That is an unattractive stark title about a two edged sword cutting across most camps.
Jason Byassee in 22 September issue of Christian Century reviews Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart’s Atheist’ Delusions. One of Hart’s arguments is summarized as “paganism, whether ancient or modern, has no grounds for such tongue clucking [about the failures of religious people] because it has no morality to betray.”
And so it seems. Part of the contemporary ethos is a belief that everything is relative, that right and wrong are just social constructs. Then along comes something like the sex abuse of children and that gets universal condemnation. But then there is this case: we are part of a 1000 person village, people of all ages rounded up by an evil dictator and forced into a huge pen with armed guards pointing guns at us. The ultimatum is that we sexually abuse three of the children and then we are all free, otherwise we all die. What do you think the vote would be?
Right now only 25% of the American public says that torture is always wrong. Americans used to be the good guys and we blanched when we went to the movies and our heros, men or women, fell into the hands of police who said, “vee haff vays uf maykingk you shpeek.”
In one Catholic blog, ostensibly pro-life, the blogger said he could not at that point comment on whether torture was always immoral. He said he had not read enough about the Catholic position. I recommended he look into the Universal Catholic Catechism from which he took his other positions. It is very hard to maintain a consistent sense of absolutes when it is our lives that are at stake.

Tags: absolutes, David Bentley Hart, Jason Byasse, torture