agreed. I'm not going to force someone who wants to die, to live. But I will definitely make them rationalize it for me and I'll in turn propose the opposite viewpoints' stance. Its what I'd want done for me, plain and simple.

(November 13, 2013 at 10:39 am)Cinjin Wrote: No its not. Not at all actually. If I chose to defend suicide for my 80 year old grandfather with pancreatic cancer that has absolutely nothing to do with me feeling that life has no meaning. Even if I defend a 20 year old man's right to kill himself because he got his dick blown off by an IED, I'm STILL not admitting that life has no meaning for ME. The meaning of life is subjective to each person and you are by no means an authority on what the meaning in my life or anyone elses actually is.

I claim no authority over someone else's life purpose.

What I claim is that defending suicide in any case is simply stating that life CAN lose its meaning.

So "meaning" in any life is actually weaker than "pain". This puts pain and comfort as the priority measurement of the value of life above meaning.

If pain and comfort are the measuring stick for a valuable life, those in pain are basically worthless, and this opens the door to many a moral dilemma.

This is not how humanity works. The value of life does not diminish because of the circumstances it undergoes. The value of life CANNOT diminish.

(November 13, 2013 at 10:39 am)Cinjin Wrote: Inspirational speeches aside, your rant still does not address the point. Some people have nothing left to make the climb, and universal answers for such difficult questions never work. Is suicide often the answer? No, I don't think so either, but to just assume that everyone has the ability to struggle through and find a happy ending is a small-minded notion. There is a level of suffering that no living thing should have to endure, and I believe that that level may vary greatly from person to person.

I make no claim to happy endings in this life. Sometimes we go into the maze to fight the beast and the beast wins.

Would you call that a worthless life? Should that person never have lived because they lost in the end?

If you measure life by pain, life becomes a meaningless dance around trying to just be comfortable. It becomes a SLAVE to comfort, and when comfort disappears, life becomes meaningless.

(November 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm)GodsRevolt Wrote: I claim no authority over someone else's life purpose.

What I claim is that defending suicide in any case is simply stating that life CAN lose its meaning.

Yes, it CAN. Recognizing that it CAN LOSE its meaning is the first step towards assessing what meaning it actually CAN acquire.

(November 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm)GodsRevolt Wrote: So "meaning" in any life is actually weaker than "pain". This puts pain and comfort as the priority measurement of the value of life above meaning.

No, the remaining meaning in any life CAN be less than the weight of its pain, but that is for the owner of the life to determine.

(November 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm)GodsRevolt Wrote: If pain and comfort are the measuring stick for a valuable life, those in pain are basically worthless, and this opens the door to many a moral dilemma.

Again, comfort and pain are a yard stick. If it were not in the case of you christians, then you wouldn't care for your standard of living, churches wouldn't care to amass wealth, and one spectacularly sybritic Catholic Bishop wouldn't renovate his own official residence in Germany at a cost to his perishners of $50 million. But except amongst certain "captains of industry", christian adherents of the wealth gaspel, and the said bishop in Germany, comfort and pain are usually not the ONLY yard stick. Meaning of life therefore depends on a aggregate measure of which pain and comfort can become, but is not by necessity, a dominant part.
So it is up to those in pain to determine which yard sticks to measure the aggregate meaning of their lives, and how much those yard sticks say. Not you.

(November 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm)GodsRevolt Wrote: This is not how humanity works. The value of life does not diminish because of the circumstances it undergoes. The value of life CANNOT diminish.

Who the fuck are you, beholden as you are to the religion that probably killed more of humanity against their expressed wishes than all others combined, to speak for humanity about how humanity works?

(November 13, 2013 at 4:44 pm)Chuck Wrote:

(November 13, 2013 at 4:30 pm)GodsRevolt Wrote: This is not how humanity works. The value of life does not diminish because of the circumstances it undergoes. The value of life CANNOT diminish.

Who the fuck are you, beholden as you are to the religion that probably killed more of humanity against their expressed wishes than all others combined, to speak for humanity about how humanity works?

A human. Therefore he has as much right as anyone else. The fact that he adheres to a religion that has been used to justify acts of inhumanity does not change this.

Quote:The value of life CANNOT diminish.

You're nuts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amyotrophic..._sclerosis

Quote:Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) – also referred to as motor neurone disease (MND) in most Commonwealth countries, and as Lou Gehrig's disease in the United States – is a debilitating disease with varied etiology characterized by rapidly progressive weakness, muscle atrophy and fasciculations, muscle spasticity, difficulty speaking (dysarthria), difficulty swallowing (dysphagia), and difficulty breathing (dyspnea).

Quote:Most people with ALS die from respiratory failure, usually within three to five years from the onset of symptoms. The median survival time from onset to death is around 39 months, and only 4% survive longer than 10 years.

(November 13, 2013 at 5:15 pm)Optimistic Mysanthrope Wrote:

(November 13, 2013 at 4:44 pm)Chuck Wrote: Who the fuck are you, beholden as you are to the religion that probably killed more of humanity against their expressed wishes than all others combined, to speak for humanity about how humanity works?

A human. Therefore he has as much right as anyone else. The fact that he adheres to a religion that has been used to justify acts of inhumanity does not change this.

You confuse the right to make noises with any claim to being taken seriously.

(November 13, 2013 at 5:53 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

Quote:The value of life CANNOT diminish.

You're nuts.

I think the key point is that he said the value of life cannot diminish, rather than the quality of life.

(November 13, 2013 at 6:15 pm)Chuck Wrote: You confuse the right to make noises with any claim to being taken seriously.

The claim that life has an intrinsic value, undiminished by circumstance, shouldn't be taken seriously? Really?

(November 13, 2013 at 7:06 pm)Optimistic Mysanthrope Wrote: The claim that life has an intrinsic value, undiminished by circumstance, shouldn't be taken seriously? Really?

Really. The notion that something can be asserted to "just be" without regard to circumstance shouldn't be taken seriously.

But that wasn't your objection. You didn't question the assertion, you questioned his right to make that assertion.

(November 13, 2013 at 7:34 pm)Optimistic Mysanthrope Wrote: But that wasn't your objection. You didn't question the assertion, you questioned his right to make that assertion.

That wasn't the goal post you just set one post back.

But be it as it may, I think the fact that I question the assertion ought to be as clear from the rest of my posts as if it were dripping from the monitor. Depending on the provenance of the assertion, I can certainly question the assertion but respect the claim of the person who made it to be taken seriously.

However in this case, Given the provenance of the assertion, I can not feel even the faintest glimmer of respect for his theatrically emphatic claim to being taken seriously.