Torture - What Would Jesus Do?

Professor, What Gives?

A recently released (April, 2009) Pew Research Center poll found that the more people go to church the more likely they are to approve of torture.

Didn't they get enough of that in Mel Gibson's movie where there was scene after bloody scene of Jesus being tortured by Romans?

Am I wrong or aren't Christianly and torture supposed to be totally incompatible concepts?

By the way, the research shows that approval of torture among atheists, agnostics and "unaffiliated" is much lower than among evangelical Christians.

This is a good topic for debate, and promoting intelligent debate is what this section is largely about.

But to answer your question, the results are not surprising. Conservative Christians -- primarily evangelicals -- voted overwhelmingly for Bush, and torture (by whatever name) was supported by that administration.

Although the findings of the Pew Research Center study are consistent with other studies, they were attacked by conservative publications such as The American Spectator Online, which said that Pew Research is a liberal group that used questionable sampling techniques.

One of the arguments put forward to support torture has been "if it gets results it's okay." But the results argument, although debatable in itself, has not been used to oppose things like stem-cell research.

To Forum Index

To Home Page