Dear David,

Your body and your mind are entities, perhaps one entity perhaps not, it doesn't matter much.

Perhaps these are two separate garments, perhaps just one. The body allows you to walk and talk, the mind allows you to think, but both constantly change, or perhaps it is only just one body-mind which constantly changes and eventually wears out: what's all that to do with you?

What all that has to do with me is that my body is me.

Dear David,

It is very sad that you do not know yourself.

Since your body was born, every single atom was replaced therein.
Are you then someone else than who you were when you had a baby's body?

I am fed up with the arrogance of meddling Christians, Paul Russel it is none of your dam business what I do with my body. Why don't you stop wasting your time put your energy into helping people who might benefit from it.

Why is this issue so distorted by some of the above writers ?

Suicide is one thing. Assisting, or persuading, people to kill themselves is quite another. Murder is another.

Surely tighter boundaries can be put around what is legal, suicide, in that people can kill themselves without the involvement of any other person ?

And why are opponents to assisted killing written off as Christians ? Surely if one believes in an afterlife, one is more likely to write this one off ? There's another waiting, so why worry ?

As an atheist, I believe that we have one life, one precious span of time, to make contributions to humanity - and then we're gone. Forever. I'm puzzled how and why sections of the pseudo-Left have degenerated into a death cult.

Yes, I've lost loved ones, and many, many acquaintances. Knock around the Indigenous scene and you can't avoid it. So many precious people whose one-and-only lives were cut short. Gone. Forever. They have left this beautiful, troubled planet and they will never be seen or heard or hugged or laughed with ever again. The End.

So the notion of counselling people who are depressed, or not in pain, or in imminent danger of dying (i.e. The End), to top themselves is grotesque, abhorrent and against humanity.

Joe

Loudmouth,

"Surely if one believes in an afterlife, one is more likely to write this one off"

No, traditionally suicide is a sin, since human lives care God's gift, there are, of course, many theological interpretations, take your pick, so the assumption that believers in an afterlife necessarily accept the practice of suicide is incorrect.

"So the notion of counselling people who are depressed, or not in pain, or in imminent danger of dying (i.e. The End), to top themselves is grotesque, abhorrent and against humanity."

Agreed, however, it's conceivable that a rational person could arrive at a decision to commit suicide.