Monday, April 18, 2011

London Times- Christians Should Not Be Against Suicide or Assisted Suicide

So says an Op Ed in the London Times Ed by Minette Marrin:

For many old people — long before they become mortally ill — that prolonged dwindling is a worsening nightmare: a time of maltreatment in geriatric wards, lying on their bedsores in urine and excrement, of dependence on indifferent foreign minders in expensive care homes, a period of painful confusion, feeling ignored, unwanted and lonely. In a less rich society, such things will become more common.

Given all this, the taboo against suicide or assisted suicide seems incomprehensible. Religious people may think it wrong, although I have never quite understood why. It seems odd to me that they are not eager to meet their maker as soon as possible, if heaven is so devoutly to be desired. Perhaps it is different if one’s religion teaches that one might after death come back as a toad.

But, believers apart, for everyone else there is no philosophical reason against suicide that I can see. The usual slippery slope argument is purely emotional: we are all already on the slippery slope as far as any moral decisions go and constantly have to choose between two evils.....

So we can now add this to a list of things such as sexuality , marriage , the Nicene Creed that the Church must change it's position on. The rest is behind a paywall sadly but perhaps we are not missing much. As one commenter says at TITUSONENINE :


Perhaps it shouldn’t surpise me, but it always does that commentators are happy to weigh in on things they are too lazy to study to find out why the position they oppose is supported by others. And that goes for lazy editors, too. Why publish something that proclaims its ignorance? Of course, in our society, there is no stigma attached to being ignorantly critical of Christianity.



Also is that not sort of a breathtaking statement that besides for believers there is NO philosophical reason against suicide . None?

No comments: