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Dear Peter,

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The Christian Church buildings are often referred to as “God’s House”, never the “House of the Faithful” or the “House of the People” or any other appellation that might somehow suggest that they are dedicated to the ordinary men, women and children who frequent them.

After all, who are the churches built for ? God ? Why does God need buildings ? Isn’t God supposed to be “infinite, eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient” ? Aren’t churches built for the “faithful”, the adherents to particular religions, to create an awesome and peaceful atmosphere of sanctity, not for God – he doesn’t need that – but for the “faithful”, the ordinary men, women and children who (as you say) are “sentient beings” and believe there is a God ?

In the US, the “People’s House” is what the Democrats call the House of Representatives. No God there at all. He is in a completely different building, at another address.

Strange, isn’t it ?

It seems that, for the American Democrats, the House of Representatives is far more human than the Church.

Maybe the Grand Old Party has a different point of view.

I shouldn't be surprised if it did.

Would you ?

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To David F.

This is going to sound harsh, but hear me out please. Suicide in my opinion is another very drastic symptom of the world, (or maybe more locally the nation or the culture that has suicides), that the world is sick. I take suicide as a serious matter and don't want my comments to be assessed as dismissing or lowering the value of suicide as an issue.

However with that said, why was the suicide committed, and in larger groups of people are there dynamic cultural structures that create reasons or conditions for suicide on a more massive scale?

With that in mind, you said your cousin couldn't tell her mother she was pregnant. But instead decided to commit suicide. This is a question not just for your cousin but for the larger society as a whole. Why couldn't she have told her mother she was pregnant? What was the underlying issue to stop her? I don't know your family dynamics but my first guess for her and those who face the same fear is the shame in telling her mom, and potentially the reaction the could come from it. If there are other reasons that you feel comfortable sharing, please go a head and do so. I know suicide is a very emotional time in which burdens become so huge for a person to face and deal with. Shame and the assumed backlash are huge burdens when in a situation where suicide wins out as a solution.

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As for today, there are abortion programs for people to have abortions in secret away from stigma and shame. This might seem to be the solution but in it the solution calls for killing unborn babies. Murder is the wrong word here because that's a criminal offense and murder is not accepted by society as a whole. None the less this killing of unborn children is still killing. And it is viewed as acceptable. A solution to the problem of pregnancy. That in my opinion is as monstrous as suicide is tragic.

This "solution" is where much of my comments have stemmed from. The problem with abortion is that it is seen as a solution and therefore killing children (as long as we don't see them and acknowledge they are alive and human) is an acceptable socially recognized venue to another problem of an over sexed and sex driven issues. Love, sex, and all the emotions related to relationships are an unlooked at issue because the consequence of pregnancy is solved by socially accepted killing.

(I'll get back to that later Toni Lavis, and thank you for the link on baby hatches. For now this is all I have time to comment on).

Hi NSS,

When's your birthday ? The day you were born, or the day when your mum's egg was fertilised by your dad's sperm ? When do you celebrate ? Has it ever occurred to you to calculate that DoF, the Date of your Fertiisation ?

As a bloke, I'm not sure that I have much right to tell any woman what to do with her body. I can have fun for a couple of hours, maybe three, while she must deal with the consequences of that ecstasy for perhaps nine months, or if she takes the advice of many spectating men here, for eighteen years. There are no real consequences for me, unless she dobs me in to the various authorities, but I've probably pissed off by then, which might be inconvenient for me, but not for eighteen years at a stretch.

It's her business, first and foremost. Keep offering advice though, although it's not really your business or mine.

Joe

Dear NNS,

I cannot tell you what was in my cousin’s mind. I know she didn’t tell her mother because her mother did not know she was pregnant until the girl was examined after her death. I can only assume that she thought life was no longer worth living in her circumstances. In her social milieu that was probably a reasonable judgment. I don’t think the social milieu that she was a part of has changed, but a girl in her circumstances now has an alternative, and that alternative is an abortion by a qualified medical practitioner.

In my opinion you and people like are part of the problem. You and people like think certain things are moral and certain things are immoral. I also feel that certain things are moral and certain things are immoral. However, I don’t feel that everybody has to have the same standards as I have. You apparently see your standards as standards everyone else should have.


To call a fetus an unborn baby is emotive language. A fetus does not necessarily become a baby even there is no abortion. Sometimes natural conditions terminate a pregnancy. You, I and other people will eventually die so all living people can be called undead persons. If you want to have a rational discussion about abortion you can start by calling a fetus what it is rather than call it an unborn baby.

Abortion is not killing children because a fetus is not a child. A fetus is human and alive, but it is not a child. If you want to have a rational discussion about abortion you can start by calling a fetus what it is rather than call it a child.

Dear NNS,

To me it is a great social advance that a pregnant woman who does not want the pregnancy to go to term can get an abortion by a qualified medical practitioner. To me it will also be a great advance if a person who does want to live any more can be offered a simple non-painful end to her or his life. The person may be required to see a psychiatrist to determine whether it is due to depression which can be treated or whether it is a based on a rational judgment of the person’s circumstances.

In Japanese society if there is a great loss of face a person is expected to commit suicide. Should that mean that we have to feel the same about suicide? I feel no more bound by Japanese culture than I do by your religion.

You have already admitted your belief in a hell that people who don’t believe in your silly and stupid superstition get put into. It is a silly and stupid superstition because no reasonable religion would condemn people to an eternity of suffering for an opinion. You talked about a sick society. A religion that would condemn people to an eternity of suffering for an opinion is a sick religion.

Calling a religion silly and stupid is emotive language even if one judges it to be silly and stupid. Calling a fetus an unborn baby or a child is also emotive language. I’m sure you don’t like your religion called silly and stupid. Well, I don’t like a fetus called an unborn baby or a child. If you want to continue this conversation please try to stop using emotive language.