The immorality of torture

There have been a lot of articles in the news recently about the Bush administration's policies involving torture. The administration allowed torture in several cases. This consisted of sleep deprivement, waterboarding, mild beatings, all the perverse sexual abuse at Abu Ghraib (I admit the last one has officially been said to have been not known about by high leadership) and other things. I've argued to friends for some time that the fact that we are threatened does not justify us using whatever means necessary to protect ourselves. We should still have rights, order, and morality. I want to prove this using the scriptures.

Moroni 9 is a hard chapter to read in the Book of Mormon because it tells the horrible crimes of the Nephites and Lamanites. In verse 8 we learn that the Lamanites are killing the husbands and fathers of prisoners and feeding them to their wives and children. They are also depriving the prisoners of water. Then in verse 9 and 10 we learn that the Nephites are even worse. They raped their prisoners, tortured them to death, and ate their flesh. These acts are strongly condemned by Mormon.

The Book of Mormon was written for our day. I think these verses are telling us that morallity still must be maintained in war. Both sides are condemned for atrocities. Also, in the Book of Mormon a common theme is that if we are righteous God will fight our battles. In fact this is taught in detail in the Bible as well in Leviticus 26. In verses 3,6-8 it tells us that if we are righteous the Lord will fight our battles and give us peace. This implies to me that we need not lower our standards and torture and rape and deprive people of rights. Whatever information we are lacking from not torturing will be made up for in God's protection.

To fight evil we cannot become evil.

The Name of the Forgery

I was looking online today to get an update on the City Creek Center progress. While doing so I came across a web page about the project done by the Salamander Society. It was no big surprise that the page simply insulted the church a lot and made sacrilegious comments.

I found it interesting that this apparent anti-mormon group calls itself "the Salamander Society" This is clearly a reference to the Salamander letter from the 1980s. At the time it was a huge controversy - a document that seemed to put much of the LDS church's origins in doubt. Then Mark Hoffman, the letter's forger, murdered several people with bombs and accidentally hurt himself with one. Pretty soon it was discovered that he had done a ton of forgeries of early LDS documents in an effort to harm the LDS church and appear to prove it false. One of these documents was the salamander letter.

So I found it funny that an anti mormon group would use the name of this forgery to name itself. It is basically saying "we are a lie, we are trying to prove the church wrong by lying about it". The anti mormon group's name implies that what they are teaching is false. How ironic. How well suited.

Somali Pirates

I was just reading an article on pirates. I was thinking about the similarity between pirates and Gaddianton robbers. I particularly noted that in the article it says most people won't stand up to the pirates which is leading to this problem. This sounds similar to the problems with the Gaddianton robbers in the Book of Mormon. Eventually the Nephites combined for protection and overcame the robbers.
I'm going to leave this post a little unresolved (it feels unfinished). I see a parallel between pirates and robbers.