Which is more evil, torture or mass killing?
Mass killing is a more grave sin, certainly. But torture is also pretty seriously wicked and anyway moral reasoning doesn’t work that way. You’re not supposed to justify doing something evil on the grounds that it will prevent a greater evil in some hypothetical circumstances which are unlikely to ever happen in the way they are presented.
What I’m saying is that your point about torture is as invalid as the people who say, well I’m against abortion except in cases X, Y, and Z when I think it’s justified. I’m saying it’s a serious enough moral transgression that it’s in the same class of evil as abortion. But evidently you disagree, which is fine. I’m not going to come at you with a flamethrower over it.
Doesn’t matter, unless one is a relativist.
Of course it matters because we are not relativists!Doesn’t matter, unless one is a relativist.
OK, that’s really all I have to say on the subject.
No, it is not clear.
Hang on to your relativism that JPII warned us about.
Look in the mirror.
No, there’s a distinction made between what you can do on the battlefield which is legitimate defense and what you can do to a captive prisoner. If you believe waterboarding is torture (which to me it pretty clearly is, since it terrifies and inflicts pain on the victim), then it is not permissible to do it to a captive prisoner to extract information or mete out punishment. Torturing a captive prisoner is not considered legitimate defense because he is disarmed and therefore poses no threat to you. On the battlefield he does pose a threat to you (and you to him).
I’ll offer the same challenge to you and Jharek as I offered to newbie. I think it applies, but please correct me if I’m wrong:
I can’t tell if you are really misunderstanding this passage, or if this is a disingenous argument. Either way, its clear that for this passage to apply the person that is commiting the aggression must be the same person that force is being used against. You are suggesting that it is OK to use torture or deadly force against A to keep B from committing an act of aggression. If that were true, it would also be justified to kidnap a terrorist’s children and torture them until the terrorist turns himself in. That is clearly not what the Church teaches.
Obviously I don’t see it that way. I see moral relativism as the rejection of moral absolutes – the idea that certain actions are always and everywhere immoral regardless of the circumstances. Take rape for example. It’s always wrong to rape someone, regardless of the circumstances. I think torture is in the same category of evildoing (in fact rape has often been used as a form of torture during wartime). Is it worse than mass killing as you asked above? No. But it’s still a pretty bad thing to do, so bad that no hypothetical scenario that requires raping someone in order to save someone else will make the act sit well with me.
No, relativism does not have any objective truth. In your position, torture is OK. The Church says torture is an objective evil and not OK.
Sorry that you don’t get it.The taking of innnocent life is objectively worse than waterboarding.No, relativism does not have any objective truth. In your position, torture is OK. The Church says torture is an objective evil and not OK.
You say it’s OK under certain circumstances i.e. that it’s better that one be tortured than many be harmed. In other words, relative to one person being harmed more people being harmed is worse, so given the choice it’s OK to harm that one person.
That’s relativism.