For the last couple weeks, I have been reading the book “End of Faith” by Sam Harris. Besides artfully derobing religious faith that we might gawk at its naked and unflattering truth, he provides a compelling argument about torture. It unfolds as follows.

If we are willing to accept “collateral damage,” which is a euphemism for the unintentional murder or maiming of non-targets in military operations as an inevitable consequence of modern warfare, then we should similarly be willing to accept torture. We accept collateral damage because we believe that the suffering or death of one is acceptable if it saves many from harm, and this is exactly the line of justification that could apply by extension to torture. In fact, Harris goes on to say that torture should actually be more acceptable for the following reasons:

• In a torture situation, the subject is guaranteed to be an enemy, but in collateral damage, the victim may well be an innocent, such as a child or non-combatant.
• Even if they are only suspected to be an enemy, torturees can at least be subjected to ’selection criteria’ that increase the likelihood that they are a desired target, while collateral damage is by nature indiscriminate.
• Torture can be controlled in such a way as to minimize or eliminate permanent bodily harm, whereas collateral damage will always be, well, damage.
• From a callously utilitarian standpoint, there is potentially something to be gained from torture. Collateral damage is, frankly, wasteful killing.

If this is true, why do we have such a visceral aversion to torture, but not to accidentally killing innocents? The reason is probably because the latter is something of a hypothetical. Our minds are in part removed from the end result, while torture is all too easily envisioned. It’s really the same reason we know intuitively that it takes a different kind of person to drop a bomb from 40,000 feet than it does to beat someone to death with a shovel, although the results are similar. It seems our minds have developed a knee-jerk negative reaction to killing, but the further we remove ourselves from the stimulus that induces the shock reflex, the easier it becomes to make the decision to kill. So, even though torture and collateral damage could both be seen as “inflicting harm on someone who may not deserve it, in order that we may further the cause of protecting the multitudes,” only one of them seems atrocious.

Whether you agree or not, the moral equivalence is worth noting.