Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: Dog Gone

I'm not going to "blast" you, I'm simply going to state that I think your analysis is wrong. There is a significant moral difference between "sacrificing oneself" such as in a battle, and committing suicide.

The "sacrificing oneself" that I think you're talking about would be a scenario such as throwing oneself on a hand grenade to protect one's compatriots. Such an analogy forgets that someone else threw the hand grenade with the intent of killing. The person who commits the sacrifice is responding to that malevolent act. Their intent was not to kill oneself, it was to save others.

Suicide, on the other hand, is an act committed with the intent of killing oneself. It's a final denial of God's grace and of hope.

Obviously, you can't punish someone who has committed suicide, at least in the secular sense. And it's not left to us to decide whether someone who has committed suicide will be "punished" in the hereafter. What happens in the hereafter is left to our Lord.

Where I view this as a "moral absolute" is the fact that this is a suicide industry. It's an industry that profits from human despair, and profits from the death of fellow human beings. Morally, I don't view it much differently than I would view operating an oven at Auschwitz.

That the individuals in pain and despair seek death "voluntarily" in Switzerland is of little consequence. Many of the internees in the death camps eventually sought death, and were all too willing to go when it was time. That did not render those who killed them any less culpable.

The Nazis did it for hate, and yes, for profit. The suicide industry does it for profit, and yes, for hate.


17 posted on 06/03/2006 7:07:01 AM PDT by RKBA Democrat (Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 12 | View Replies ]


To: RKBA Democrat
In Fox's Book of Martyrs there are numerous accounts of women who threw themselves off of cliffs rather than be apprehended and subjected to all sorts of horrible torture, humiliation, and inevitable death.

It's hard to see the moral absolute there. Perhaps you can.

I can pretty easily place most, and maybe all, assisted suicide into "wrong under any circumstance" category. But I think there can be times when dying sooner voluntarily might be the best choice if all your options are horrible.

18 posted on 06/03/2006 7:29:06 AM PDT by Dog Gone
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson