Re: [asa] Torture

Let me clarify. In my series of e-mails, I stated twice my mention of Deu 25 as a peripheral point. I am discussing it as a scientifically discrete unit of analysis with applications from different possible situations. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
 
In real life, we may face many uncertainties and complications which cause us to practise differently from our philosophizing on a simple, imagined scenario. That does not discount God’s principles that we infer from His Word though. What I’m trying to emphasize is that we ought to consider first these principles and them being in different levels of importance before other realistic factors of the issue.
 
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There are several very significant problems with your ex ante vs ex post analysis:

-- before the bombing, you don't know the offender is in fact an "offender" because the accused has not yet been convicted of any offense after due process of law. In a constitutional democracy, we presume innocence until guilt is proven.

-- terrorist activities tend to be highly decentralized. It is unlikely that any one person will possess all the information required to stop the attack. Therefore, multiple suspects will have to be tortured. This highly increases the likelihood that at least some innocent people will be detained and tortured.

-- information extracted under torture is notoriously unreliable. People will say anything to stop the torture. It is very unlikely that torture of a suspect will, in fact, lead to reliable facts about the impending attack.

In short, the ex ante vs. ex post argument gives broad powers to the police / military authorities to detain and torture large numbers of people, many of whom will be innocent of any crime, without due process of law. I don't think either Christian or democratic principles should tolerate this kind of thing.

On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 10:31 PM, huiyiing@juno.com <huiyiing@juno.com> wrote:
Regarding the peripheral point I made on Deuteronomy 25:1-3, should we punish the offender after the whole city and its inhabitants are destroyed, or should we threaten/force the information out of him to prevent the bombing? There's a higher reason to execute one above the other.
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Received on Sat Aug 9 09:16:03 2008