>Many would disagree. If proven effective, you could easily argue it is moral to torture an evil-doer to save the lives of many. Neither of these things are an

>Many would disagree. If proven effective, you could easily argue it is moral to torture an evil-doer to save the lives of many. Neither of these things are an actual argument. Just because some people disagree it does not make a fact untrue. Just because you can argue something does not make that arguement correct. The argument that many good lives would be saved is defeated by the fact that a society that tortures people is making a mockery of human dignity and the values that can underpin human happiness. When one person can be tortured for extreme need, soon anyone can be tortured for any reason. There are countless examples of this kind of slippage, from the terrors in France and Russia to the use of extreme surveillance by local authorities in the UK (to determine if school places should be allocated). How can anyone be happy when they might be taken and tortured at any moment? How can the preservation of people in terror be a goal to be accomplished by an intrinsically evil act. We are defined by how we dispense mercy and compassion, that is what makes society worth preserving.