Pajamas Media

98 Comments

1. Sissy G:

My religion forbids me to consider suicide so I never have. I was appalled at Terri Schiavo’s husband forcing his will onto his incapacitated wife by starving and dehydrating her to death especially since her parents wished to care for her till her natural death. It was clearly NOT Terri’s choice and I wish her husband slow painful death and the eternal flames of hades.

That said if a mentally competent ADULT chooses to commit suicide in such a fashion as this…let them do it. We have no clue as to what it is to be elderly and frail, disabled and totally dependent, having a terminal disease with death looming around the corner, suffering from constant pain, fear of living without the one we’ve lain with for over 50 years…so I can not and will not pass judgment. Judgment in these cases belongs to my God and my God alone.

Jul 25, 2009 - 4:08 am 2. "progressive"watch:

Abortion is and assisted suicide will be big items in Obamacare government-controled living and dying.

Jul 25, 2009 - 5:33 am 3. Mats:

Earlier this month, British conductor Sir Edward Downes, 85, traveled to Dignitas — the Zurich-based suicide clinic — with his wife Joan, 74, who had terminal cancer. Sir Edward was frail, with failing eyesight and hearing, but not terminally ill. After fifty-four years of marriage, the couple drank a fatal draft of poison and “fell asleep” for the last time, holding hands across the bed.

But then they were awake again, standing up and looking to their own dead bodies. Something was wrong. This wasn’t suposed to be happening. There is no life after death, right? NO hell, no heaven and no judgment. Then why do they feel that something is terribly wrong? Suddenly they realized that mistake they had made, but it was too late. Their souls were thrown in hell for rejecting the second greatest gift God has ever given mankind (biological life).

So so sad that people will suffer for ever for the mistake of suicide.

As bad as your life is, things can get much worse (and forever!). Don’t loose hope, don’t kill yourself, but most importantly, get your life right with the Lord Jesus.

Jul 25, 2009 - 6:25 am 4. hBG:

Hear, hear. Dignitas is a hideous symptom of the age: the self-centeredness of the individual has imploded into a black hole. And similarly, it will suck everything else around it down too.

Jul 25, 2009 - 6:30 am 5. AThinkingPerson:

Funny how we’re willing and eager to suck out and dismember the unborn but allowing an elderly person facing a terminal disease to end their suffering is immoral?

Jul 25, 2009 - 7:29 am 6. Daniel:

This is a very tricky pony.

Just as the author pointed out there was a young man who was paralyzed, filled with pain, and experiencing constant spams. He did not want to live. Who am I to deny him that? Who am to judge how HE is living and to stop him from achieving relief (relief in his mind at least)?

However on the other side there was the healthy elderly man who did not wish to become a widower and also killed himself. I find that to be wrong I guess, but again who am I to deny him that?

The question at hand is hard. I think it can be solved with a committee board handling and judging each and every case. That would be very helpful. This is not straight and simple. I think there can not be a law that can be drafted to cover how all cases should be handled. In the end it comes down to a judgment call.

Death is as natural as life I guess.

Jul 25, 2009 - 7:39 am 7. Stephen in Afghanistan:

Small government conservatism and libertarianism should also mean small government on social issues as well. People should have the right to take their own life should they choose to.

Jul 25, 2009 - 8:54 am 8. Joe Bison:

The right to suicide flows naturally from
abortion. My body my choice. You can’t make
the argument for one without the other shoe
dropping.

Next step after that is when does government
while allocating scarce medical funding start
to make the life ending question for you?
And I mean not in the sinister sense but
in the unofficial footdragging of services
sense based on wealth, influence, medical
condition and priorities.

Jul 25, 2009 - 9:05 am 9. Daniel:

Please do not bring abortion into this. We can have a fruitful discussion, but someone has already tried pouting this and diverting the discussion with the whole abortion thing.

Jul 25, 2009 - 9:16 am 10. Anthony Morrison:

I dont think is a good choice anyway….but every person when feels that have no exit from some problem, they just do it.

Jul 25, 2009 - 9:19 am 11. Joshua:

Jackson: Suicide is not a crime. If the healthy Mrs. Coumbias is determined to kill herself when many terminally sick people would dearly love to live; if she is so indifferent to the suffering that it will cause to her loved ones, she can, literally, go and jump off a cliff.

What if there are no cliffs nearby, or you are too physically weak to make the trip, much less actually hurl yourself over the cliff? If you make suicide too difficult legally and/or practically, more people who want to off themselves will do so in ways that also endanger others – and that do, in fact, involve committing crimes. “Blue suicide” comes to mind.

Mats, #3: But then they were awake again, standing up and looking to their own dead bodies. Something was wrong. This wasn’t suposed to be happening. There is no life after death, right? NO hell, no heaven and no judgment. Then why do they feel that something is terribly wrong? Suddenly they realized that mistake they had made, but it was too late. Their souls were thrown in hell for rejecting the second greatest gift God has ever given mankind (biological life).

If you don’t believe in that life-after-death stuff in the first place, then the “threat” of eternal damnation isn’t much of an incentive against offing yourself. (Besides, isn’t non-belief supposed to be grounds for eternal damnation in its own right, suicide or no? If the Downeses were, as they would seem to be, atheists or “post-Christians”, whatever fate awaited them after death, be it hellfire or simply total oblivion, wouldn’t have changed if they’d chosen to die naturally as opposed to offing themselves.)

Jul 25, 2009 - 10:53 am 12. Pete:

If liberals will take this to heart it could be a good thing.

Jul 25, 2009 - 10:54 am 13. Shef Rogers:

Do you panic every time a “healthy” person jumps off a tall building? Eats a gun? Swallows a bottle of Tylenol? Lots of seemingly healthy people kill themselves. Unless you’re willing to follow them around and keep them away from tall buildings, sharp objects, and pharmacies, they’re always going to be able to die at will. How did that become your business anyway?

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:31 am 14. Brian:

I have no problem with an 80 year old man making a choice such as this, or someone with a terminal illness who only has months of pain ahead before death. If they are competent to make the decision then I am not going to seek to stop them, regardless of my beliefs. I may counsel them to choose a different path but that would be the extent of my actions. I believe in personal freedom.

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:38 am 15. Rockmelon:

LOL…I am 100% for ending one’s life voluntarily. Nobody but me has had to live my life and nobody is going to tell me that I should live if I chose to die. If I had terminal cancer why should you tell me that I must suffer. Why should it be your decision that I must spend my liquid assets in order to satisfy the judgements of doctors and hospitals when I would prefer to die and leave my assets to my heirs!

People who insist that one must live until natural death make me ill. How dare anyone presume to know what it is my best interest! Mind your own affairs and leave others to theirs.

Beside that, Obama is the one who will determine whether we live or die via his healthcare bill; more aptly named his “doomsday death insurance program.”

To anyone who insists that suicide or euthanasia is unacceptable; may your pain at death be magnified 1000 times!

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:39 am 16. Donna V.:

For people who scoff at “slippery slope” arguments , might I point out that the goalposts have already shifted? The pro-death folks have moved from arguing that people have a right to die when they are suffering from painful and incurable diseases to now saying that they have a right to off themselves for any reason whatsover. In fact, they should be helped along.

With the population of the West aging and nationalized (and therefore rationed) healthcare on the way, how many people who see absolutely nothing wrong with this will find themselves in a state-run hospital or nursing home 30 or 40 years down the road being told that it’s time for them to kick the bucket. Don’t want to die yet? Oh come now, let’s not be selfish, you’re using resources that should be reserved for younger, healthier people. You’re not useful any more – time for the lethal injection, gramps, so you’re not a burden to society anymore. All of you cheering libertarians – just wait when assisted suicide becomes not your individual right, but your duty as decreed by the state.

Once again, the post-Christian, post-modern West has taken a action universally condemned in the not-so-distant past and decided that black is white, and evil is good. And, of course, cloaks it in soothing music and flowery language. Well, Western civilization is already committing suicide, so it’s fitting, I suppose, that it is now doing so in the most literal sense.

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:53 am 17. Donna V.:

Do you panic every time a “healthy” person jumps off a tall building?

You don’t consider that a tragedy, Shef? Several years ago, I saw a documentary about the people who commit suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate bridge. Most die on impact, but a handful survived. One man, who had been suffering from severe depression, said that someone saw him preparing to jump – and asked him to wait until the observer had taken his picture. The tourist wanted a souvenir of an actual Golden Gate suicide to show the folks back home. That callous request completed the man’s despair. The tourist (was that you Shef?) thought it “cool” that he’d actually get to witness a suicide. All of the would-be suicides said that if just one person had said to them “Don’t do it, live” they would have backed away from the edge.

Most healthy people who commit suicide do so because they are suffering from depression (a very high percentage of untreated manic-depressives commit suicide). Their thought processes are distorted. They can’t see past the pain of the moment. They need medication and therapy, not encouragement.

Please, let’s hope that Shef never has contact with depressed and suicidal people. Instead of comforting them, he’ll tell them to jump or pass them them the pills – it’ll be great entertainment for him.

Jul 25, 2009 - 12:16 pm 18. Donna V.:

Really, the stupidity and callousness of Shef’s comment is incredible.

Yeah, Shef, I’ve noticed that when suicidal people end up standing on a ledge, people seem to “panic.” They call the police, who then do their best to coax the suicidal person off the ledge. They don’t say “Well, it’s his choice. He’s got an absolute right to kill himself, who are we to stop him?” or get popcorn and pull out a lounge chair. Society recognizes -or has recognized, up until this point – that this is a disturbed person who needs help. That doesn’t mean, as you ridiculously state, that we follow everyone around to make sure they don’t kill themselves. Most people are not suicidal.

I wonder if any of the suicide fans here have ever known people who committed suicide. I know a woman who was left to raise 5 children by herself when her husband, a successful doctor who had serious problems with depression, committed suicide. His 11 year old daughter found the body. The 23 year old son of another acquaintance killed himself when his fiance broke off the engagement. Do you have any idea of the anguish suffered by those families?

Most healthy people who kill themselves do so because at that moment, life seems too much to bear and they can’t imagine that things will ever get better. When the suicide fails and they get help, they frequently are relieved that someone intervened.

We as a society should be encouraging troubled and depressed people to seek help, not shrugging our shoulders and saying “So what, no big deal.” Or, worse yet, “Here, let me help you do yourself in.”

Jul 25, 2009 - 1:58 pm 19. myth buster:

When I was in high school, a friend of mine told me that he was going to kill himself that afternoon. Another friend of mine, who was sitting next to him, encouraged him to do it. I told the guidance councilor, and he got help. He thanked me the next day.

Jul 25, 2009 - 3:46 pm 20. Shef Rogers:

Sorry, Donna! I forgot how intense the US taboo against mentioning death really is. I lived abroad for a while, in places where people are very comfortable with the notion of growing old and dying; I forgot that no one must mention these topics here.
Strange, because Americans used to be quite comfortable talking about death. Read Victorian US poetry and you see people who are nervous talking about sex, but relaxed when discussing death. These taboos have flipped; sex is now fine, but we’re all supposed to pretend we’ll live forever.
Well, we won’t. We will all die. And as long as an individual is able to walk unaided, he has the power to end his life any time he pleases. I’m not sure why that assertion is so cruel and extreme, but I’m sorry if it offended you.

Jul 25, 2009 - 4:05 pm 21. Mary Jackson:

And as long as an individual is able to walk unaided, he has the power to end his life any time he pleases.

Indeed he has, and nobody should try to stop him. But should a “clinic” or a “doctor” make money out of it? Should a “clinic” or a “doctor” give him the poison that will kill him. Terminally ill is one thing. Sadness is quite another.

Jul 25, 2009 - 4:30 pm 22. BrainTrust:

If we honor freedom and liberty, we honor it for all decisions. The consequences will come with each act, either here on earth or in another place.

I think if someone wants to end his or her own life, it is a personal decision and part of what is called the Darwinian Theory, or survival of the fit.

Doing this to another without that person’s consent is a different thing altogether and is called “murder”.

Jul 25, 2009 - 5:03 pm 23. Cristina:

Mary,

As a libertarian in this matter, I want to exercise my right to exit this world as I choose, including suicide, since the first choice–to be born–was not up to me. Liberty means being the absolute master of your own destiny, once you are alive. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, in the US Constitution preventing suicide or assisted suicide. I see it as a First Amendment right, a Fourth Amemdment right, a Tenth Amedment right, even a Thirteenth Amendment right, a Fourteenth Amendment right, which says:

1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

That is, no US federal or state law can make any law abridging my freedom to dispose of my own life as I choose. None. The Constitution only states the State cannot deprive me of my life and liberty–which means, roughly, that you can’t send me to the gulag or to the gallows without due process. In so doing, it acknowledges the State can’t deprive me of the liberty to choose my own demise.

Jul 25, 2009 - 5:54 pm 24. Juliet:

The healthy wife killing herself when her spouse dies is not that disimilar to the windows in India. I too am taking care of a disable husband but when he dies I hope to going on living & enjoying myself. I take care of home because I love him but it is also my duty. What an old fashion word but the meaning of which alot of peoplehave forgotten in our modern self centered world.

Jul 25, 2009 - 6:37 pm 25. Donna V.:

Excuse me, Shef. I was unaware that the Victorians were so comfortable with death they had no problems with letting people commit suicide, or even helping them do so. The things you learn on blogs!

Of course, nitwit, we are all going to die. I work in a hospital and so am reminded of that fact a bit more frequently than most are. There’s a slight difference, I would say, between accepting death and comforting those who are close to death and encouraging those who are confused and distressed to kill themselves – or to hand them the pills yourself.

We have hospices and pallative care for the sick. For the depressed and mentally ill, we have medications and treatments that were unavailable 100 years ago – or even 50 years ago. Victorians who suffered from various physical and emotional maladies had it worse than people do today because medical care was much more primitive and yet I am unaware of any Victorian suicide clinics willing to adminster poison to their clients.

The Victorians faced death stoically because they could hardly avoid it. Women died in childbirth all the time. Infants died. Children died. But I don’t think that cheering on suicide clinics represents an ability to face death fearlessly. On the contrary, it’s a cop-out. I think so many people in the West lead such comfortable lives that they believe that any any discomfort, any pain, any distress, physical or emotional is intolerable. They don’t want to feel it and they don’t want to help others deal with it. Nah, who wants to take the trouble, we have other things to do. Much better if they just off themselves.

Really, what would you have said to the man preparing to jump off the Golden Gate bridge? “Nice to see you don’t have the usual American fear of death?”

Jul 25, 2009 - 7:18 pm 26. Tony R:

I can’t say I would look forward to a last 3 or 4 years on this planet being kept alive by modern medicine, having my nappy changed, having my food drip-fed to me whilst being unable to remember the name of my wife/children. Not to mention paying a fortune in medical bills for absolutely no quality of life whatsoever with no possibility of recovery/improvement. Putting my close family through years of worry and waiting and anxiety and stress would not be my bag.

I believe I should have the right to forego such “pleasures” after years of actual life.

However, I agree with the author…..there is something wrong about a company making money out of such a monumental personal decision.

Jul 25, 2009 - 7:46 pm 27. Marilyn:

There exists an evil so pure and pervasive that is filtering into every aspect of so-called civilized nations, so seductive that it convinces people that “good is evil, and evil is good”. This evil is so convincing that behaviors that have always been taboo, sinful, and soul destroying, “normal” society and “everyday folks” cannot even see anymore that murder is always wrong. This evil is named Satan, and I weep for all of us for what is being done in his name.

Jul 25, 2009 - 11:28 pm 28. tioedong:

Ah, but the couple you speak of was cheered on to kill themselves by their kids, who of course didn’t have to bother caring for them or do the dirty work to care for and keep a dying person comfortable and feeling loved.

Like Abortion, a lot of this is about the lifestyle that abhors the idea of sacrificing oneself for another.

As for suffering: good medical care can alleviate this.

But those who see suffering are more likely to put their hands out to help others who suffer in the world…

The “religious” idea not to kill oneself is best expressed by my Chippewa patients: That God has a path for everyone to walk, and this includes suffering.

Jul 26, 2009 - 12:03 am 29. RightwingHippyChick:

Why not try to convince people that life is worth living instead of poo-pooing their attempts to escape living hell?

No-one owes you their company on this planet — so please don’t expect them to suffer so you can have your personal moral peace. There are a lot of people out there for whom life at the end of their time is very very grim — people in cancer pain, others who literally rot away whilst alive and so on. What do you gain by insisting they hang on in agony?

It always is a difficult subject, and everyone who wants to die should be helped — and if that help in the end when all other possibilities have been exhausted is assistance to suicide, then so be it. More often than not the help can take many other forms, but it also requires people who are willing to give this help in the first place (and there are not many of those)

Trust people to know themselves and strive to help them make the best decision — but don’t offer moralising, offer real help and alternatives, not just warm words.

Jul 26, 2009 - 2:20 am 30. Mats:

Joshua,

If you don’t believe in that life-after-death stuff in the first place, then the “threat” of eternal damnation isn’t much of an incentive against offing yourself.

No, but those who are alive and realize what they may find, it will be another thing to make them ponder before killing yourself. As bad life may be, taking an eternal leap into the great unknown is ilogical. ´

(Besides, isn’t non-belief supposed to be grounds for eternal damnation in its own right, suicide or no?

Yes, but that doesn’t change the purpose of my reply. Those who are alive can read it, and think twice before killing themselves.

If the Downeses were, as they would seem to be, atheists or “post-Christians”, whatever fate awaited them after death, be it hellfire or simply total oblivion, wouldn’t have changed if they’d chosen to die naturally as opposed to offing themselves.)

True, but my words were not to the Ds, but to those who are alive. For them, it’s already too late. They made their choice,and now they’ll live forever in hell.

Jul 26, 2009 - 6:12 am 31. Mary Grabar:

Great article raising some important questions. But I wonder why the psychobabblers aren’t talking about “codependence” now. Aren’t these spouses their “own people”? Aren’t relationships intended to simply “enhance” and “enrich” your life–not give it meaning? Read any of the self-help literature directed toward single women.

What is missing here fundamentally is the Judeo-Christian set of values. Quite simply, God determines when we are born and when we die. Our culture, through the educational system, has brought back the primitive as the standard. Because of indoctrination, we now think it’s okay to set Grandma on the ice floe, Mom on the bonfire. These practices are promoted in the multicultural literature as authentic; objections to them are signs of colonialism. It’s in the anthologies and textbooks I’m forced to use.

Jul 26, 2009 - 6:22 am 32. Captain Obvious:

I’ve only scanned the comments, but nobody seems–other than the mention of Sati in the final paragraph–to be mentioning the obvious next steps–leading to others deciding my life isn’t worth living and ENFORCING my “right to die”.

Jul 26, 2009 - 7:05 am 33. Mary Jackson:

I wonder why the psychobabblers aren’t talking about “codependence” now. Aren’t these spouses their “own people”?

Hah! Good point. Why aren’t feminists at the HuffPo up in arms at the idea of a woman feeling she is nothing without a man? What happened to those fishes and bicycles?

In fact, as well as emphasising marriage and family, the Judeo-Christian God values the individual, and no way would say a woman was worthless without a man or vice versa. Sati, the horrendous celestial brothel of Islam and the death factory of the atheists has other ideas.

As a libertarian in this matter, I want to exercise my right to exit this world as I choose, including suicide, since the first choice–to be born–was not up to me.

Nobody is stopping you, but the free speech accorded by your first amendment means that people can express disapproval. And I’m not for a minute suggesting people should be kept alive artificially in pain. Palliative care for the dying involves making someone comfortable and this can mean pain relief so that someone slips away.

What is wrong is for a “doctor” and a “clinic” to profit from making death just another consumer choice, not just for the terminally ill, but for the distressed, the bereaved and the unhappy.

In the UK assisted suicide is illegal, but in practice nobody has been prosecuted, and the sentencing would be lenient if they were. I think this apparent muddle is the right approach, because it means that the full force of the law can be used against those who murder while pretending to be helping someone die on compassionate grounds.

As for Dignitas, I think it is evil.

Jul 26, 2009 - 7:25 am 34. Mary Jackson:

the obvious next steps–leading to others deciding my life isn’t worth living and ENFORCING my “right to die”.

I haven’t specifically addressed this, but I agree, and it is a slippery slope. Who’s to say that the disabled won’t be judged – by those who know better, and the Left believes the state knows best – to have insufficient quality of life to justify staying alive? This is not unthinkable; it has been done.

Under the guise of choice and “human rights”, the most primitive barbarism is worming its way back in.

Jul 26, 2009 - 7:30 am 35. e:

A rational decision to end one’s life might be fine and dandy. But how many suicides were performed by rational people? Suicides performed by women are usually passive aggressive and were often were not the first attempt by cutting or pills. Does multiple failed attempts mean she’s just incompetent? Or maybe she doesn’t really want to die!

For men suicides tend to be a bit more dramatic leading to less failed attempts. Though its difficult to fail at eating a bullet. But its quite rare that there isn’t depression or obsession with a personal problem (relationship, monetary, getting fired from work, failing out of school).

20. Shef Rogers:Read Victorian US poetry and you see people who are nervous talking about sex, but relaxed when discussing death. These taboos have flipped;

Have you actually read Victorian poetry? Shakespeare is Victorian (but not US) and all that’s in there is sex and violence (in both is poems and plays). Oh sure they use euphemisms (some quite thinly veiled), but its in there.

Jul 26, 2009 - 7:35 am 36. Brian:

Donna your points regarding depression are very valid to me. I wouldnt want people to make the decision to end their lives due to a temporary state of mind or impulsively because of depression. For this reason I believe the “just jump off a cliff and end it” should be replaced with doctor assistance. That way a person can be evaluated to determine the reasons for deciding this course… People are only going to choose suicide when they feel thier options are at an end.

“there is something wrong about a company making money out of such a monumental personal decision.”

So companies should work for free? If such company is allowed to exist they need to be paid for services, as ghastly as they may be to some. A $10K dollar bill to cover the evaluations and medical services is a token compared to the costs of care for a terminal illness. And if a person chooses to sidestep the pain and expense for their family… power to them, it may not be my decision… but who knows I may feel differently when the time comes.. and government has no right to make the decision for me or against me.
I knew a man who after suffering cancer once decided when he was diagnosed with it again made the choice not to suffer through the treatments again at the age of 70…. So he took a gun and ended it… how would you prefer your family to discover you? How traumatic would that be for someone to discover? The man made a personal choice after suffering the disease once earlier in life. He had no other options for avoiding the suffering.
I find it ironic that it is considered perfectly humaine to put an animal to sleep to end their suffering.. but people are expected to endure it. If you decide to endure because of your beliefs, fine no one should direct you otherwise. However if a person does not share your beliefs then you should have the same consideration and respect that persons freedom.

Jul 26, 2009 - 7:42 am 37. HalifaxCB:

e: @ 35
Shakespeare died 200 years before Victoria was even born.
You might want to rethink your comment.

And if you really think “all that’s in there is sex and violence”, I would suggest you read it a little more deeply. You’ll find Harold Bloom’s “Shakespeare/ The Invention of the Human” of great assistance in getting started.

Jul 26, 2009 - 8:37 am 38. Cristina:

# 36 Brian:

Indeed. My shrink, god bless her heart, always warns me: Watch out for those who pretend to know how to run your life better than you.
Of course she wouldn’t want me to commit suicide; it’s against her professional oath; as a matter of fact, she is obligated by law to announce authorities if she thought I was in danger of taking my life.
Is there a contradiction here? Maybe. But the final decision would still be mine.

Jul 26, 2009 - 10:07 am 39. Cristina:

Mary Grabar:

“What is missing here fundamentally is the Judeo-Christian set of values. Quite simply, God determines when we are born and when we die.”

I dunno…I thought my parents decided on this one. I believe my mom had a few abortions before me. Two or three beings ahead of me God says no, not in the plan–not to mention miscarriages–but with me it’s yes, go forth and be born, only he knows why me. Figure that out.

If it was God’s will, in his grand scheme, for millions to die of plague or polio or you name it, why did he allow us to develop cures for them?
Inscrutable indeed.

Jul 26, 2009 - 10:27 am 40. Donna V.:

Our culture, through the educational system, has brought back the primitive as the standard. Because of indoctrination, we now think it’s okay to set Grandma on the ice floe, Mom on the bonfire.

Your comments are bang on, Mary Grabar. Although of course, it isn’t literally the ice floe or the bonfire, it’s some cushy establishment in the Alps with smiling staff and great views and no doubt, beds with 500 thread count sheets and pretty music piped into your room. So that makes it all OK. That means we’re not barbarians.

Jul 26, 2009 - 10:39 am 41. Donna V.:

Cristina: As I noted before, the final decision may not be yours. You strike me as very young. Let us not hope that in 40 or 50 years, the state does not make the decision for you. You feel just fine, despite some aches and pains? Or you don’t feel fine, you have a chronic condition that necessitates medical care, but you’d still rather be alive than dead? Well, tough. You’re costing the state money and you don’t work. And don’t give us that sentimental religious nonsense about individuals having value or souls or anything like that. We answered that question in the negative back in the early 21st century. You’re an old biddy with no value whatsoever as far as the state is concerned and so we’re going to put you down like a old pet dog. But don’t worry – it won’t hurt.

Jul 26, 2009 - 10:51 am 42. Cristina:

Mary Grabar:

Thank God for the pagan Greek and Roman values that are part and parcel of my “Judeo-Christian” heritage. They understood death with honor.

Jul 26, 2009 - 10:54 am 43. Brian:

Donna you going off topic, no one is talking about the government making the choice for you. Oh wait… they already do, doctor assisted death is illegal.
No one is going to advocate the government mandating the time you pass, instead the topic is should YOU be able to decide? Not the government… one does NOT equal the other. Advocating personal choice is anywhere close to the same as advocating government intervention. That simply confuses the discussion.. or is that the intent?

Jul 26, 2009 - 11:30 am 44. Cristina:

Donna:

As Brian says, you are confused about the issues at hand. I understand your concerns, but we are not talking about eugenics here, goverment deciding that you are past the age of having a hip replacement because it’s not cost-effective. You are a retiree, you don’t contribute much to the general welfare–never mind the inherent worth of your life to you, to God, and to those who love you. Government decides pain killers are the best solution for you–Obama’s health plan seems to be going in that direction, and is loathsome.

The issue is the liberty of making the final decision of your life, whose sole proprietor you are, that is deciding to end it. No government or human or god owns my life. It’s enough to put up with life’s inherent determinism, that is matters you have no choice in: parents, gender, genetic load, place of birth, moment of birth in history, geography, geology, race, etc. These are a given, and you make the best of them you can. You can change some, tinker with others, but others are, as of today, intractable.
Suicide is that sole existential choice that everyone is inherently free to make about his life, unless not mentally responsible. It’s wonderfully liberating, and it stops, paradoxically, many from taking their own lives when they know they have the option intact.

Jul 26, 2009 - 12:40 pm 45. Donna V.:

Cristina: Sure – and they also practiced infanticide and slavery. Women were considered inferior in ancient Greece. Read about what happened to Sejanus’s teenaged daughter. Putting a virgin to death was against Rome law and so she was raped before her execution. If you knew a bit more about ancient history, you wouldn’t get so misty-eyed about the noble ways of the pagans.

Brian: nobody is talking about the government making the choice for you – yet. All I’m saying is that the danger that at some point they will, once you have legitimized the whole notion of assisted suicide, is very real.

My comments in this thread have really focused on healthy people who choose to end their lives. It is the people who bring up the terminally ill who have gone off track, because the woman in Mary Jackson’s article was a healthy woman. All I am saying is that in such cass, most would-be suicides are suffering from depression or mental illness and their perspectives are distorted. And that the moral thing to do is to help those people regain a sense of the value of life, not tell them they have a perfect right to off themselves, so be my guest.

Jul 26, 2009 - 12:44 pm 46. Cichawoda:

25. Donna V.:
“The Victorians faced death stoically because they could hardly avoid it.”
You do realize that we, including you, also can’t avoid it? As far as I can tell, nothing alive can avoid death. The guy didn’t want to live without his wife – why shouldn’t he be able to get help in dieing without pain? The only thing that is scary about death is the act of dieing. If you are not prepared your mind will go into a panic as your brain shuts and that will be your last state, your eternity. Personally I would like to live to a ripe, healthy old age and while my mind is still in good shape prepare myself and commit suicide in the least painful and traumatic way possible so that my eternity can be one of peace.

Funny how it is the Abrahamicly religious that are most opposed to an individuals right to self determination but than again subservience and obedience are the predominant features of these religions.

Jul 26, 2009 - 12:56 pm 47. Donna V.:

Christina, all I can say is I’m very glad you are not a relative or a friend. And please, never volunteer for work on a suicide hotline. If I suffered from depression or loss and was contemplating suicide, I’d want a friend or a loved one to tell me I was valued and loved and that this pain, as horrible as it is, shall pass. Not that it’s “wonderfully liberating” to kill onesself.

Do you think those people who survived jumping from the Golden Gate bridge were “liberating themselves?” Watch the documentary. To a man, they all said that if just one person had shown they cared, they wouldn’t have done it. And all were glad to have survived, despite the fact that they were in considerable physical pain, having shattered just about every bone in their bodies.

As for the government not interfering in such decisions: I am glad you and Brian have so much faith in the state that you trust it would never, ever do such a thing. Forgive me for being more wary.

Jul 26, 2009 - 12:59 pm 48. Cristina:

Donna:

Why are you aswering my post to Mary Grabar, not to yours?
Are you aware of something called “red herring”?

Just curious.

Jul 26, 2009 - 1:02 pm 49. Cichawoda:

40. Donna V.:
“some cushy establishment in the Alps with smiling staff and great views and no doubt, beds with 500 thread count sheets and pretty music piped into your room.”

As long as it is my choice – I’m up with that – seems civilised to me.

You keep bringing up the Government as boogeyman – heartless killer and in full control of our lives. As far as I know in this country we are the people and the government works for me.

Jul 26, 2009 - 1:04 pm 50. Cichawoda:

“if she is so indifferent to the suffering that it will cause to her loved ones, she can, literally, go and jump off a cliff.”

This is the telling line in the article – the selfishness of the person committing the suicide is not as important as the selfishness of the loved ones left behind.

I don’t think letting somebody you supposedly love suffer is a demonstration of caring for that person.

Jul 26, 2009 - 1:23 pm 51. Brian:

“All I am saying is that in such cass, most would-be suicides are suffering from depression or mental illness and their perspectives are distorted.”

Agreed. That is very plausible. However if a person is evaluated and found to be “rationale” and coherent. Would that not be their choice? Admittedly I do not know the process someone would go through at this place. However, if they are not screening people I would be super suprised just from a lawsuit point of view. I am sure people don’t walk in and get a needle (my assumption).

“All I’m saying is that the danger that at some point they will, once you have legitimized the whole notion of assisted suicide, is very real.”

I don’t see any possible connection… one is murder! You cannot murder yourself… there is no way to link the two and say one could possibly be linked to the other.
“

Jul 26, 2009 - 1:52 pm 52. Cristina:

Mary Grabar:

“Because of indoctrination, we now think it’s okay to set Grandma on the ice floe, Mom on the bonfire. These practices are promoted in the multicultural literature as authentic; objections to them are signs of colonialism. It’s in the anthologies and textbooks I’m forced to use.”

1. Quit your teaching job, if anybody forces you to do anything that is against your beliefs. It’s a free country, remember, not commie Eastern Europe. That’s why, I suppose, you chose to live here.

2. Don’t push hyperbole too far. It works marvels in fiction and satire, but not in journalism. You write “we now think…”
Who are these “we” on behalf on whom you presume to speak?
Show me anybody, in the American mainstream, who thinks it’s OK to put your “Mom on the bonfire.”
I don’t know of a single one. Doctrinaire, slavish Marxist and post-modern, post-colonial academics are a different species altogether. I’d stay away from them. They reek of entitlement and status, and they lie as a matter of course, for all history is a lie.

You seem to be settling scores with your academic peers, which is fine. More power to you. Just don’t bring average Americans into the dispute.

Jul 26, 2009 - 1:55 pm 53. GregGS:

If people want to go “off planet” by their own accord, let ‘em! But euthanasia should not be institutionalized, in any form.

Jul 26, 2009 - 4:08 pm 54. B Dubya:

His Holiness John Paul II is the Christian answer to suicide.
How much more courage and faith did it take for him to drink all of that bitter cup which Parkinsons Disease was for him, and to die in the faith that had borne him up through all the dark times of his life and through all of the triumphs that he shared with us.

What a contrast, between that poor suffering man and this fearful 85 year old Englishman. As much as my heart goes out to the old gentleman, he is the symptom of this age; fear to feel and fear to live.

We are coming on a time when governments will ration not only energy and the very air we breathe, but they will ration life. Do you really think that any government anywhere would tolerate lifespans more than twice the current productive age of taxpayers and earners? Except for the special ones among us, no, they will not. And who are the poster boys for special? Chris Dodds. Harry Reid. Barney Frank. Henry Waxman.

Jul 26, 2009 - 4:32 pm 55. H. Coburn:

As an individual has no choice whether or not to enter this world, I feel that when an individual chooses to leave it, it should be his or her decision to do so.
What means said individual chooses to end his or her life is that individual’s business, and most certainly none of mine.
As my grandfather, a WWI army medic said towards the end of his life. “We are all born, we live our lives, and we will all die.”

Jul 26, 2009 - 4:47 pm 56. Donna V.:

I don’t see any possible connection… one is murder!

Well, helping healthy people commit suicide is pretty damn close to the wire in my book. A lot of people (like Cichawoda) seem to be charmingly naive about the notion that the government will never, ever get involved in this or make decisions about who’s going to get the axe. Might I remind you that the people who backed New Deal programs in the 1930’s never dreamt that government would grow into the monster it is today. Oh, I know Cichawoda’s all cool with it and everything, but remember that there are elderly people in the Netherlands who fear checking into their state-run hospitals. Euthanasia is not quite the free and happy choice the pro-death club likes to think it is.

Cristina wrote:

Funny how it is the Abrahamicly (?) religious that are most opposed to an individuals right to self determination but than again subservience and obedience are the predominant features of these religions.

Right. As opposed to the wonderful compassionate societies of ancient Greece and Roman where people died with dignity – when they weren’t being crucified or being torn apart by wild animals. Modern China, yeah, they are also incredibly supportive of “an individual’s right to self=determination.” China, BTW, has just rescinded its one-baby-per couple program because it has figured out that it will get old before it gets rich. I predict assisted suicide will really take off there in another 10 or 15 years, with the reluctant given a bit of an extra nudge so they stop being so selfish.

The traditional Western view that all individuals have souls and worth in the eyes of God does come from Judeo-Christianity, not from the pagans. It would help, Crista, if you actually, you know, knew something about “the Abrahamicly religious” that comes from a different source than Bill Maher. (Islam , I note, doesn’t appear to have any problems with suicide – at least not if you take an infidel with you.)

Jul 26, 2009 - 6:49 pm 57. Camo:

Governments that approve of euthenasia, like Washington State, already send notices to terminally ill about other “options” in their subsidized health care, including “death with dignity.” From a money standpoint, death = about $4000; chemo, hospitalization and hospice = over $50,000. Gee, it’s nice to have a caring government help me decide my fate.

A person deciding to die or not should’t be coerced by HMOs, the government and such. As a health care professional of first “Do no harm” I have an ethical problem with assisting in it. My patients count on me to help them, not harm them. If the patient wants to die, they can do it themselves, in their own home. If they can’t, hand them off to the governemnt/HMO official to “assist” the patient, in his/her own office.

Jul 27, 2009 - 12:01 am 58. Cichawoda:

56. Donna V.:
“The traditional Western view that all individuals have souls and worth in the eyes of God does come from Judeo-Christianity”
All the European pagan religions give great value to the individual and his/her rights even when facing the Gods themselves. It is the Abrahamic, desert religions that promote subjugation, even slavery. The Abrahamic imaginary friend cares most about obedience. Democracy even in it’s faitest form does not figure anywhere in the old, new testament or the Koran. It was only after Europeans got back in touch with the philosophies of their own “pagan” faiths did they start to shake of the tyranny of middle eastern thinking. Since the Renaissance we have been finding our own path away from the oppressive desert religions.

Ever notice how fearful Christians are of government unless it is run by them – they, just like the Muslims, don’t really believe in Democracy – it’s not in their book.

Jul 27, 2009 - 12:14 am 59. Camo:

58. Cichawoda:
“…Ever notice how fearful Christians are of government unless it is run by them – they, just like the Muslims, don’t really believe in Democracy – it’s not in their book.”

Funny, most modern democracies were set up by Christian members of the countries, look at the Eastern European example. The Chirstians there had so much fun under loving communism. Perhaps it is because over 60 million people have been murdered by non-christian governments over the last 75 years and most other governemnts that aren’t Christian openly discrimate against them.

Jul 27, 2009 - 2:38 am 60. Donna V.:

Cichawoda: You are a very ill-informed person. Public school education, I would guess. I repeat: the ancient pagan world had slavery. Women had no rights. The ancient Greeks would have thought the idea of deformed and handicapped people having any sort of value laughable.

The Greeks and Romans did produce some great philosophers and dramatists. And the only reason we know of them is bcause Irish monks in the Dark Ages painstakingly copied their works and preserved it for humanity. Thomas Aquinas studied and drew on Aristotle and other pagan authors. The first universities in Europe were founded by the Church and included the study of ancient authors.

Again, it’s a really bad idea to rely on Bill Maher for your information. May I suggest reading a few books?

Jul 27, 2009 - 3:56 am 61. Donna V.:

Camo: you beat me to the punch. Given that 18th and 19th century Americans were a very religious people, it’s a bit, well, dumb to say that Christians don’t care about democracy. And, as was frequently noted after 9/11, it’s not Methodists and Baptists who are flying planes into skyscrapers or making women wear burkkas. It’s in the best interests of religion haters to lump the Abrahamic religions together despite their obvious differences, which are clear to anybody who isn’t an anti-religion bigot.

Also, have Crista and Cichawoda ever noticed that most hospitals in this country are affiliated with a religious denomination? That’s because hospitals in Europe were founded, run and adminstered by religious for many centuries and the model continued here in this country. Another legacy of Judeo-Christianity that is entirely taken for granted these days.

Jul 27, 2009 - 4:26 am 62. Mike:

How sad that these people have no faith or hope in their lives! If you love God and want to please him, you would never leave your post before being called.

Not so for the mentally ill, though, they have merely succumbed to a disease.

Jul 27, 2009 - 7:17 am 63. Cichawoda:

60. Donna V.:
“the ancient pagan world had slavery”

You mean kinda like the: England till 25 March 1807, USA till December 1865 and in Saudi Arabia till 1962 – all countries claiming have their philosophies cut from the Abrahamic creed.

And not forgetting:

Mainstream forms of first century Judaism didn’t exhibit such qualms about slavery, and ever since the 2nd century expulsion of Jews from Judea, wealthy Jews have owned non-Jewish slaves.

Slavery in different forms existed within Christianity for over 18 centuries. Although in the early years of Christianity, freeing slaves was regarded as an act of charity[95], the actual institution of slavery was rarely criticised. Indeed, in 340, the Synod of Gangra condemned the Manicheans for their urging that slaves should liberate themselves; the canons of the Synod instead declared that anyone preaching abolitionism should be anathematised, and that slaves had a Christian obligation to submit to their masters.

The slavery endorsed by the Qur’an limited the source of slaves to the children of two slave parents and non-Muslims captured in war. The Qur’an provides for emancipation of a slave as a means (or in one case, a requirement of) demonstrating remorse for the commission of certain sins.

Jul 27, 2009 - 9:07 am 64. Mary Jackson:

Chichawoda makes a mistake common among Muslims and their apologists of comparing the best of Islamic theory with the worst of Christian practice.

Slavery has existed in the Islamic world on a huge scale and the Arab slave trade dwarfs that transatlantic slave trade. Christianity does not endorse slavery, though of course Christians have fallen short of that. However the Koran does, and Mohammed himself had sex slaves whom he raped regularly.

When Muslims kill, rape and enslave they are practising Islam and following in Mohammed’s footsteps. When Christians do it they are violating the tenets of Christianity.

Jul 27, 2009 - 9:17 am 65. Kelly:

Hmm, I guess I’m just not sure a healthy person should be assisted in suicide. How could his wife have agreed for him to choose this I wonder? His life only had value with her? If Europeans are so comfortable with death than why would his life be so meaningless just because his wife was dying? Shouldn’t he have accepted it and lived out the remaining years of his OWN life?

Personal decision seems like it should require him to end his own life without assistance.

Jul 27, 2009 - 11:31 am 66. Cichawoda:

64. Mary Jackson:
“Christianity does not endorse slavery”

“However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.” (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.” (Ephesians 6:5 NLT)

I think that covers both old and new – got any more sage words about the good of Abrahamic religions? To me they all the same bs.

Jul 27, 2009 - 11:40 am 67. Abu Infidel:

Their souls were thrown in hell for rejecting the second greatest gift God has ever given mankind (biological life).

Yes, of course, someone who harms no one but themselves deserves the same horrible fate as the world’s mass murderers in your eyes. Quite logicial.

Cichawoda;

All the European pagan religions give great value to the individual and his/her rights even when facing the Gods themselves. It is the Abrahamic, desert religions that promote subjugation, even slavery.

Yes, Thor, Odin, and Ares were models of pacifism.

Almost every part of the world has practiced slavery or has had it’s people enslaved at some time or other in history. Slavery and subjugation have been around since the the dawn of history, and usually with the blessing of whatever god was in vogue.

Jul 27, 2009 - 12:00 pm 68. Cichawoda:

64. Mary Jackson:

PS: The Evangelical influence was not evident or prominent in America till the late 19th Century and early 20th Century and started with the Prohibition movement.

Jul 27, 2009 - 12:03 pm 69. Linda Rivera:

U.S. HEALTHCARE: CUT YOUR LIFE SHORT
Obama promised HOPE and CHANGE. The media never asked what frightening changes Obama planned for Americans.

WORLDNETDAILY.COM
July 22, 2009
Obamacare for old folks: Just ‘cut your life short’
Health plan provision demands ‘end-of-life’ counseling

By Bob Unruh

The version of President Obama’s universal health care plan pending in the U.S. House would require “end-of-life” counseling for senior citizens, and the former lieutenant governor for the state of New York is warning people to “protect their parents” from the measure.

At issue is section 1233 of the legislative proposal that deals with a government requirement for an “Advance Care Planning Consultation.”

Betsy McCaughey, the former New York state officer, told former president candidate Fred Thompson during an interview on his radio program the “consultation” is no more or less than an attempt to convince seniors to die.

“One of the most shocking things is page 425, where the Congress would make it mandatory absolutely that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session,” she said. “They will tell [them] how to end their life sooner.”

McCaughey also said the Obama administration is suggesting that medical care be withheld from seniors based on the expected years they have left to live.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.printable&pageId=104719

Obama’s Civilian National Security Force
Obama promised change. The End of America as we know it:

Obama: “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwaAVJITx1Y

PRAVDA: America’s Descent into Marxism – Brief Video
http://www.solutionsfromscience.com/

Jul 27, 2009 - 12:15 pm 70. Cichawoda:

67. Abu Infidel:
“Slavery and subjugation have been around since the the dawn of history, and usually with the blessing of whatever god was in vogue”

Nope – read your Norse, Slavic or Greek mythology. A opposed to Abrahamic, Middle Eastern myths, European stories often talk about descent and standing up to and against the Gods. This is where the thinkers of the Renaissance and Enlightenment found their rejuvenated faith in the human being, in the individual. Are you trying to suggest that the oppressive theocracies of the middle ages where the inspiration for the democracies of today?

And again: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ.” (Ephesians 6:5 NLT) – you will not find such a blatant endorsement of subjugation in any of the Pagan European myths. Sure the Gods can reward and punish but they are never in full control. The individual always has a chance – something missing from the Abrahamic, totalitarian, jealous God.

Jul 27, 2009 - 12:43 pm 71. Cichawoda:

69. Linda Rivera:
“The media never asked what frightening changes Obama planned for Americans.”

Must be hard being ignorant and scared.

“McCaughey refers to simply amends the Medicare Act to allow coverage for patients to receive counseling about end-of-life care options every five years if they so choose. Moreover, prominent medical societies have supported such counseling.”

“In a “Statement on End-Of-Life-Care” (http://preview.tinyurl.com/ltra68) posted on its website, the American Medical Association expresses support for “[t]he opportunity to discuss and plan for end-of-life care. This should include: the opportunity to discuss scenarios and treatment preferences with the physician and health care proxy, the chance for discussion with others, the chance to make a formal ‘living will’ and proxy designation, and help with filing these documents in such a way that they are likely to be available and useful when needed.”

“In an article on “End-of-Life Care: A Guide for Seniors and Caregivers,” (http://preview.tinyurl.com/ndrn2d) posted on the website of the American Geriatrics Society, Dr. Steven Lipson wrote that “[a]dvance planning-discussing such issues while you are still healthy-is always a good idea. Be sure your family and other caregivers know your plan.” Lipson also recommends to patients, “Always discuss your wishes with your doctor.”

Jul 27, 2009 - 12:59 pm 72. Abu Infidel:

Cichawoda

read your Norse, Slavic or Greek mythology. …European stories often talk about descent and standing up to and against the Gods.

Hitler also found faith in those old Norse stories. One sees in a story what one wants to see

Are you trying to suggest that the oppressive theocracies of the middle ages where the inspiration for the democracies of today?

Nope, you have me mixed up with another posting. But while we’re on the topic, the middle-ages were not theocracies. The church did enjoy exclusive rule. There was a separation of powers between church and state, cleric and king. There existed a constant power struggle between the two , each one trying to use the other’s influence to impose their will on the people. What secularism did was to break the connection so that both powers would leave the other alone.

you will not find such a blatant endorsement of subjugation in any of the Pagan European myths.

The Vikings were certainly not pacifists and they would be amply rewarded by their conquests in Valhalla. Odin, the war god, encouraged battlea and killing. You might also want to read the Iliad for some fine examples of gods endorsing subjugation

Jul 27, 2009 - 1:18 pm 73. Abu Infidel:

OOPS, that should be ‘the church did NOT enjoy exclusive rule.”!!

Jul 27, 2009 - 1:22 pm 74. Cichawoda:

72. Abu Infidel:
“The Vikings were certainly not pacifists”

Never said anything about Pacifism but a endorsment of individuals in a struggle against other individuals, nature and the gods. All the old Pagan myths glorified the struggle and the value of the individual, the hero. This is diametrically opposed to the teachings of the church where obediance (not even loyalty) is emphasised.

“There was a separation of powers between church and state, cleric and king.”

The church was by far the dominant partner as to be a king you had to be crowned by the church. The first to successfully break with the Roman church was Henry the 8th. But by than the Renaissance had already started and the humanistic ideas of old Pagan myths where being reexamined.

“Hitler also found faith”

Hitler was a devout Christian, served as an alter boy and considered becoming an abbot. Guess we could argue if Norse stories colored his Christianity or if Christianity colored his view of Norse stories.

Jul 27, 2009 - 1:55 pm 75. Cichawoda:

72. Abu Infidel:

PS

The church is just trying to hold on to the power that is slipping away. 300 years ago it was OK to burn unbelievers, 200 years ago it was OK to own slaves, 100 years ago it was OK to “own” a wife, 50 years ago it was OK to “teach” pagans and today we are the champions of humanity but just leave our pedophile bureaucrats alone.

Yes there have been people of great worth and integrity in the church who fought for justice and freedoms. Somehow I have the feeling they would have done the same if not better from a humanist platform.

Jul 27, 2009 - 2:04 pm 76. Free Quark:

Cichawoda;

Cultures that had war gods had them for a reason. Their people spent a lot of time indulging in conquest and battle. No amount of sugar coating will change that. Odin carried a spear, not a fluffy kitten.

All cultures have ‘owned’ slaves and women. That is not limited to the churched. The Bible was used to condone slavery and it was used by the abolitionists to condemn it.

Renaissance Humanism has its roots in the philosophical texts of the Greeks and Romans, not in the pagan myths of Woden, Zeus or Jupiter. These texts relate to the nature of man, the nature of perception and objectivity, and the ideal state. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_humanism.

Hitler’s religious views were a strange mixture of Christianity, Occultism, Teutonic myths, and state worship. He could hardly be described as ‘devoutly Christian.’ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_religious_beliefs

It was Stalin who’d once studied to be a monk, not Hitler. Stalin was an atheist by the time he went on his murderous spectacles. In pursuit of a completely atheist society, he nearly drove the Russian Orthodox Church to extinction and executed thousands of monks and nuns. Other religions at the Russian periphery were not exempt, enduring the destruction of temples, mosques, sacred buildings and the murders of their clerics.

If religious belief is not synonymous with good behavior, neither is non-belief. Believers and non-beleivers have committed atrocities in the imposition of their philosophies, to put it mildly.

Jul 27, 2009 - 4:45 pm 77. Cichawoda:

76. Free Quark:

I think we have some agreement here although

“philosophical texts of the Greeks and Romans,”
Yes they did but the texts themselves as well as the culture as a whole was informed by the myths and views from which they arose. I am not white washing the Pagan religions – just pointing out that they placed more value on the individual being born from pastoral, nomadic or hunter gatherer lifestyles. The Abrahamic religions grew out of the early religions (Gilgamesh) of agricultural communities in the Fertile Crescent and therefore have a much more authoritarian, top down outlook.

“He could hardly be described as ‘devoutly Christian.”

Well yes he was “strange” but not unlike many other “Christian” politicians past and present. He was rather liked by Pope Pius XII. Was Newton not a Christian because he was obsessed with Alchemy?

“The National Socialist State professes its allegiance to positive Christianity. It will be its honest endeavor to protect both the great Christian Confessions in their rights, to secure them from interference with their doctrines (Lehren), and in their duties to constitute a harmony with the views and the exigencies of the State of today.” –Adolf Hitler, on 26 June 1934, to Catholic bishops

“We were convinced that the people needs and requires this faith. We have therefore undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” -Adolf Hitler, in a speech in Berlin on 24 Oct. 1933

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison.” –Adolf Hitler

“Stalin was an atheist by the time he went on his murderous spectacles.”
I don’t think, judging by his writings or the writings about him, that his “murderous spectacles” was caused, powered or motivated by his Atheism. In fact he had little to say his own religious belief or disbelief. His persecution of organized religion seems to have been a political one – he was not good at sharing power.

Jul 27, 2009 - 5:50 pm 78. Cristina:

Donna V.:

1. “Cristina wrote: Funny how it is the Abrahamicly (?) religious that are most opposed to an individuals right to self determination but than again subservience and obedience are the predominant features of these religions.”

You are confused. I never wrote those lines.

2. “Christina, all I can say is I’m very glad you are not a relative or a friend. And please, never volunteer for work on a suicide hotline. If I suffered from depression or loss and was contemplating suicide, I’d want a friend or a loved one to tell me I was valued and loved and that this pain, as horrible as it is, shall pass. Not that it’s “wonderfully liberating” to kill onesself.”

a. Sorry, but you don’t seem to read very well. My name is spelled without an “h”– it’s certainly not “Crista.” Also, you attribute me things I never wrote.

a.1. I didn’t say it’s liberating to kill yourself, but to know that you can do it, when suffering and indignity are beyond endurance.
a.2. Yours is pure psychobabble. There’s pain that never heals or passes away, no matter how much help you get from family and/or Oprah, like “Tatoo Bob”’s, a “recovering addict” who had the most loving family and supportive community. When he took his own life, after some 20 years of struggle, we all uderstood why he did it. Having known him, I hate to think what he would have thought of your breezy assesment of lethal suffering. He fought hard and, in his life, I bet he appealed to more suicide hotlines you can think of.
a.4. “Do you think those people who survived jumping from the Golden Gate bridge were “liberating themselves?”

They certainly thought so.

Jul 27, 2009 - 7:39 pm 79. Donna V.:

I don’t think, judging by his writings or the writings about him, that his “murderous spectacles” was caused, powered or motivated by his Atheism.

Uh, exactly what “writings” of Stalin’s have you read? Or “writings about him?” Please let us know where your wisdom about Stalin comes from. Read Robert Conquest’s book about him or “Gulag” by Anne Applebaum. Atheism was an integral part of Soviet Communism from the start and the religous were a prime target of Lenin, Stalin and their successors in the USSR and Eastern Europe.

“He was not good at sharing power.” Brilliant insight, that. Yeah, I’ve noticed dictators have an issue with that. Pol Pot and Mao also seemed to have a few problems along those lines. Not that the Orthodox Church was any threat to Stalin by the time he took over, since Lenin had already effectively gutted it.

The Nazis also killed many clergy. Ever heard of a very brave man named Paster Niemoller? I doubt it.

Slavery was a constant in human history up until the early 19th century. Credit the Rev. Wilberforce and the evangelicals for ending the British slave trade.

No comments about the founding the university and hospital systems by the Church during the Middle Ages? Or the work the Irish monks did to salvage the Greek and Roman classics during the Dark Ages? Here’s a quote from Sir Kenneth Clark: “People don’t realize that only 3 or 4 antique manuscripts of the Latin authors are still in existence: our whole knowledge of ancient literature is due to the collecting and copying done by monks that began under Charlemagne. Almost any classical text that survived until the 8th century has survived until today.” So the only reason we know of Aristotle and Plato and Virgil is because of the Christians who succeeded them.

Nobody is arguing that the Church has never done wrong, or that all Christians have behaved well. But your view, which is not based on facts but on what you want to believe, swings too far in the opposite direction. It’s like the leftists who can see nothing but racism and injustice when they look at US history.

Judeo-Christianity has provided the West with a set of ethics that is very difficult to live up to and collectively and individually, we all fall short. But the concept of the value of the individual comes from Christianity. All of your starry-eyed, romanticized, New-Agey hooha about the wonderfulness of pagan cultures doesn’t change it.

Jul 27, 2009 - 7:59 pm 80. Donna V.:

Hitler said contradictory things about Christianity. In the 1930’s many Germans were still nominally Christians. So at times, he paid lip service to Christianity.

In private, it was quite a different matter:

“Under the direction of Martin Bormann, a stenographic record of Hitler’s conversations was made. This, published under the title Hitler’s Table Talk, shows that Christianity and the Jews were regular themes of Hitler’s conversation.

Christianity is a rebellion against natural law, a protest against nature. Taken to its logical extreme, Christianity would mean the systematic cultivation of the human failure. [p. 51]

So it’s not opportune to hurl ourselves now into a struggle with the Churches. The best thing is to let Christianity die a natural death.[] [Hitler's Table Talk, pp 58-62]

The reason why the ancient world was so pure, light and serene was that it knew nothing of the two great scourges: the pox and Christianity. [Table Talk, p. 75]”

Gee, that last quote – why, Cichawoda, you couldn’t have said it better yourself!

Jul 27, 2009 - 8:07 pm 81. Donna V.:

Cichawoda is so easy to refute that I’m starting to feel un-Christian doing it, but I just noticed this gem:

PS: The Evangelical influence was not evident or prominent in America till the late 19th Century and early 20th Century and started with the Prohibition movement

Er, google the First Great Awakening, which occurred in the American colonies in the 1730’s and 40’s. According to wiki, the evangelical movement of the 1740’s played a big role in the development of the movement toward revolution. There was also a Second Great Awakening, which happened in the years prior to the Civil War.

The evangelical movement in England produced Wilberforce and other abolitionists and led to the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833.

Jul 27, 2009 - 8:34 pm 82. Cichawoda:

76. Free Quark:
Did some research on Stalin:
“Stalin remained religious, even pious, for some years after leaving the seminary. Stalin’s reversal on bans against the church during World War II followed a sign that he believed he received from heaven.”

Mussolini seems a better example of a unrepentant Atheist tyrant.

Jul 27, 2009 - 9:43 pm 83. Camo:

Beware the trolls.

Jul 27, 2009 - 9:45 pm 84. Leslie:

I don’t believe the “slippery slope” argument is cause to deny people who are in tremendous pain the peace they seek.

As to supposing an older spouse tells his much younger partner their life is worthless alone: In reality, that spouse’s words would likely be mitigated by the appeals of other loved ones.

Further, places that allow assisted suicide usually have required wait periods, therapist visits and coherency tests.

To say it would be better to live and grieve sounds like the words of someone who has never witnessed an aging loved one face prolonged loneliness, pain, or humiliation – all while battling the inevitable.

Jul 28, 2009 - 1:31 am 85. Mary Jackson:

To say it would be better to live and grieve sounds like the words of someone who has never witnessed an aging loved one face prolonged loneliness, pain, or humiliation – all while battling the inevitable.

Wrong.

I find the idea of a doctor killing a healthy person who is just unhappy at the thought of losing someone utterly immoral and repugnant. Grief is part of life. Just because that silly woman can’t face life alone doesn’t mean a doctor should kill her. If he does, he should rot in jail like any other murderer.

Jul 28, 2009 - 2:18 am 86. Donna V.:

Gee, sorry, Cristina for mixing you up with your fellow suicide fan and for adding the extra “h.” Yes, it should be obvious there’s no “Christ” in you.

Er, Cichawoda, better stop digging. It’s pretty clear you don’t know what you’re talking about. There was quite a few years between Stalin’s years in the seminary and the time he rose to power. During that time, he discovered a new belief system. And if Stalin temporarily laid off the church during WWII, it was because he was trying to rally the Soviet people and boost morale during the fight against Hitler. In other words, it was a ploy.

You’ve very willing to take the public pronouncements of amoral dictators at face value.

Jul 28, 2009 - 4:04 am 87. Cichawoda:

86. Donna V.:
“You’ve very willing to take the public pronouncements of amoral dictators at face value.”

You are very willing to mistake current church dogma for truth. The “Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot …therefore… Atheism, not religion, is responsible for the worst mass murders of history.” argument is false in both fact and logic.

Logic – Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot believed the scientific evidence that the world is round, therefore, not flat-earthers, but believers of science are responsible for the worst mass murders of history. OR John Lennon, Gandhi and Thomas Jefferson where non-Christians therefore not Christians but non-Christians are promoters of peace, human rights and liberty etc… Until you can show a causal connection the argument is moot.

Fact – The Atheism of most of the mentioned dictators is not true, in doubt or unknown.

Hitler was a devout Christian, quotes in previous posts

Stalin was most likely a believer or an agnostic at best – seminary and post seminary, secret visits to home town church through out life, never used Atheism as an argument for any of his actions etc

Pol Pot was raised Christian and makes no remarks about his Atheism. He does appear to be pathologically scared of intellectuals, not unlike the religious right in this country. First thing he did was kill all the doctors, teachers, lawyers, engineers etc in an attempt to return Cambodia to a primitive and natural “communist” paradise – does this sound familiar?

Mao had a particular hatred for homosexuals, whom he brutally murdered as “unnaturals” – makes you wonder how his sopposed Atheist world view lead him to that?

They all feared and hated organized religion because they knew how powerful it could be and power was not something they where willing to share. I am surprised that Mussolini is not used in the list – he is the only 20th century dictator I could find that made his Atheism unequivacally know.

Atheism is a simple rejection of the supernatural, metaphisical and magical world view. It does not lead to “good” or “bad” people but it does take away the motivation to kill others in the name of a belief system.

Jul 28, 2009 - 7:46 am 88. Cichawoda:

81. Donna V.:
Oh Donna, Donna, Donna… OK

Slavery:
In 1772 Lord Mansfield’s opinion in Somerset’s Case made slavery illegal in England. In 1777 Vermont (an independent country at the time) abolish slavery. In 1794, under the Jacobins, Revolutionary France abolished slavery. Wilberforce’s honorable efforts to pass the Slave Trade Act of 1807 where based on the urgings of Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and based on an anti-slavery essay by the Anglican Deacon Thomas Clarkson written in 1785 and in turn inspired by the works of Anthony Benezet, a Quaker abolitionist. It’s funny how Evangelicals want to take credit for everything – reminds me of when Stalin claimed the Russians invented everything.

The first “Great Awakening” – what do you think had a greater influence considering the final secular tone of the documents and laws – the sermons of Whitefield or Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the runaway bestseller that became an overnight sensation read aloud in taverns and other public gathering places everywhere in British North America. Or maybe it was the works of Voltaire and Rousseau with their general hostility towards religion and the promotion of reason for the purposes of freedom and progress – that the Founding Fathers so admired.

The second “Great Awakening” was just a splintering of the Protestant movement in to a who cornucopia of cults – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons); Jehovah Witnesses; Millerism and it’s later branches, Seventh-day Adventist Church (Adventists) and the Worldwide Church of God – with some contribution (not always progressive) to the crisis over slavery.

Third, fourth etc – originates and is embraced often and primarily by evangelical Christians. In recent times, the idea of “awakenings” in US history has been put forth by conservative US evangelicals. I think it is know as blowing your own horn or as revisionist history. Believe it or not it is only recently the Evangelicals have become the dominant religious movement with in Protestantism.

Just to put the Hitler debate to rest. It doesn’t matter to me if his beliefs where fueled by Christianity, Paganism or ideology – he was a man of “Faith”: “It is essential to have fanatical faith and hope and love in and for Germany.” Adolf Hitler

Jul 28, 2009 - 11:33 am 89. Anonymous:

Pol Pot was raised Christian

You simply make up stuff as you go along, don’t you? Pol Pot was raised Buddhist.

Whatever your ethical system may be, you certainly have no problems with lying. And I’m done wasting my time with you. It’s been fun (and extremely easy) to expose you as a liar and a bigoted know-nothing but you’re getting quite boring, dear.

Again: try reading a few books. Your ignorance of history (nevermind theology) is astounding.

Jul 28, 2009 - 11:52 am 90. Donna V.:

LOL! You just make it up as you go along, don’t you? Keep digging that hole – you’re close to China. Pol Pot was raised Buddhist. And even if he had been raised Christian, what does that have to do with the beliefs a person espouses as an adult if he no longer believes in the religion? There are 3 former atheists in my church. Nobody holds their old beliefs against them. There are people raised Christian who become atheists. If they commit evil after disavowing their religion, that isn’t the fault of the religion – as anyone with 2 brain cells who isn’t a complete bigot can figure out.

Not only are you incredibly ignorant of history and theology, you’re no great shakes in the logic department either. Thanks for the entertainment,though. There are atheists who are very difficult to argue against. You ain’t one of them.

Adieu!

Jul 28, 2009 - 12:17 pm 91. Cichawoda:

89. Anonymous:

“Pol Pot’s own childhood was cosseted and secure. He was born in 1925, when Cambodia was still a protectorate of France. His father was a prosperous landowner, with élite connections. His sister and a female cousin were dancers in the royal ballet in the capital, Phnom Penh, living comfortably under the king’s protection. Saloth Sar, as he was called in those days, went to live with them when he was six years old. He attended a series of Catholic French-language schools. Only a few hundred other Cambodians enjoyed this privilege.” – A Political Biography of Pol Pot by David Chandler professor at Georgetown University

There where plenty of Buddhist schools in Phnom Penh at the time and many élite Cambodians converted to Catholicism or simple where non-religious therefore it would appear that the major religious influence in his life where the schools he attended.

90. Donna V.:
“If they commit evil after disavowing their religion”

So what you are saying that the 16+ years that Stalin spent as a devout Orthodox Christian had no influence on him? You are saying that somebodies childhood, education etc has no influence on the way they act regardless of what political or religious roles they choose to play as adults?

“There are 3 former atheists in my church.”

Funny you should say that. I wonder how true that is since according to the US Census the fastest growing segment of the US population are people who where born in a religious family and switch to non-believers and only about 42% of believers participate in any kind of organized religious activity (makes you wonder what they really believe). I bet if we where talking about homosexuals you would say “I have 3 converted homosexual friends.”

Amusing to see how quickly the “Christians” among you resort to epitaphs and falls accusations when they don’t have a real argument to sell.

Jul 28, 2009 - 1:18 pm 92. Donna V.:

Actually, probably most churchgoers know at least one former atheist. It’s not at all unusual. And of course, it’s also not unusual for people to lose faith, but only a very ill-informed person thinks the movement is in only one direction.

A list of well known ex-atheists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_atheists_and_agnostics

And two conversion stories by bloggers who were once atheists and were raised in no religion:

http://www.conversiondiary.com/2006/12/on-having-proof.html

http://www.catholic.com/thisrock/2004/0410dr.asp

So, you see, there’s hope for you yet, Cichwocha!

Jul 28, 2009 - 4:03 pm 93. Cichawoda:

92. Donna V.:
“ill-informed person thinks the movement is in only one direction.”

Oh well, I guess the US Census is ill informed.

change in % of total adults 1990-2008
Christian Total -10.2%
None/No religion, total 6.8%

And as long as we are exchanging links have a look at this one http://tinyurl.com/38t96r

Jul 28, 2009 - 5:10 pm 94. Cristina:

# 86 Donna:

“Gee, sorry, Cristina for mixing you up with your fellow suicide fan and for adding the extra “h.” Yes, it should be obvious there’s no “Christ” in you.”

Do you mean that “Madonna”–you know the one–channels Virgin Mary, and you, with your abbreviated name, should be deprived of access to such holiness? How can you sleep at night?

Jul 28, 2009 - 5:18 pm 95. Cichawoda:

92. Donna V.:

Just had a closer look at your known ex-atheists list – come on, why do you guys always have to stretch the truth?

CS Lewis? “Raised in a church-going family in the Church of Ireland, Lewis became an atheist at the age of 15, though he later paradoxically described his young self as being “very angry with God for not existing”. At the age of 29 he considered himself a theist and was eventually converted at the age of 33.” – so he was an Atheist when he was angry with God? – that’s just silly.

Jul 28, 2009 - 5:41 pm 96. Donna V.:

“that’s just silly.”

Nah, just a paradox. C.S. Lewis, Oxford don and the author of the Narnia Chronicles – wrote a rather famous book about his conversion. Might be a bit beyond you though.

Jul 28, 2009 - 6:44 pm 97. Donna V.:

Besides, if God exists, He exists no matter what is said for and against Him in a blog’s comment section. If He doesn’t, the same holds true.

If I live my life believing there is a God and it turns out there is not – so what? I’ll never know. If you live your life believing He doesn’t exist and it turns out He does – you’ll find out about it.

So believe what you want.

Jul 28, 2009 - 6:58 pm 98. Cichawoda:

96. Donna V.:
“Besides, if God exists, He exists no matter what is said for and against Him”

No not really. God is equivalent to deity. A deity is a postulated supernatural immortal being, who is thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, worshiped by believers. A tree in a clearing is a God when it is worshiped by believers. There is no difference between your belief in your God and their belief in their God. If you woke up after death and found yourself facing a giant, omniscient, omnipotent, etc Oak what would you do? If this question sounds absurd to you, your assumptions are as absurd to me. If you don’t think the omniscient, omnipotent, etc Oak is absurd than you have some evolving to do.

“Might be a bit beyond you though.”

Tell me Donna is the absurdity of calling yourself a Atheist because you are angry at God beyond you?

Jul 28, 2009 - 10:39 pm

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