Andrew – you advocate that whether we do or don't make use of voluntary assisted dying should be up to each of us to decide for ourselves (without coercion).

So it would seem that you would agree with Philip Nitschke who infamously stated, “ . . . all people qualify [to have assistance to die], not just those with the training, knowledge or resources to find out how to ‘give away’ their life. And someone needs to provide this knowledge, training or recourse necessary to anyone who wants it, including the depressed, the elderly bereaved, and the troubled teen.

. . . This would mean that the so-called ‘peaceful pill’ should be available in the supermarket so that those old enough to understand death could obtain death peacefully at the time of their choosing.”

Do you sincerely think that “the depressed, the elderly bereaved, and the troubled teen” should be helped to end their life whenever they choose? Should a "peaceful pill" be readily available for anyone who wants it?

If not then you fail to stand by your advocacy that it should be up to each of us to decide for ourselves about VAD.

Come on, spell out clearly exactly what it is you are supporting

There is a way four.

Fund research into "next life" .

Knowing with certainty what comes next after death, will ensure the paradigm of successful VAD.

Until then, what if " things are bad but they could be worse" . That question always remains relevant.

Dan

I disagree! Life is a precious gift. Instead of making doctors acquiesce to assisted suicide, need to help patients live! Today over a million folk a year are routinely told, we've done all we can make your life a living hell in the process, now go home and die.

Until then here are some scripts for some very powerful, very expensive opioids that'll make you more comfortable if all but vegetative! Albeit, less effective over time!

We could have remediated your condition in hours of your first consultation but for government and the fossil fuel industry, big nuclear, big pharma's and green activists recalcitrant intransigence!

Given all those groups are united in extreme vociferous opposition to MSR thorium/alpha particle/miracle cancer cure, bismuth 213!

Currently, around 1 in 2 of us will in our lifetime, be exposed to cancer as the patient or relative of patient!

Be forced to watch the last stages of often remediable conditions go on to claim yet another victim prematurely, sometimes very young children!

All while the ubiquitous "cancer industry' makes squillions from this for them, gravy train! From big pharma to those whose very lucrative business models raising funds for cancer research?

Were this not the case and the untold scandal, this would be the very next, asleep at the wheel, four corners expose!?

Long may it continue, even if that also means the victims in their millions annually have to suffer months of nausea, hair loss, projectile vomiting, diarrhoea, along with indescribable pain!?

DON'T NEED ASSISTED SUICIDE, JUST A GUN LICENCE/ALLOW THEM TO TOP THEMSELVES AS AN ALTERNATIVE TO MIRACLE CANCER CURE BISMUTH 213!

Be good enough to do it in the bath old chap so there's not too much mess to clean up/use the pistol, not the shotgun we want a recognisable head left on your shoulders, OK?

Let's make all of the above an election issue the very next time we vote, anywhere! Demand of your rep, their views on nuclear power, climate change/MSR thorium!
Alan B

Hi JP

These are great questions; thank you for raising these points.

The short answer is that my article is about voluntary assisted dying (VAD), not voluntary assisted suicide.

To answer you properly, I will have to do so in a series of posts because of word limits, so please bear with me.

The proposals are only to make VAD available to people who are terminally ill, defined as in the last six months of their lives or, if suffering from a neurodegenerative condition, the last 12. VAD is about helping people who are already dying have good and peaceful deaths; it is not about helping people commit suicide. Suicide applies to people who are not dying and these people cannot claim that they are merely trying to ensure that their dying is peaceful and free from unnecessary suffering. Since VAD excludes these people, the elderly, the bereaved, or the troubled teen wouldn’t be able to access VAD.

Now you might reply: why don’t my arguments about conscience commit me to the claim that the default position should be to allow voluntary assisted suicide (VAS), and not just VAD? The answer is that if we allowed VAS and not merely VAD, we are taking a much greater risk that the vulnerable people you mention would gain access when this isn’t really what they truly want in accordance with their own conscience. To take the teenager, we know that teenagers have their whole lives ahead of them and they are very likely to change their minds later, and be glad that they did not act on their suicidal thoughts. There is a real question whether their decision would be truly voluntary for this reason. Further, we know that their values and beliefs are likely to change since they are still at an early stage in their lives. As others have claimed, the terminally ill are at the end of their lives and it is much less likely that their values and beliefs will change (See Jansen, Wall and Miller, ‘Drawing the line on physician-assisted death’ Journal of Medical Ethics 2019; 45: 190-197 http://www.colegiomedico.cl/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/190.full_.pdf).

We also know that people who are bereaved will recover after approximately six months, and that their desire to commit suicide while they are bereaved is likely to be clouding their judgement. Again, we can doubt that these decisions would be truly voluntary. Someone whose judgement is clouded is not really acting voluntarily, and so in that sense is coerced. For this reason, we can doubt that they would be truly acting in accordance with their own conscience. The desire to ensure that decisions are truly voluntary, and that people really are acting on their own conscience, can justify restricting the proposals to a voluntary assisted dying regime only.

These issues come under the empirical matters mentioned in the article, and are in the province of what in a peer reviewed paper (http://www.unswlawjournal.unsw.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/McGee-et-al.pdf) I call ‘public matters’, matters in which the State has a legitimate interest. These public matters are in contrast to personal matters. The State has this interest because it will be sanctioning the use of lethal medications so that people can end their lives with them.

I think the harder question you could ask me is whether people who are suffering from illnesses or conditions that are not terminal, and who are determined to end their lives – such as Tony Nicklinson, the locked-in patient who took his case to the UK Supreme Court – should be allowed to end their lives. Tony was not terminally ill and would not have qualified under the proposed legislation in Queensland (or under the legislation in Victoria and in Western Australia). It was clear that his decision would have been truly voluntary, and that he would have been acting on his own conscience. So my answer to you above is not available to me here.

But allowing Tony to end his life would, in my view, have been to allow assisted suicide rather than assisted dying. Although we might claim that, in this case, the default position should be to allow people like Tony to end their lives, we would not be allowing a VAD regime but a VAS regime, and we can reasonably claim that legitimate State interests in protecting vulnerable people could justify not allowing assisted suicide, and so not allowing Tony to end his life. Although whether this is true is partly a matter of empirical evidence, it is not exclusively so. If the State has a policy on minimising suicides, then it could reasonably claim that allowing VAS rather than VAD would undermine this other policy and so the policy balance should fall in favour of restricting any legislation to VAD and excluding VAS.

Thanks again for pressing me to clarify JP.
Andrew

The bottom line is
"whose life is it?"

ASSISTED DYING AND ASSISTED SUICIDE ARE BOTH THE SAME THINGS! With the exact same end result, a dead patient! REPEAT, A CLINICALLY DEAD PATIENT! END OF STORY AND ANY POSSIBLE DISTINCTION! BECAUSE THERE ISN'T ANY! Murder by any othe name, definition or distinction, that intentionally stills a beating human heart, remains a crime and always will!

And given it is proffered instead of miracle cancer cure in the bulk of the intended assistance?

Able to avoid forever any real discussion of miracle cancer cure, alpha particle, bismuth 213!

Currently, there are only 2 methods of creating the alpha particle, bismuth 213, by bombarding radium with accelerated particles in a linear accelerator or as a decay byproduct of MSR thorium> U233.

The first inordinately expensive and energy expensive.the second as a virtually free byproduct of nuclear energy via MSR thorium!

Given the trillions big pharma make annually fro chemo and the afterwar palliative care, little wonder, neither it nor its puppet practitioners, Andrew, will have a bar of it or quite incorrectly albeit as complementary or alternative medicine. And should the cap fit? No offence intended!

Refuse as if their business model depended on it to look at the many successful trails of the alpha particle, bismuth 213, in otherwise death sentence cancers. And over half a century Andrew. You looked at all? Did you?

That includes, according to published reports, over half a century, myeloid leukemia, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer and some very nasty, inoperable brain cancer, to name some.

None of which seems to trouble doctor death or his excuse-making and distinction drawing acolytes. If the cap fits?

Q: Incidentally, Andrew, do you know the Irish cure for water on the brain?

A: A wee tap on the head.
Alan B.

Thanks for replying Andrew.

I would take issue with your attempt to draw a (meaningful) distinction between VAD and VAS. Whenever a person deliberately, and indeed voluntarily, ingests a lethal dose of poison, whether by their own hand or by that of another, they are killing themselves. They are not simply dying. To say otherwise is to abuse the English language.

When a person intentionally kills themself, they are committing
suicide. This remains so regardless of whether or not the person is “dying”. I say “dying” because obviously in a very real sense we are all dying; some are just apparently closer to death than are others.

No, VAD and VAS is a distinction without a meaningful difference.

You favourably cite proposals to make VAD available only to people who are terminally ill, defined as in the last six months of their lives or, if suffering from a neurodegenerative condition, the last 12. Yet you make no attempt to try and justify these particular time limits. Essentially these limits, or any variation of them, are completely arbitrary.

Nothing special happens when the six month line is crossed, so one month, 24 months, or 100 months could be substituted instead. On what principles basis could you argue against these alternatives? It is because the lines that are drawn in relation to VAD are completely arbitrary that it opens the door for the circle of those who can gain access to VAD are widened over time, as has happened in countries that have legalised this.

If, when it comes to VAD, the person’s conscience is to be king then there is no way to hold any of the arbitrary lines that may be drawn. If a person has some sort of right to claim assistance to kill themselves in one instance then it will only be a matter of time before everyone will be able to claim that right.

You may not like Philip Nitschke's position but once we accept any killing, he will eventually win.

Hi JP
Many thanks for following up. These are all good points, but I believe they can be answered.

I used to be suspicious myself when I saw the shift in language from voluntary assisted suicide to voluntary assisted dying. But it seems to me now to be an important and defensible distinction. When we know that someone has been diagnosed as terminally ill, there is an obvious sense in which, unlike those who have not been so diagnosed, they are dying. Accepting the reality of this, it seems meaningful for these people to then claim that they want their death to be as comfortable as possible, and to avoid having it drawn out. These points cannot apply to people who are not dying. So, to my mind, that’s an important distinction.

You say that “in a real sense” we are all dying. But it’s important to understand that when you make a remark like that, you are using “dying” in a broader sense. It would be as if I objected to the clinical definition of insanity by responding that, “in a sense” we are all a bit insane. That may well be true, but it does not undermine the clinical definition of insanity. We can make the same claim about dying. While it is true that we are “all dying”, that does nothing to undermine the category of people who are ‘terminally ill’ and the distinction we draw between these people and those of us who are not dying.

Your points about prognosis, and an ineliminable degree of arbitrariness of these statutory time frames, are well known. They are the subject of considerable debate, and some experts think we should have a “death is reasonably foreseeable” clause instead. But this alternative has its own challenges. My colleagues Ben White and Lindy Willmott suggest that legislation should state that a person’s condition should be incurable, advanced, progressive and be one that will cause death. This might well be a better alternative, but it may not appeal to those who want sharp lines.

Andrew

And similar remarks about arbitrariness of these sharp lines can be made about ‘adult’. That’s a sharp line, but it has served us well. I think terminal illness as defined in Victoria and WA could be workable enough, but I admit that my colleagues’ suggestion is also attractive.

Andrew

Thanks for your further thoughts Andrew, however you didn’t really respond to my point that there is no meaningful distinction between VAD and VAS.

Just because a person may be considered to be dying, should they employ VAD, they are nevertheless deliberately killing themselves – they are committing suicide, even if it is just a day or eleven months before they would have otherwise died. The reluctance of supporters of VAD to use the appropriate English is, to my mind, telling.

The choice to use the euphemism, voluntary assisted dying, rather than the honest terminology of, voluntary assisted killing, indicates that there is a reluctance to face the hard truth of what is actually being done. If you as a supporter of VAD think it is a legitimate thing for people to be doing, then you should have the courage of your convictions and call a spade a spade – you support killing people, albeit at their own request and under particular circumstances.

Of course, those being killed in these situations, and their loved ones, probably prefer the softer sounding “assisted dying”, but again, as a matter of integrity, we should speak the truth. If people can’t handle the thought that they are committing suicide then they are not ready to be doing the act.

You make the point that some “experts” (what qualifies someone to be identified as an expert on this?) think we should have a ‘death is reasonably foreseeable’ clause, or that a person’s condition should be incurable, advanced, progressive and be one that will cause death, instead of the need for someone to be terminally ill.

This just goes to show how rather vague, subjective, and ultimately unenforceable any boundaries around assisted killing will prove to be. Once people get used to some killing and cases arise where people are just outside the boundary, they will see that the boundaries are not based upon any inviolable moral principles and so there will be continuous pressure to expand the boundaries. You would be well aware of this taking place in the Netherlands, Belgium and Canada.

Hi again JP

Apologies for the delay in responding to your last post.

I appreciate you following up again; the points you raise about euphemisms are important and are sometimes raised in this debate, so I will address them. Before I get to that, I don’t think it’s quite true to say that I didn’t respond to your point that there is no meaningful distinction between VAD and VAS. I did explain how I would draw the distinction. However, I agree that I didn’t address your point that, whether we are dealing with people who are dying or not, such people are ‘killing themselves’ and that ‘when a person intentionally kills themselves they are committing suicide’ regardless of whether they are dying.

This is not, in my opinion, true. Let me take the term ‘suicide’ first. When you say that ‘when a person intentionally kills themselves they are committing suicide, and this remains so regardless of whether they are dying’, you are making a recommendation that we reject any distinction between those who are dying and those are not, and that we should call this suicide. That is a normative recommendation on your part in the guise of a neutral sounding description. You haven’t provided a reason why we should accept your recommendation, other than your claim that “in a real sense” we are all dying – a contention I have already answered.

Note that it doesn’t matter here how suicide might have been defined in the past; within limits, we can always change how we use certain words, and so appealing to how words were used begs the question against those of us who are recommending that we use the word differently (eg, more narrowly, to exclude those who end their lives under a VAD regime).

Now, making a recommendation as such is not wrong. As I just said, those of us, like me, who claim that we should not call VAD assisted suicide, or VAS, are equally making a recommendation. But we have good reasons for doing so, some of which I gave in my earlier posts.

You might reply that we can’t just choose to define terms differently, and that ‘suicide’ just means intentionally killing oneself. On this view, since ‘intentionally killing oneself’ applies to the terminally ill no less than to other people, it follows that such people are committing suicide.

But I see no reason to accept this. The term ‘suicide’ is not just a legal term (like ‘homicide’); it has accrued connotations and freight in its use in everyday language that can justify avoiding its use in some circumstances.

By analogy, we may want to avoid the term slightly derogatory term ‘cop’ and use ‘police’ in some contexts. The other term can have connotations we want to avoid. The same applies to ‘suicide’. The term ‘suicide’ can connote an ill-thought through decision made by somebody who is internally coerced and is therefore not making a truly voluntary decision. Since the decisions under a VAD regime -- assuming adequacy of safeguards – will be voluntary and well-considered, we can justifiably claim that we ought not to call these cases instances of suicide. Meanings are not set in stone or God given; they are norms and in that sense partly up to us

ateday,

<<The bottom line is
"whose life is it?">>

The real bottom line is: Whose responsibility is it to end life?

We can make a similar point about ‘killing’. This term has connotations that we may want to void in some circumstances. For instance, in our society we are fearful of, and want to lock up, ‘killers’. Although the term can be used neutrally, as when we talk of killing our plants, ‘killing’ can also be used to mean ‘murder’ as when we talk about the serial killer’s killing spree. It is, in my view, entirely legitimate to want to avoid the connotations of or baggage weighing down certain terms. We can legitimately claim that people under a VAD regime end their lives, avoiding the word killing not because, in its more neutral uses, it doesn’t apply, but because in its other uses – where it connotes something reprehensible, it doesn’t apply. Opponents of VAD will always object to this, and will always dismiss it as a ‘mere euphemism’. But I don’t find that objection convincing for the reasons given.

Thanks JP. It's been a good discussion.

Andrew

Hmmm, I’m not convinced Andrew.

You sound rather like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that's all.”

You say I should not use past definitions of words because meanings can change. I agree meanings can change but the dictionary definition of suicide continues to support my position not yours, eg, Cambridge Dictionary, suicide: the act of killing yourself intentionally; Dictionary.com, suicide: the intentional taking of one's own life; Merriam Webster, suicide: the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally.

The person using VAD - wittingly taking a lethal dose of poison - is intentionally taking their own life; they are committing suicide, they are killing themselves, as per current normal usage of the words. I am not making a normative recommendation, just a descriptive one with nothing hidden.

You say I don’t provide a reason for accepting my recommendation. I am saying that until there is an accepted change to the meaning of words, if we want to successfully communicate, we must go with their established meaning.

You say you have provided good reasons for your recommendation for a narrower meaning of suicide. As far as I can see the only thing you have offered is, “it seems meaningful for these people [the terminally ill] to then claim that they want their death to be as comfortable as possible, and to avoid having it drawn out”. (Apologies if I missed something else.)

Certainly they may want that but that does not mean that in using VAD they don’t commit suicide and neither does it provide a justification for redefining the word suicide. Unless you mean that by using softer words (even though incorrect terms in normal English usage) that helps make their death “as comfortable as possible”.

But perhaps killing is always reprehensible.

Thanks JP. I did give another reason. I said:

“By analogy, we may want to avoid the term slightly derogatory term ‘cop’ and use ‘police’ in some contexts. The other term can have connotations we want to avoid. The same applies to ‘suicide’. The term ‘suicide’ can connote an ill-thought through decision made by somebody who is internally coerced and is therefore not making a truly voluntary decision. Since the decisions under a VAD regime -- assuming adequacy of safeguards – will be voluntary and well-considered, we can justifiably claim that we ought not to call these cases instances of suicide.”

It is funny you should mention the Alice in Wonderland passage. It is well known to me. This is why I said "within limits". It is not as though I am saying that we could redefine "suicide” as a species of Amazonian termite!

Rather, the claim is partly that we ought to avoid terms that have a certain degree of baggage that does not apply to the situation we are dealing with, and partly because these people are already dying – already being "killed" by their underlying condition, which makes it meaningful, for reasons I have stated, to claim that these people are seeking to make the process of dying better and avoid the suffering it may otherwise cause, rather than “committing suicide”.

As noted above in my other post, since the term "suicide" can connote a decision made in the heat of the moment or connote an ill-conceived decision made at a time when the person is coerced by their condition and so not doing what they would do if they were not in its grip (so it is not a truly voluntary act), it would not be appropriate to use this term of the regime we are discussing. For example, VAD is supposed to be entirely voluntary.

It is always important when using language to avoid certain unwanted connotations. These connotations are not captured in dictionary definitions which are often extremely blunt. As lawyers, we have to be acutely aware of this when drafting contracts or legislation, lest in settling a dispute a court decides a term means something different to what the parties or drafter intended. Also, as any lawyer will tell you, the dictionary definition will do no work when terms are given definitions in statutes (and ‘VAD’ is defined in statures). These terms often depart form the dictionary definition, so appealing to the dictionary definition will be irrelevant in that context. But the statutorily defined terms are none the worse for that.

There is also another important point about how the use of terms can change. In Australia, the term “assisted dying” is gaining currency in government literature and statutes. In time, this could well have an impact on how other terms such as “suicide” are defined in the dictionary. But the new recommended usage needs to catch on first, which does take time. This is why your appeal to the dictionary definition does not answer those of us who are recommending a different use. Once we have made this recommendation, it begs the question against us to cite the definition whose use we are recommending should be altered. But it doesn’t work the converse way. We are not begging the question against those who appeal to the dictionary definition. The onus is on those who object to our recommendation to give reasons independent of the dictionary definition about why the recommendation should not be adopted. I believe I have given adequate reasons for this recommendation; you obviously don't. But I haven't found your objections convincing.

Can I ask you something JP? Do you ever have a morsel of doubt about your own position? You described voluntary assisted dying in your last post as "reprehensible". Does this mean that you are also a pacifist who objects to any type of "killing" in self-defence or in war? On what basis would ending someone's life in any circumstance always be reprehensible? Do you extend this claim to withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment? And do you extend it to cases where, at least according to some people, there is no intention to bring about death – the palliative pain relief cases foreseeing that death may be hastened, or the withdrawal cases where the intention is to be free from burdensome treatment with death a foreseen side-effect?

When I used to occupy a position more like yours and had severe doubts about assisted dying, the only reason I could think of for why it would be wrong is that we couldn't guarantee that we would always be ending life for the right reasons, which in my view is an empirical matter. But some people claim, implausibly in my view, that no matter how desperate someone is to end their lives when already dying, not matter how great their suffering is, doing so is an implicit value judgment that their lives are not worth living. Is this your view? I am not going to be able to enter into a debate about these issues on here, but I am just asking out of interest. So if you respond and clarify your position, I won’t start a new thread of argument about them.

All the best JP; as usual you've made some great comments.
Andrew

Yes, you’re right Andrew, I still do not regard your reasons as convincing.

Regarding your first reason above, how could anyone know that someone seeking VAD was not just as “internally coerced” (and therefore on your terms not acting truly voluntarily) as any other person who seeks to commit suicide? How is “internal coercion” any different to someone saying “I really want to do this”?

Moreover, would you say that a person who qualifies for VAD in other respects but who was deemed as being “internally coerced” should be denied VAD after all? Do you really think that would happen?

It all seems highly subjective to me.

You say that VAD will only be given to people who make a voluntary, well-considered decision. (I understand that a proposed VAD law in Tasmania requires just a four-day period between a request for VAD and its implementation! Yet how much time does a person need for such an irreversible, fatal decision to be regarded as “well-considered”?) How is “voluntariness” to be assessed? It is not unusual for older people presently to feel that they are a burden, even when their family assures them they are not. Should VAD become commonplace how easy it will be for such people to feel they “ought” to make use of VAD. To all appearances their decision may appear to be voluntary – “This is what I want!” while the family may know full well that they just think they should get out of the way. And then there will be the families that will covertly pressure their elderly relatives to use VAD.

You wish to redefine “suicide” by VAD according to the state of mind of the actor, while I want to retain the notion that suicide refers to the act, largely regardless of the state of mind of the actor. I think that deliberately ending one’s life should always should always be regarded as something negative (although I recognise that some people with serious mental health issues may have very diminished responsibility for such an act). But deliberately ending one’s life is never a good.

Who never has a doubt Andrew? Such people would surely be scary! (I’m assuming you have some doubts on this yourself?) No, I’m, hopefully, always genuinely seeking what is “right” and “true” and that is why I have appreciated this discussion with you. (Now, those are loaded words, right, and, true, but if we don’t think such notions are meaningful then what is this all about?)

I didn’t quite describe VAD as reprehensible – I said perhaps all killing is reprehensible. But, yes, I do think the practice of VAD warrants censure.

It seems to me that either human life is of absolute value, in terms of what is valuable in this world, or it is not. But what gives human life its value? Is it something that we simply choose to attribute? (and if circumstances are such, can we equally choose to withdraw such attribution?)

If we regard human life as just the unintentional outcome of evolved pond scum, then I find it hard to see how human life (or any life or anything else) has any intrinsic value. Further, unless there is some ultimate purpose for our existence then really what does it matter in the end what we do? Can we really do anything that is actually “right” or “wrong”, in a moral and not just a legal sense? And if our morals are just expressions of personal or group preferences then why should anyone care what others’ preferences are and not just act according to their own?

So you probably can guess where I am coming from. You can probably guess my answers to most of those questions too (I am a pacifist BTW.) If you would like to see my thoughts set out more fully you might like to see my website: www.atheismforkidsandteens.com and I also have a number of articles on OLO – you can find them under my name, Graham Preston.

Thanks for the discussion but it would be good to hear an outline of your worldview too.

Hi JP

Thanks for these replies. You raise some very deep questions there! Probably too deep to go into on a post in this forum. I've always been puzzled by the idea that we would need a God to secure the objectivity of right and wrong. It seems to me that 'God' himself is subject to what Kant called the moral law, which is supreme. Assume that 'God' exists. I can only know if 'God' is good by applying the moral law to his or her conduct. Some people reply that it is the other way round and that God is prior what is good and right -- a version of the Euthyphro Dilemma. But it's not clear what that would mean and, to my mind, it embodies the dangerous idea that some beings can be above the law.

Wittgenstein once said that even if there were a God, it wouldn't solve the riddle of life, but only add to it. He's clearly right of course. It's on the same footing as trying to postulate the existence of God to explain the existence of the universe. People forget that this doesn't work, since we then need to explain God! The same point applies to the objectivity of ethics issue.

Have you heard of Derek Parfit? Parfit's work, following on from Sidgwick and Kant, aims to defend the idea of the objectivity of ethics, and Parfit aims to answer a lot of those questions you posed. He believed that ethics is a science, like mathematics. It is different -- sui-generis -- but in that ballpark. He spent a lot of time grappling with the phenomenon of disagreement, which seemed to be an objection to this view. He wrote a three volume tome called On What Matters. Parfit, to my mind, was a genius and rivals Wittgenstein and Kant as the greatest philosophical minds of all time. I strongly recommend these three volumes to you.

It's been a great conversation JP, but this will be my last post. I will check out your website this week.

All the best
Andrew

Thanks for your willingness to engage Andrew.

It's a shame not to get answers to my last lot of questions but it was good to get this far. I recognise that the "God hypothesis" has significant challenges, which I continue to work on, but if there is no God, then to my mind absolutely nothing makes any sense at all. I'll keep an eye out for On What Matters. Hope you find my website of some interest. And all the best to you too.

Graham

Andrew,

<<Not only may I not believe in any religion, but even if I do, I may think that my religion's ethical code should make an exception for people suffering unbearably. In our democratic society, we have come to tolerate people's right to hold and practice certain beliefs that are not shared by everyone – provided that the practice of such beliefs does not unduly harm others.>>

You present 2 of your presuppositions here: (1) A religious ethical code should make an exception for people with unbearable suffering, and (2) We can practise certain beliefs as long as they don't 'unduly harm others'. Those are your autonomous beliefs with which I disagree profoundly.

Indian-born, Canadian-American apologist, Ravi Zacharias, passed into the presence of the Lord on 19 May 2020 (aged 74) after a short battle with an aggressive cancer - sarcoma. He knew what it was to suffer. He had 2 titanium rods down his back to fix disc problems and then he died from a disease of extreme suffering. See this interview by Jew, Ben Shapiro, with Ravi: http://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=336945090569734

Therefore, I reject the assumption of the title of your article, <<Why making voluntary assisted dying legal best respects both sides of this debate>>.

I am a Christian, from the side that proclaims that it is not the right of human beings to deliberately take the life of another person, whether it's called VAD or VAS. Why? In the historically reliable Scripture the position is: 'Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter', http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+24%3A11&version=ESVUK.

The Scripture states clearly God's position, in the words of Job: “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21), http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job+1%3A21&version=ESVUK