Religion
Related: About this forumChristians More Supportive of Torture than Non-Religious Americans
http://religiondispatches.org/christians-more-supportive-of-torture-than-non-religious-americans/BY SARAH POSNER DECEMBER 16, 2014
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that Americans, by a 59-31% margin, believe that CIA treatment of suspected terrorists in detention was justified.
A plurality deemed that treatment to be torture, by a 49-38% margin.
Remarkably, the gap between torture supporters and opponents widens between voters who are Christian and those who are not religious. Just 39% of white evangelicals believe the CIAs treatment of detainees amounted to torture, with 53% of white non-evangelical Protestants and 45% of white Catholics agreeing with that statement. Among the non-religious, though, 72% said the treatment amounted to torture. (The poll did not break down non-Christian religions in the results.)
Sixty nine percent of white evangelicals believe the CIA treatment was justified, compared to just 20% who said it was not. (Those numbers, incidentally, roughly mirror the breakdown of Republican versus Democratic voters among white evangelicals.) A full three-quarters (75%) of white non-evangelical Protestants outnumber the 22% of their brethren in saying CIA treatment was justified. White Catholics believe the treatment was justified by a 66-23% margin.
more at link
safeinOhio
(32,531 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)Assyrians skinning or flaying their prisoners alive
safeinOhio
(32,531 posts)the iron horse, trial by water and burning at the steak.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)I keep a water bottle by my BBQ just in case.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)Sometimes that warfare was religious and at other times it was not.
Johnny Rash
(227 posts)?itok=freJYPpN
I am not 100% sure about this, but a definition of a "Civilized Nation" is based on how a Nation justifies itself for using "Tortures".
The Medieval Churches always claimed to be more civilized than others: They were simply doing "God's Works"!
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Must be some other madness, right?
Promethean
(468 posts)Even among the non-religious only 53% said the torture wasn't justified. Correlation isn't necessarily causation. In this case the numbers more closely match up to the religious make up of the political spectrum (which cbayer mentions downthread). It is more likely the causation is that the kind of people who are likely to be religious are also likely to be willing to overlook torture.
Incidentally Bob Altemeyer nailed this one in his book "The Authoritarians." In one chapter he talks about how easy it is to justify atrocity to authoritarian followers and even convince them to participate.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)So sad that so many Christians think it is ok.
I was also surprised at the level of support for it by the non-religious as well.
safeinOhio
(32,531 posts)Like the Romans 2,000 years ago?
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)It may have to do more with politics than religion, as she speculates.
There is not enough breakdown of the data to say that definitively, but similar kinds of findings have been found to be closely related to political ideology.
hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)cbayer
(146,218 posts)72% percent said that the treatment was torture, but only 53% said it was not justified.
This may well reflect individual concerns about national security.
I thought we had moved further than this, but I think I was wrong.