Suicide, Faith and God
Suicide is the killing of oneself. Some refine this definition to say that
it is the deliberate killing of oneself. Suicide is a health issue not a
religious or moral one. To make it a moral or religious issue is
judgemental. This is such a serious matter that one should leave and be
removed from any religion or ethical community that moralises about suicide.
Nobody has the right to use a tragedy as an opportunity to moralise. Do
not forget that God and religion and fundamentally about the duty to live - so
suicide being morally wrong is core and fundamental.
The Church says suicide is a rejection of God's intention to look after us and a
rejection of his plan to bring good out of the evil we do and suffer. The
atheist would believe the suicide is judged enough without God being brought
into it! The Catechism of the Catholic Church callously worries about how
a suicide has supposedly let everybody down: "[Suicide] likewise offends love of
neighbor because it unjustly breaks the ties of solidarity with family, nation,
and other human societies to which we continue to have obligations. Suicide is
contrary to love for the living God (2281).
St Thomas Aquinas condemned suicide because it,
is contrary to natural self-love, whose aim is to preserve us
injures the community of which an individual is a part
violates our duty to God because God has given us life as
a gift and in taking our lives we violate His right to determine the duration of
our earthly existence (Aquinas 1271, part II, Q64, A5).
But all of the three reasons are over-simplified. It's hugely more complicated
than that. If we have that problem with suicide, imagine how much trouble we
will have in giving reasons for condemning other things!
Can a person have a suicidal motive? Is your motive to kill the pain? Or
yourself? Or both? If you kill yourself to save another person's life, the
subjective reason you do it is to save the other person and not to kill
yourself. If your motive is only to kill the pain then it follows that it is
immoral (if you believe in that word) or evil to condemn or forbid suicide. What
you would do is help people but leave them the right to refuse that help and
kill themselves and praise them for availing of the right.
Socrates
Socrates said that though he was sure the soul was immortal there was a chance
that he was wrong but still he would die for it. Christianity has the same
attitude. Christians are told to be willing to stake their lives and the lives
of others on the existence of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. As
heterosexual marriage is a core doctrine of the Church, you are expected to be
willing to give your life if it means taking a stand against same sex marriage.
Such teachings are really about coercing and forcing yourself and brainwashing
yourself to die for "ifs". No if is worth dying for. No wonder dedicated
believers develop a propensity to start forcing others as well. If you program
yourself you will soon lose sight of how you are trying to program others
especially your vulnerable children. If you should die for an "if" then it
hardly matters if you start going into denial that it is an "if" and start
arguing that you are 100% certain that Jesus was the sinless Son of God and the
Bible is true.
God Belief Does Nothing to Deter Suicide
Children have straightforward faith and die by suicide at alarming levels.
If faith cannot inoculate them how can it protect anybody?
In general we believe that death is the greatest loss we
can suffer so our moral codes or codes about good behaviour should work hard to
protect human life. Religion takes the force of this way and so is to be
condemned outright. It even goes as far as St Paul to say that to die is to gain
and to be better off.
Religion says that God forbids suicide as he has a plan for your life. But that
ban has no credibility. It is just a mere prohibition and no real reasons are
given for it. Merely telling a suicidally depressed person not to do it is a
waste of time. It is in fact making the problem worse. It will be perceived as,
"She cannot give me a a reason to live. I am not going to degrade myself by
living when I don't want to just to please her!" If A provides sufficient
motivation to another to die by suicide then A might be responsible for the
suicide.
The plan stuff is not helpful. Religion is very hazy about the plan. It amounts
to something like saying that God is slowly but surely working to encourage us
to be more loving. But that surely means there will be casualties. And a
depressed person is not going to feel part of a plan. Telling her or him there
is a plan only makes her or him feel worse and that the depression is her or his
fault for not having enough faith.
Some would reason that maybe it's God's plan that you die by suicide for he has
mysterious purposes that are unknown to us. The religious doctrine that evil is
used in God's plan and God only lets evil happen for a good reason says exactly
that!
God is ultimately responsible for the depression and despair you experience.
Thus if it kills you he is responsible. Belief in God should make depression
worse. If it doesn't then does the person understand God at all? Or does the
person really believe?
Don't presume that suicide is intervening in nature and so is against God. The
person who is dying will use medicine to save her own life so if that
intervention is acceptable then it may be acceptable to implement suicide. The
intervention argument cannot prove suicide wrong.
And to say suicide is wrong because God forbids it is really saying ,"I don't
care if suicide hurts you or not. What matters to me is that God has banned it."
Such a view will only spur on the suicidal person who is influenced by religion.
It will deepen the depression.
Religion holds that if you kill yourself because of unbearable pain or
depression you are not fully to blame. If you have lost control of yourself
enough, then it follows that you may not sin at all in suicide.
This view implies that if you die by suicide, religion has to hope that you were
in such great agony that you had to kill yourself. The pain forced your hand.
This view is vicious for it attacks the victim for religious reasons. It wishes
evil on him or her for the sake of religious dogma. Suicidal persons who see
this will easily feel that their religion has failed them. To the depressed
mind, they are personally attacked and despised by their religion.
If a person dies by suicide, the atheist simply regrets that they didn't find
whatever it was that might have saved their life. That is caring for the person.
We do not have to worry about the so-called sin or how it thwarts God. That is a
moral criticism of the person that must be avoided.
An ingrained moral belief that suicide is wrong is not going to stop a person
from attempting or dying by suicide. A suffering mind can be convinced it is right
and that morality is not a consideration. A person may decide to die by suicide
and if they believe its immoral that is further confirmation to them that their
belief that they have no control over improving themselves is correct. They will
reason, "I want to do bad and this proves that I and everybody else is better
off if I die."
Suicide is not necessarily selfish. Many suicides are people of good character.
They see themselves as a curse on the earth. They see their death as a kind act
that relieves others of having to endure them. It does not feel selfish to them.
They think they are doing everybody that counts a service by killing themselves.
Suicide bombers think they are doing a service too.
Believers say that God is bigger than our sins. That surely means that if you
kill yourself to do others a favour you get a free pass into Heaven and are a
saint! Suicide is implicitly encouraged!
The example of Christ who deliberately provoked people to murder him so that he
could pay for their sins, as the gospels say, is not the kind of example we need
in a society riddled with suicide.
A study found, "Religion has typically been seen as something that would protect somebody from thoughts of suicide or trying to kill themselves, and in our study our evidence suggests that may not be the case for everyone, particularly for those we refer to as sexual minority people". The quote comes from John Blosnich of the Injury Control Research Center at West Virginia University in Morgantown (2017).
Nihilism gets the blame for suicides and students gunning
down their classmates at random but nihilism and God are compatible.
Nihilism is the idea that nothing has value so suicide is neither here nor
there. Nihilism is confused with a command to commit suicide but that
would mean it is not nihilism for it values suicide. If life is valuable it does
not follow that God can create a universe where it is valuable for everybody -
assuming it is true that God and evil are agreeable.
If you believe in God, you will have no real reason for opposing suicide.
Moreover, you will have reason for accepting or condoning or encouraging it.
Hume's Reply to Aquinas
David Hume had an answer for Aquinas's silly reasons for opposing suicide. The
following borrows his main points and adds clarifications.
If God exists, then he lets us fight the way he has laid things out. For
example, we have to reclaim land. We have to get cures for the diseases he
makes.
If God lets us contravene the laws of nature he has made, then it follows that
if we are better off committing suicide then we should do it. You may argue that
suicide is never the answer. But what if it was? That would show that God only
forbids suicide because it is never for the best and not because it is killing
yourself. Killing yourself would then not be wrong in itself.
If you assume that suicide is never the answer for anybody, then how do you know
everybody else well enough to make such a global statement? Your arrogance is
not going to help a person rethink. They want understanding. If there are
reasons to kill yourself, you need people to understand them so that you might
see a better way.
If we have free will because of God and not in spite of him, then we are still
fitting in with his will by killing ourselves.
Sometimes suicide does not upset other people. Families may want a relative who
is suffering extremely and who is dying anyway to end it all.
Hume says that suicide does not violate our duty to love ourselves if our
continued existence can be seen as worse than death. He said the fear of death
which is a natural instinct means that we will deliberate carefully and assess
the pros and cons fully to develop the courage and the clarity of mind to end it
all.
Kant argued that Hume was wrong for our moral worth and capacity comes from our
rational will and it's a contradiction to say that such a rational power should
be destroyed by the one who exercises it. To annihilate the subject of morality
in one's person is to root out the existence of morality itself from the world
as far as one can, even though morality is an end in itself. Consequently,
disposing of oneself as a mere means to some discretionary end is debasing
humanity in one's person… (Kant 423).
Depression
It is thought that depression can lead to suicide and that most depression is
caused by a perception that one cannot control one's life to help improve how
one feels. It would be a sense of powerlessness.
You could feel powerless as an atheist. Belief in God does not insulate you
against feeling powerless either for ultimately God makes all the decisions and
you are dependent on him - you even use your free will (assuming free will is
real) because of him.
The atheists should feel they are at the mercy of random forces.
The believers should feel their destiny is in God's hands.
Either view can be damaging but which one is the worst?
The atheists strive to feel that though life is random it can be good because of
that randomness. They do not feel that there is something else out there to put
another spanner in the works - God. And the notion that God uses evil to do good
justifies evil befalling you. If random forces hurt you that is not justified in
any sense. It is 100% regretful. The atheist stance is realistic and courageous
and the best option. The atheist hopes not for a miracle but for a random event
that saves her or him. The atheist's hope is better for she or he will know from
life experience how to expect the unexpected and how it can be surprisingly
good.
We can know, intellectually, that we might win. Emotionally is a different
story. We may not feel that at all. It is thought that knowing might help us
cling on to enough hope to keep us alive.
But knowing it when you don't feel it enough will only make you feel worse. You
will be frustrated at yourself for you will expect yourself to feel a bit less
gloomy.
It is said we can know we can win though we might not believe it at all. This is
really the same thing as saying we know we might win. Can only means you can do
it not that anything is guaranteed.
Conclusion...
Suicide is a health issue not a religious or moral one. Religion must not
be allowed to steal the right to comment on it or condemn it. As death and
suicide is the biggest issue or matter of all, and religion cannot speak to it
or about it then religion should not exist. It is a matter for medics and
family not faithheads. Religion costs lives through suicide. Belief in God
costs lives through suicide. First it cannot discourage it. Second it also
commands it in certain ways. Third, it hides its role. Religion and
faith in God must be opposed - it is better to oppose them strongly than for one
life to be lost over them. Too much blood has been spilt. What is the point of
religion and God when they have no answer for the biggest question of all: "Why
should I not die by suicide?" They do not help therefore they hinder. The
good they do is shabby when the biggest problem is left in limbo and not dealt
with and cannot be dealt with.
Suicide is trying to escape terrible pain. It is not about self-destruction though that is what happens. Self-destruction would be when you really do just throw everything away and it is not about suffering. Religion would suggest the possibility that nihilists and atheists could self-destruct but thaat is a stereotype.
