More on Torture and 24

Badger Blues responds to my earlier response to his post on the morality of torture in 24. I want to clarify that I don't necessarily take the "ticking bomb" scenario of this season of the show as realistic. I was just taking it as is and trying to make a point about moral absolutism, which I am uncomfortable with.

I don't have an answer to my own questions, either. Ben presents another example from Hollywood, from the movie Kingdom of Heaven. It reminds of the real-life example of Dietrich Bonhöffer. He was German and Christian pastor during the Third Reich who opposed Hitler, and took part in the conspiracy to kill the dictator. As a Christian pastor, he certainly believed in the immorality of murder. Yet he also saw the evil Hitler and his regime carried out around him. Was he wrong to want to kill Hitler, or was Hitler's evil so great as to justify what would otherwise be immoral?

I don't have an answer, and I don't think there is an unambiguous one. But that's the problem with absolutism of any persuasion: it simplifies complex situations into seemingly simple ones, ignoring all the subtleties that are actually there. That's one of the myriad reasons I dislike the Christian Right, who want to reduce everything to a choice between an absolute, inflexible right and true choice (which is whatever they say it is), and everything else.