Suicide - Does it send one to hell?

Autofellatio

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You seem to assume that any physical process must be reversible, absent supernatural forces driving it in one direction. I fail to see any good reason why anyone should believe such a thing.

My knowledge of biology and chemistry is little more than a patchy recollection of classes that I took in high school more than 30 years ago, but I seem to recollect that there are all sorts of physical, chemical, and biological processes that go in one direction only, usually for reasons having to do with entropy and the transfer of energy from a determinate structure to a free form. A plant cell converts light and carbon dioxide to sugars and other organic compounds. Why should you suppose that the process should be reversible? The idea reminds me of the academicians in Gulliver's Travels who are trying to release sunlight from cucumbers.

Hmm, you do raise a reasonable point regarding the law of entropy... but if I recall correctly, certain critical processes are perfectly reversible, like osmosis. If you placed a cell in a concentrated saline solution, for instance, it would get dehydrated - putting it into distilled water would rehydrate it.

Granted, we are discussing mechanisms beyond mere hydration problems, here. I'll admit that the premise is most probably inaccurate, but I just find the idea of meat-bags being animate to be... a tad beyond what conventional science has to offer.

Just a personal opinion, and let me state for the record that yes, I do see the logic in your arguments :D
 

Calboner

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Hmm, you do raise a reasonable point regarding the law of entropy... but if I recall correctly, certain critical processes are perfectly reversible, like osmosis. If you placed a cell in a concentrated saline solution, for instance, it would get dehydrated - putting it into distilled water would rehydrate it.
Well, some processes are reversible and some aren't. The main point is that the irreversibility of some physical processes is no ground for invoking supernatural causes. Irreversibility is just as much a characteristic of the beating of an egg into batter or the drying of paint as it is of the death of living things; so if you are going to see it as evidence of spiritual causes then you are going to have to populate the world with quite a lot of spirits.
Granted, we are discussing mechanisms beyond mere hydration problems, here. I'll admit that the premise is most probably inaccurate, but I just find the idea of meat-bags being animate to be... a tad beyond what conventional science has to offer.

Just a personal opinion, and let me state for the record that yes, I do see the logic in your arguments :D
I'm not sure what the scope of the term "conventional science" would be, as opposed to just plain "science." That aside, I would agree with you that scientific explanations of how we work as organisms—"meat bags," as you colorfully put it—do not explain what we know of ourselves as thinking, feeling, consciously acting beings. But that doesn't entail that our mental lives are evidence of supernatural operations. It just means that we need a better understanding of our psychological concepts.
 

JustAsking

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...Granted, we are discussing mechanisms beyond mere hydration problems, here. I'll admit that the premise is most probably inaccurate, but I just find the idea of meat-bags being animate to be... a tad beyond what conventional science has to offer.

Except I venture to guess that you don't know all that science has to offer in the area of the origin of life (and neither do I). So what you have created is simply an Argument From Personal Incredulity from a dearth of information. It has the form:

1) Premise: I personally find X to be incredible.
2) Conclusion: Therefore X is false.

And then if you follow it by a nice False Dichotomy:

3) Premise: Only X or Y can be true.
4) Conclusion: Then Y (from 2 and 3).

The problem with personal incredulity as a guide for rejecting scientific explanations is that most of what we have discovered and explained since the mid 1800s is incredible from a personal intuition standpoint.

Continents float around the globe, mass increases with velocity, time contracts with velocity, and the quantum world is so bizarre it seems like it comes from someone's hallucination.

And on top of that, we have no place in our intuition to factor extremes of deep time. We have no personal intuition for what a natural process can accomplish given billions of years. So we tend to find it more satisfying to propose an even less probable solution such as a timeless supernatural entity zapping something magical into matter to produce life.

Our intuition is so bad when it comes to explaining natural processes that it is no surprise that we accomplished more in 400 years of science by ignoring our intuition than we did over the last 10,000 years when we relied on it.
 
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JustAsking

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JA, it seems to me that you have aimed far too high. Autofellatio's posts are not primarily about the life of the mind. He was originally talking about life, period. His argument is that the difference between the living and the dead state of an organism is incapable of physiological explanation,...

But he provides no support for the notion that life cannot be explained by natural processes. There is a difference between saying that something is not yet explained vs that something cannot be explained. To conclude the latter from the former is called an Argument From Ignorance. Or more colloquially, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

And I use the term absence of evidence loosely, since there is a lot of work going on in the area of abiogenesis, even though no comprehensive hypothesis has been formed yet.

... and that it must therefore be attributed to the presence or absence of a soul...

And there is the False Dichotomy of the form: "If X is not true then my arbitrary, fantastical, unfalsifiable, and unsupported explanation Y must be true."
 

travis1985

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I'll explain the teaching of the Catholic Church, since its teachings are usually misunderstood by most people. Theologically, suicide is a rejection of the gift of life and represents a failure to trust and have faith in God. Therefore, it is unacceptable and sends one to Hell. However, in order for a sin, even an objectively grave one such as suicide to be mortal (Hell-sending), it must be committed with full understanding and consent. Thus it is possible for a person to commit suicide yet not go to Hell because their judgment was impaired by the strain of whatever prompted them to consider suicide. Not that an excuse is made for suicide, or that a free pass is given on this charitable assumption. But it's a possibility, and the Church recognizes it. In summary, the Church teaches that suicide is completely unacceptable and inexcusable, but that God is merciful in cases when the person truly and genuinely was not under the control of their right mind. We on earth don't find out what happens with each case.
 

JustAsking

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... In summary, the Church teaches that suicide is completely unacceptable and inexcusable, but that God is merciful in cases when the person truly and genuinely was not under the control of their right mind. We on earth don't find out what happens with each case.

Travis,
That was a very clear and concise statement of how the RC regards suicide. And it highlights one of the fundamental distinctions that separate many Christian denominations. I would describe this as a kind of "grace spectrum" where on one end, its all about your decisions and actions that determine your salvation, and on the other end, it is all about God's saving grace that determines your salvation no matter what you think or do.

Luther's complaint about this was that people are not ever really "in control of their right mind". The decisions we make are always clouded by so many creaturely influences that our free-will and competency for making "saving" choices vs "damning" choices is very limited. So God, in full awareness of this, has no choice (being a loving God) but to declare us incompetent to stand trial. Instead of death, we get eternal life and rehabilitation. Jesus is appointed to judge mankind and Jesus' renders his decision by dying for everyone in their place.

So Luther (and many of the offshoots of Lutheranism) would say that people who commit suicide are saved just like everyone else is saved. In fact the "saving" was accomplished 2000 years ago.
 

D_Tim McGnaw

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Travis,
That was a very clear and concise statement of how the RC regards suicide. And it highlights one of the fundamental distinctions that separate many Christian denominations. I would describe this as a kind of "grace spectrum" where on one end, its all about your decisions and actions that determine your salvation, and on the other end, it is all about God's saving grace that determines your salvation no matter what you think or do.

Luther's complaint about this was that people are not ever really "in control of their right mind". The decisions we make are always clouded by so many creaturely influences that our free-will and competency for making "saving" choices vs "damning" choices is very limited. So God, in full awareness of this, has no choice (being a loving God) but to declare us incompetent to stand trial. Instead of death, we get eternal life and rehabilitation. Jesus is appointed to judge mankind and Jesus' renders his decision by dying for everyone in their place.

So Luther (and many of the offshoots of Lutheranism) would say that people who commit suicide are saved just like everyone else is saved. In fact the "saving" was accomplished 2000 years ago.




I can never remember the doctrines of the protestant divines clearly enough, though I'm fairly certain Luther didn't propose predeterministic theology and that was Calvin's innovation.

Which always makes me wonder why Lutheranism accepts unconditional election but denies reprobation...
 

Calboner

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Travis,
That was a very clear and concise statement of how the RC regards suicide. And it highlights one of the fundamental distinctions that separate many Christian denominations. I would describe this as a kind of "grace spectrum" where on one end, its all about your decisions and actions that determine your salvation, and on the other end, it is all about God's saving grace that determines your salvation no matter what you think or do.

Luther's complaint about this was that people are not ever really "in control of their right mind". The decisions we make are always clouded by so many creaturely influences that our free-will and competency for making "saving" choices vs "damning" choices is very limited. So God, in full awareness of this, has no choice (being a loving God) but to declare us incompetent to stand trial. Instead of death, we get eternal life and rehabilitation. Jesus is appointed to judge mankind and Jesus' renders his decision by dying for everyone in their place.

So Luther (and many of the offshoots of Lutheranism) would say that people who commit suicide are saved just like everyone else is saved. In fact the "saving" was accomplished 2000 years ago.

JA, you know how highly I regard you and your contributions to any discussion; so I hope you won't take it in bad part when I say that your statement of Lutheran doctrine makes me ever so glad that I was not brought up a Christian of any sort whatever.
 

irox19

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Personally, I don't know that I really believe in the concept of "heaven" and "hell"--pretty ludicrous when you think about it...fluffy clouds or lakes of fire, hm. However, I do feel suicide is not the right choice and that it doesn't necessarily do any good for whatever afterlife there might be. But then again, some instances could potentially be situational, and is it okay then? I don't know, I am babbling because I have nothing better to do.