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Post by stevec on Dec 17, 2013 10:03:03 GMT -6
I answered your question. The answer is that your premise is flawed, refore your conclusions are erroneous. It's not that I didn't give an answer. it is that you don't like the answer. No, you didn't answer my questions, you simply stated I was wrong and that I was stupid. Your problem is that, when you can't use fancy words to answer my questions, you're lost.
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Post by Flitzerbiest on Dec 17, 2013 11:06:35 GMT -6
I was speaking to Steve. This logic of yours, though, is also then tantamount to saying, that a person that opts not to continue cancer treatment is committing suicide as well. Your premise is that 'we treat animals better at the end of life, then we do people". That's an opinion, not a fact, based on the conclusion that what may be considered apt treatment for an animal thus constitutes the norm for how people should be treated. We put a dog out of its misery, so that = lets put people out of their misery. That really doesn't hold up to scrutiny, in the end. (However, if we do treat animals better than people in other ways, then that is a sad indictment of our culture, and one I would say has some merit since i see a lot of people more concerned about adopting pets than adopting children). Animals are not people, and this equivalency comes from equating the two. Notice how the dog doesn't get the choice, though. Animals are property, and their owner has life and death power over them. Euthanasia is an option because they are not people, they are property even though they are live creatures, even if we have some kind of fondness for them. So if you are going to go this route, then you have gone down a pretty slippery slope. But you atheists like to weasel the meaning of things to suit your purpose when convenient.We can, if you desire, have a civil discussion on this topic, but you're off to a bit of a bad start. So far, you have said that Euthanasia is out of bounds because people and animals are different. I agree that animals do not have choice in when they are put to sleep. Obviously, the process for human euthanasia needs to depend on the choice (in advance or in real time) of the patient. Whether or not you want to pursue the animal analogy, please answer this question: If a patient has a disease with no hope of cure, is suffering miserably from symptoms of the disease and wishes to speed up rather than delay his death, why should he not have this option?
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Post by malleodei on Dec 17, 2013 12:23:13 GMT -6
Fortunately, we live at a time in which medicine does afford ways to alleviate this suffering to various degrees with real results.
A patient should not have this option because it is never moral to intentionally kill someone, even one's self. Now, I realize that, by using the word, moral, the response will be all sorts of howls. Steve will tell us how immoral bible-god is and blah-blah-blah. Somehow, in the 20th century, we have developed this bizarre sense of freedom in which we think that freedom is the self-determination to terminate one's own life. Where this strange notion of freedom comes from, I have no idea.
I think that I may have already mentioned the principle (or is it principal? UGH, DOT will be sure to correct me) of double effect. For all of western history (A.D.) there has always been clear distinctions that everyone has recognized between the direct and intentional taking of life (in which the end does not justify the means) and things like heroic sacrifice (now, apparently, the solider who throws himself on the grenade to save his buddies is to be counted as suicidal...) suffering from illness and palliative measures that may cause death, and the like.
Apparently, it is only the enlightened now in the 21st century, who see that everyone has been fooled, for all this time.
I get that people dying are in agony, and the pain and suffering is excruciating. No one wants that. I have a family. I've lived through that (as I'm sure you all have). And no one is saying that they should suck up the pain on some heroic notion of Christian virtue. That's not what I am saying. But it is a mis-guided sense of compassion to do violence to a person (and that's what killing is. Let's be honest) in some misguided sense of compassion. Violence never begets compassion. It is wholly misguided at best.
You know why we're never going to agree? Because you see and believe in nothing after death. I do, and the Resurrection changes everything.
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Post by stevec on Dec 17, 2013 13:15:36 GMT -6
Malleo,
Why does the Church venerate those who died for their faith, when clearly in many cases death was a choice? Clearly the Church does recognize suicide as a noble act.
Are you now equating Jesus' death with the act of throwing oneself on a grenade? That's interesting, how does one throw oneself on a crucifix and die? Seems like he needed some help, don't you think?
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Post by showmedot on Dec 17, 2013 13:41:15 GMT -6
Nathan Hale is inapplicable. He took a calculated risk that his insurrectionist acts MIGHT result in his being captured and executed. Then again, like Paul Revere, he could have been fortunate enough not to have gotten caught.
Jesus KNEW that he was to be sacrificed. That was his purpose. The Gospel makes clear that he had no maybe-caught-maybe-not as did Hale.
Potential suicidal risk does not equate, serious though the plight of any number of the American revolutionaries was.
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Post by stevec on Dec 17, 2013 14:27:15 GMT -6
Malleo,
Does the Catholic Church have an official position or recommendations for those who find themselves in convert or die circumstances in Islamic countries?
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Post by malleodei on Dec 17, 2013 15:23:25 GMT -6
Malleo, Why does the Church venerate those who died for their faith, when clearly in many cases death was a choice? Clearly the Church does recognize suicide as a noble act. You still hold to your false premise. In suicide, the person seeks out death and actively pursues it, either giving another permission to kill them or doing it themselves. A martyr neither seeks their own death, nor has the free choice to actively terminate their life. The example of, deny Christ, and I won't kill you, is not a choice that can be made freely with free consent. Sophie's choice is no choice. I was giving an example to show how absolutely ludicrous you all are being. Talk about twisting things. You don't see the difference simply because you don't want to. It's called the poisoned mind of hate towards religion and those who are religious.
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Post by malleodei on Dec 17, 2013 15:26:24 GMT -6
Nathan Hale is inapplicable. He absolutely is. He was for freedom. He was against the powers that be. Simply amazing the words game you have to play to fit the square peg into the round hole. Words mean things. Suicide is suicide, and martyrdom is martyrdom. The two are different, and cultures and languages have recognized the distinction for hundreds and hundreds of years. And now, you people with an anti-christian worldview, muddy the terms in order to peddle your own view of things. But that is the modern way, I suppose, where people will hear what their itching ears want to hear.
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Post by stevec on Dec 17, 2013 16:37:38 GMT -6
Malleo,
We're talking about the value of a human life. You would think that saving a life would be sacred under all circumstances the way you talk, but evidently a life forfeited for faith is noble from your perspective. It's hypocrisy.
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Post by showmedot on Dec 17, 2013 20:10:07 GMT -6
Nathan Hale is inapplicable. He absolutely is. He was for freedom. He was against the powers that be. Nice attempt at red herring quoting, Malleo. THIS was my point about Hale which you tidily excised: "Nathan Hale is inapplicable. He took a calculated risk that his insurrectionist acts MIGHT result in his being captured and executed. Then again, like Paul Revere, he could have been fortunate enough not to have gotten caught." What was Jesus's calculated risk? Zip! His entire mission was as sacrificial victim from the start. It wouldn't be farfetched to equate Jesus's role with that of Japanese kamikaze pilots--both knew what their purpose was, suicide. Jesus, suicide by divine fiat and earthly authority, a 1st century form of suicide by cop. Based on your reasoning, the 9/11 hijackers were martyrs for Islam. Their purpose was religious; they died for their faith. Both suicidal and martyrs.
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Post by stevec on Dec 17, 2013 20:56:10 GMT -6
He absolutely is. He was for freedom. He was against the powers that be. Nice attempt at red herring quoting, Malleo. THIS was my point about Hale which you tidily excised: "Nathan Hale is inapplicable. He took a calculated risk that his insurrectionist acts MIGHT result in his being captured and executed. Then again, like Paul Revere, he could have been fortunate enough not to have gotten caught." What was Jesus's calculated risk? Zip! His entire mission was as sacrificial victim from the start. It wouldn't be farfetched to equate Jesus's role with that of Japanese kamikaze pilots--both knew what their purpose was, suicide. Based on your reasoning, the 9/11 hijackers were martyrs for Islam. Their purpose was religious; they died for their faith. Both suicidal and martyrs. Ohhhh, nice analogies. Let's not forget that the kamikaze pilots sacrificed their lives for their emperor/god.
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Post by showmedot on Dec 17, 2013 21:11:22 GMT -6
Here's the distinction Malleo claims between suicide and martyrdom (one not nearly so clearcut as he suggests it is, btw):
If we accept these distinctions, then Jesus was clearly suicidal since he went to Jerusalem despite knowing full well that doing so was a fatal decision and furthermore did so knowing that he would be arrested, tried and condemned to death. Sounds like "actively pursues it" along with "giving another permission to kill..."
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Post by Flitzerbiest on Dec 17, 2013 21:52:51 GMT -6
Fortunately, we live at a time in which medicine does afford ways to alleviate this suffering to various degrees with real results. A patient should not have this option because it is never moral to intentionally kill someone, even one's self. Now, I realize that, by using the word, moral, the response will be all sorts of howls. Steve will tell us how immoral bible-god is and blah-blah-blah. Somehow, in the 20th century, we have developed this bizarre sense of freedom in which we think that freedom is the self-determination to terminate one's own life. Where this strange notion of freedom comes from, I have no idea. I don't object to the word "moral" at all. It is a truly excellent word, and one that should be at the heart of this debate. I also agree that (some) cases of martyrdom are irrelevant to this debate. If I have any objection at all so far, it is over the juxtaposition of the words "never" and "moral". To be certain, there are some places where these words seem to belong together (the abuse of children, for example), but philosophy and even Catholic theology abound with examples of justifiable killing. If causing death is permissible in war, which almost never has a pure moral footing, how much more so ought we to contemplate death when it is a) welcomed by the person, b) already inevitable in the short to intermediate term, and c) motivated by desire to alleviate suffering? You are correct--there are many things we can do to alleviate suffering, but you're flatly delusional if you think that they work beyond a certain point. Twice this week I have encountered people for whom the suffering was approaching the unbearable. The various medications were already dosed rather high and were causing more side effects than relief. Both of these people still desired to press on, but if they hadn't, who are you (or the church) to tell them that they must. The idea that euthanasia violates some rigid dictum against killing is rather laughable from an institution that has, over the centuries, slaughtered so many heretics for the good of their souls. Drop the nonsense that killing is always wrong, and please come join us for a reasonable fireside chat.
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Post by stevec on Dec 17, 2013 23:59:03 GMT -6
Michael Servetus thought he was attending a nice fireside chat. No thank you, I'm not falling for that old Christian trick.
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Post by stevec on Dec 18, 2013 0:52:35 GMT -6
Here's the distinction Malleo claims between suicide and marIyrdom (one not nearly so clearcut as he suggests it is, btw): If we accept these distinctions, then Jesus was clearly suicidal since he went to Jerusalem despite knowing full well that doing so was a fatal decision and furthermore did so knowing that he would be arrested, tried and condemned to death. Sounds like "actively pursues it" along with "giving another permission to kill..." You're not going to get a response to your post. There was a song, "Chop Suey", about 10 years ago that included lyrics about self righteous suicide, and Jesus' last words on the cross. Great song.
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