post

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7thGen,
I understand, however I typically don't respond if the subject of the thread is not re: nonviolence or posed, as is often the case, in an absurd hypothetical. But, I do believe I've answered the question before. I've been consistent in that I would hope that I'd offer myself up to take the blows in place of the victim. Now,the hitler example annoys me because it is used to point to the weaknesses of nonviolence, but I see it as a failure of the cycle of violence. A problem is created by the ever-continuing cycle of violence, then that problem is used as an argument against nonviolence. The hitler example also ignores the point that in a nation where the majority would claim to be Christians, had those people engaged in nonviolence, then hitler isnt able to do what he did.

Now, you may very well disagree with my views on that, but I'm just explaining why I typically stay away from the Hitler argument. Of course, I didn't answer here because it is not relevant to the discussion. I really just had no desire to see the subject get derailed, and nonviolence has been discussed ad nauseum on this board, so we'd just end up with a bunch of hypotheticals that are distracting us from the subject at hand.

if we were all Mennonites, all would be well, not that there is anything wrong with that /pc

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I've been consistent in that I would hope that I'd offer myself up to take the blows in place of the victim

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To most, this is basically the same as saying you'd do nothing. Very naive as well.

WaPo/ABC News poll results. Are these new? According to these data, it's not an evangelical thing since the non-evangelicals have a higher percentage of "justified" than the evangelicals do. A little surprising.

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religious republicanism is a sad thing. It's like people are so unable to entertain the idea that they are wrong they never even self examine their own arguments.

Let's take a look at what has been basically offered as a defense of torture. It goes something like this.

1. Torture provides information that saves lives
2. As many or more lives are saved than men tortured
3. base on a utilitarian moral worldview we can state that the ends justify the means. The "total good" of this particular evil act outweighs the bad.

Since we are good at pretending we will pretend that a poster didn't already provide a link demonstrating that point is almost certainly false. And since literally no one from the let's torture the *******s camp has addressed this it should be trivially easy. So we accept this as true for no damn reason.

Even then, I ask why an adult human being would accept this reasoning.

Let's reframe it in a way that virtually guarantees the maximum number of lives saved. Let's instead of torturing our captives for information, simply use them as guinea pigs for medical experiments.

1. Direct medical experiments provide information that save lives and does so much more effectively and cheaply than rigorous experiments on animals prior to human testing.
2. Virulent, bacterial, genetic and cancerous diseases cause dramatically more death and suffering that loony muslims.
3. base on a utilitarian moral worldview we can state that the ends justify the means. The "total good" of this particular evil act outweighs the bad.

Do you guys also support experimentation on prisoners?

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Except that this isn't true. As far as I can tell no one has defended torture other than in an imminent threat / nuclear situation (me specifically) yet you and others keep decrying haphazard prisoner abuse combined with information extraction somewhere along the way.

The reality is that the articles posted aren't gospel. The vanity fair one says you may get good with bad (even though hitchens said he would spill the beans in an instant!). The one from the Atlantic doesn't really discuss the urgency of time.

The self righteousness with which these are paraded around is silly. No one is defending random acts of torture or wartime abuses. Perhaps an adult would stop knocking down straw men.

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I've been consistent in that I would hope that I'd offer myself up to take the blows in place of the victim

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To most, this is basically the same as saying you'd do nothing. Very naive as well.

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Precisely. There is a scale and scope beyond which an individual no longer presents a reasonable barrier (international genocide, terrorist attacks). However we do pay taxes to an organization with substantial resources with which those lives can be saved (lives that may not be American or Christian, mind you). At that point in time you are a non-actor and policy becomes more important for governance. The focus is too local in his arguments.

It no longer comes down to 'there are other ways' when a deadline is introduced. You make every effort possible or you accept death.

"He will reply, 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

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He's making the point that we don't get to dehumanize the bad guy, even if lives hang in the balance. He's not ignoring the desire to save lives, or the importance of it.

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Again, that's attributing thoughts and motives to others. The idea of dehumanization may never factor into the thought process. One does not need to buy into that to support torture if one values human life. Death is not the default output of torture. He obviously does put a value on human life if he is not willing to save it with non lethal means (ie water boarding, discomfort, sleep deprivation).

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Again, loving someone doesn't mean you do nothing. Loving one neighbor does not mean 5 die. As proven in the linked documents in previous pages, torturing one person doesn't mean 5 live either.

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Nothing was proven in those articles other than a poster's confirmation bias.

These "urgent" hypotheticals read too much like an episode of 24.

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These "urgent" hypotheticals read too much like an episode of 24.

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In the future I'll post some vague weasely response that sort of addresses a point but not really like yours. Will that make you happy?

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These "urgent" hypotheticals read too much like an episode of 24.

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In the future I'll post some vague weasely response that sort of addresses a point but not really like yours. Will that make you happy?

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Name a situation in which the Jesus of the Bible would have tortured someone for information. You are making a case for the necessity of torture, not whether or not it is sinful.

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In the future I'll post some vague weasely response that sort of addresses a point but not really like yours. Will that make you happy?

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Knock yourself out. I can take it.

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WaPo/ABC News poll results. Are these new? According to these data, it's not an evangelical thing since the non-evangelicals have a higher percentage of "justified" than the evangelicals do. A little surprising.

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It does seem a little surprising. I would have anticipated the non-evangelical demographic to be much more diverse in terms of culture, politics, economics, etc.

The easy conclusion from the chart would be that religious people support torture more than non-religious people. That may be true, but I don't think that is the factor that justifies the disparity.

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These "urgent" hypotheticals read too much like an episode of 24.

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In the future I'll post some vague weasely response that sort of addresses a point but not really like yours. Will that make you happy?

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Name a situation in which the Jesus of the Bible would have tortured someone for information. You are making a case for the necessity of torture, not whether or not it is sinful.

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Exactly. This seems to be the result of an inability to actually reconcile the practice with anything Christ ever said on how we are to treat others.

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Except that this isn't true. As far as I can tell no one has defended torture other than in an imminent threat / nuclear situation (me specifically)

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That's not true go back and read. Further, your imminent threat situation is unrealistic, you don't know what they know. And it's still a basic ends justify the means argument.

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yet you and others keep decrying haphazard prisoner abuse combined with information extraction somewhere along the way.

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Again, you seem to miss the post supporting the current republican position of using torture as we have been using it. If that's not your position then make that clear.

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The reality is that the articles posted aren't gospel. The vanity fair one says you may get good with bad (even though hitchens said he would spill the beans in an instant!). The one from the Atlantic doesn't really discuss the urgency of time.

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How does urgency help when it's prone to giving bad information? When do you actually know it's an urgent matter? When do you know much of anything about what is in another man's head?

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The self righteousness with which these are paraded around is silly. No one is defending random acts of torture or wartime abuses. Perhaps an adult would stop knocking down straw men.

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No one mentioned a random act of torture, least of all myself. I specifically addressed the argument of using torture to gather information. The irony here is rich as I attacked the very arguments used in this thread. You yourself reiterated the argument which I presented which is an "ends justify the means" utilitarian argument. I showed the childishness in this reasoning, and you haven't actually addressed my post at all.

So dispense with the nonsense and actually defend the argument. Your "nuclear scenario" is something straight out of a made for TV movie and has little bearing on reality and no bearing on what our government has actually done thus far.

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Your "nuclear scenario" is something straight out of a made for TV movie and has little bearing on reality and no bearing on what our government has actually done thus far.

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Thus my quip about a "24" episode.

Aggrad is spot on. The debate is not about random acts of torture, it's about whether the "ends justifies the means" argument (1) has any merit in the first place, and (2) whether and how that argument is in accordance or conflict with Christian teaching.

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Aggrad is spot on. The debate is not about random acts of torture, it's about whether the "ends justifies the means" argument (1) has any merit in the first place, and (2) whether and how that argument is in accordance or conflict with Christian teaching.

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It doesn't matter. The sorts of persons he's attempting to reason with will not reason. Their eyes and minds are shut and nothing will open them. These people should be avoided whenever possible and never spoken to unless forced to in a work environment. Never trust them either. The same types stab in the back and rat.

Wrestling with a Mysteriously Popular Desperate Lie from Catholic Torture Defenders

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The cheering for mortal sin by "prolife" "faithful" Catholics is an ugly stain on the Church's witness. That it still continues at this late date, after the release of the Senate Report, is even more appalling. There's no sense left in it, other than the insane "sense" of needing to go on justifying evil lest one have to admit one was obviously wrong. It's People of the Lie stuff at this stage. That's why the focus is now on a) appealing to naked liars like Dick "The Ends Justify the Means" Cheney as "proof" that "it worked"; b) refusal to acknowledge that the ends do not justify the means whether it worked or not; c) refusal to acknowledge that the Report documents that it did not, in fact, work and did, in fact, harm intel-gathering; d)endless quibbling about waterboarding as though all the other horrors in the Senate Report never happened; e) genetic fallacy lies which try to argue that the Democratic authorship of the report somehow make the copiously documented fact in the report go away; and f) (with Catholic Torture Defenders) absurd hair-splitting appeals to the now-disowned-by-the-author claim that the use of torture in interrogation might be legitimate.

It is long past time for Catholics to demonstrate some courage and stop trying to defend this miserable stain on the US and the American Catholic Church's members who have fought so hard to defend it. When "prolife" people are going to the mat to defend anal rape, freezing an innocent man to death, forcing people to stand on broken feet in stress positions, standing on a man's broken leg, and threatening to murder children and cut the throats of innocent women, the "prolife" movement can well and truly be termed a thing so perverted that its witness is dead till it renounces such prostitution for the sake of worldly power.

May our tortured Lord forgive us our cowardice and may the Holy Innocents pray for us that we be consistent in our prolife witness and abandon this horrendous failure to be fully prolife.

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