We’re studying Othello at the moment, and I got round to this debate with some chaps from school.
I’m not sure about other religions (excuse the ignorance) but I know that orthodox Christianity condemns suicide as an action that takes you straight to hell. What do contemporary Christians etc think of this?
I don’t believe in religion anyway but I think that’s ridiculous - how can you be punished for killing yourself, but not for murdering someone (as long as you say sorry before you die?)
Also, what if you kill yourself and then repent? I know it sounds impossible but think - you shoot yourself in the head and then as you die, you suddenly think “shit, I SO wish I hadn’t done that. I’m sorry God”. Do you still go to hell?
i don’t get this either, surely in killing yourself you are brining yourself to god quicker and showing that you believe in him/her, so why is this bad?
I think the Christian answer on this one is that by comitting suicide you are taking a life (allbeit your own one) and also you are doing it for the sole purpose of going to heaven quicker which is totally selfish and therefore a sin.
The whole concept of salvation in Christianity baffles me. If you place a child in a room with a chocolate bar and put a sign up saying “don’t eat the chocolate”, the sensible thing to do is to reward the child if he/she restrains themselves and doesn’t eat the chocolate and to punish the child if he/she does eat the chocolate. What Christianity does is say, it doesn’t matter whether the child eats the chocolate or not as long as he/she believes there is someone outside the room who will reward or punish him/her.
I will never understand this concept. If God rewarded those who lead a good life regardless of belief I would have more respect for the faith and would perhaps even follow it. However, the faith allows people like Myra Hindley to goto heaven, yet damns people like me to hell, just for not believing. I don’t see this is a logical system of reward and punishment, and whether I’m right or wrong about whether God exists, I choose to reject this mangled form of salvation.
Remember though that people must fully repent (i.e. be genuinely sorry) before they can be allowed into heaven. So its unlikely that someone who has just comitted suicide is going to get away with saying sorry after they’ve done it and try and trick God in some way. God’s not that stupid
But theoretically speaking, it could happen. People “find God” all of a sudden, all the time.
I’m quite with you on the whole unfairness thing. Random thing - one of my mum’s best friends is best friends with Myra Hindley. Why would you do that? Ugh
I can see why, if there is a God, he would disagree with suicide. When commiting suicide, you are completely denouncing any joy in anything around you. To commit suicide you need guts, and complete conviction in your belief that life is an utter pile of bollocks. For heavens sake - it took God a whole six days (taking the Christian-Jewish-Islam version of god) to create the universe and life within it - all that work and some guy is telling you that hard work wasn’t worth it?
But personally I’m not religious but I do think, if anyone is thinking of suicide (I do know someone who did - he was a deeply religious Christian person incidently) all you need to do is take a scientists point of view rather than a “you-will-not-go-to-heaven-if-you-do” point of view which is: It took four billion years for life to evolve and it produces you. It took 4 billion years to perfect the human form!
[This message has been edited by clara (edited 10 February 2002).]
Ignoring the whole can you repent after killing yourself argument, why isn’t killing yourself just as bad as killing someone else? I think in a way that it is. That doesn’t stop me from sympathising with people who committ suicide in the same way that you can sympathise with some murderers.
I think this is similar to a point I raised in the White Pride debate. In the same way that it is just as bad for a Jew to say an anti-semitic Jew as a non-Jew to do so, it is just as bad to kill yourself as it is to kill someone else. The morality of an act is determined by the act itself rather than who does it or to whom the act is done. Either way it’s saying a racist joke or murdering someone. The details of the people involved shouldn’t change anything.
Why should killing yourself be as bad as murdering someone else?
Well, part of me believes that commiting suicide is not as bad as murder - simply because the main victim has a choice in the matter!
However, the other half of me points out that the main victims of any death are those who remain behind and have to deal with the loss. It is so much worse for a friend to commit suicide (because you will be left with guilt) than to be murdered. So in a way, commiting suicide is just as bad as murder, although my internal argument rages on!
Let’s assume that you had no one. There are many people walking this planet today that have no family, no friends. They are pratically invisible (read Lawerence Sander’s The Third Deadly Sin character named Zoe Kohler). Sustaining a job and going straight home. Nobody talks to them, nobody wants to. They have nobody. What harm to the general population would it be if they poisened themselves and took a taxi straight to a hospital. They die and don’t even cost the city any money.
The way I look at it is that we are the only owners of our lives. We have an obligation to our parents, because they had invested much time and money into us. But as adults our bodies and lives belong to us. If we want to terminate it, what harm does it do?
Unless of course you have a family that loves and depends on you, then that is just dead wrong to committ suicide.
