Thursday, April 17, 2008

Torture

There is an interesting discussion on torture here. Maybe I ought to lay out my argument against torture.

5 comments:

Rodak said...

It seems to me that the argument against torture is cut and dried: a) it is evil to subvert the will of another human being; and b) it is not permissable to do evil so that good may result. This eliminates torture from the realm of moral acts. Period.

Anonymous said...

Hey Rodak,

Yeah, you *think* it would be that cut and dried. People just want to justify it, I guess.

Maureen

Rodak said...

Maureen--
Which is why we don't look to people for a moral standard.

Anonymous said...

Then who do you look to for a moral standard?

Maureen

Rodak said...

Maureen--
I realized sometime after I posted that comment that I should have put "people" in scare quotes.
Obviously, we look to whatever moral authorities we accept as such, unless a moral point is expressly state in divine revelation. Those moral authorities are, of course, people; but they aren't usually "just plain folks."