Because they’re not entitled to decide when and how they die.
So you’re saying that some human lives are not worth living then. You and I just disagree on the details. I think lives of severe suffering are not worth living. You feel that “guilty” peoples lives are not worth living.
I do not fundamentally disagree with your assessment of the situation.
It’s better for the rest of us to squander literally millions of dollars for a trial, housing/feeding/medical care, and lethal injection or electric chair?
All so you can get your vengeful rocks off?
Nothing is squandered when the end result is the extermination of someone who doesn’t deserve to live.
But this is a euthanasia thread, not a death penalty thread.
When they could have taken care of it themselves for free, the resources spent to kill them to get the same result, them dead, are squandered.
You really think we are property of the state, don’t you?
It’s okay for the state to determine when we die, but not ourselves?
Why is it that one is allowed to fill out a lengthy reply in this format and upon submitting it is…, then…, informed that they had not logged in (but I had!) and their user name was in the “welcome box,” and their post is lost. Sorry, but that is inexcusable…, Dope. How about making things “clear” before the time is invested.
Thanks so much.
You can do it fast, or you can do it right.
Yes.
So, it’s okay for an agent of the state to determine when we die? Like, say, a doctor who is licensed by the state? A doctor who is willing to evaluate a patient who wants to die, according to guidelines set up in law?
What a sick, sad and arrogant way of looking at things.
That’s a pretty bold statement, given that a large number of posters on this board who are atheists and perfectly aware of what death means. And think that nothing is better than a net negative.
Anyway, I’m wondering : let’s assume you are yourself in excruriating pain due to some medical condition and that, for the purpose of this hypothetical, you know with 100% certainty that no cure will be found for that condition. And no kind of painkiller can relieve your suffering.
Do you believe that you still wouldn’t want to die in these circumstances, or that you would want to die, but it would be an irrational desire ?
First of all, believing that prison is to make people suffer has nothing to do with the death penalty. So I don’t know where you’re getting that I’m against the death penalty.
Secondly, I am not against the death penalty in theory, if we could perfectly apply it. Unfortunately, it has been absolutely proven beyond doubt that many innocent people have been put to death at the hands of the state, and I am against it for that reason.
I’d much rather we have a “death of personality” where we are able to completely alter a person’s memories, personality, etc. But until then, the death penalty is a solution to a problem (removing broken people who are a danger to others).
I am not strongly against it.
It would be a legitimate use of state power, but not one I agree with. Which is why I’m opposed to legitimizing suicide lest it lead to exactly such a state of affairs.
I would not wish to die in those circumstances.
Are you still pretending to be a liberal?
Let me know when he stops being a hurt 10 year old who gets make everyone live for his emotional stability.
And guess who the biggest “wasters of their family’s resources” are?
I am a liberal.
A highly authoritarian liberal.
Oh, I see - you assumed I was limiting it to “developed countries”. No, I wasn’t. I mean throughout history, overall. Including very undeveloped cultures, and past cultures (as best we can understand them).
And no, I wasn’t saying “lots of cultures think it’s bad” at all. My point was that even cultures that think at least some suicides are good - think Inuit elders walking out into the blizzard/onto the ice floe when food is scare so they are no longer a burden on the starving younger folks, who will then have more food to eat - don’t seem at all enthused about people just up and killing themselves outside of the socially approved reasons. That’s why, when such pressures as famine were removed from such cultures the suicide rate dropped. Another situation is in the Pacific islands which needed to engage in some draconian (by our standards) practices to keep the populations of islands manageable and sustainable. With the advent of modern birth control and easier travel (allowing such islands to “export” excess people) such practices are no longer needed and, even if in the past they were seen as social goods, they are no longer done or even seen as criminal now. The line between acceptable and not acceptable has moved, but there is always a line.
The west has moved from “no approved suicides at all” to “terminal illness” in some (not all) places. The line was moved, that’s all. This thread is talking about moving the bar again, and how much, with a few people saying there should be no demarcation at all, suicide at any time is totally OK and good (not an opinion I personally share).
Currently, suicides are eligible to be considered as organ donors. There have probably been cases where donating the organs of a suicide has provided some comfort to a grieving family but I can’t point to a definite instance, and such instances must be rare given today’s circumstances. While I regret that some organs would not be used if we bar suicides as organ donors I think allowing it in combination with more permissive societal guidelines on suicide gives a perverse incentive.
(The truth is that even if we could recover every single usable organ for donation it still wouldn’t be enough to fill the need - we need to find an alternative way to get organs to truly solve the organ donation problem. There is on going research in growing replacement organs which I definitely think should be supported.)