My thanks to all the thoughtful commenters to my last post on torture.  I thought you might like to read the position paper on torture of the National Leaders Council of the American Ethical Union.  The first paragraph reads:

The use of torture is the most extreme violation of the principles to which Ethical Culture is dedicated. Among these principles, respect and reverence for the dignity of the human being is foremost. With the emergence of torture as a component of American policy in the “War on Terror,” Ethical Culture calls for the absolute and total ban on the use of torture, whether by the military, law enforcement, intelligence services or private actors.

The rest of the paper lays out some moving and probably controversial arguments for regarding torture as the greatest ethical “sin,” worse even than murder, as well as the recent facts of torture in America as far as they’re known,…

This Sunday at the Ethical Society I’ll be talking about the Ethics of Torture. I’ve seen those “Torture is Wrong” and “Torture Is a Moral Issue” banners on all sorts of congregations, and it does seem like a no-brainer for most religions that follow some version of the Golden Rule.

nrcat.org banners

Humanism affirms the worth of the individual and promotes international human rights, and the version of the golden rule we use in Ethical Humanism is “Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in oneself.” Torture arguably brings out the worst in the torturer, and it seeks to deny the humanity of the victim. Our national lay and clergy organizations recently passed a statement that torture is unethical in any and all situations.

But I’ve also heard people argue that torture can be justified if it’s used in “ticking bomb” scenarios to save lives, and I wonder if…