Hope For The Dying

[pood]

I've always wished we were more like bonobos than chimps, not that I have anything against Chimps. It's just that the matriarchal bonobos are peace loving, who are never violent except when a male tries to get to attack someone. Instead of using violence, they use sex and affection when they meet up with a different tribe of bonobos.

Well, maybe … or maybe not.

That's interesting. Perhaps all of Frans de Waal's research was done among the captive bonobos at the Emory Primate Research Center ( I think that's what it's called ). It was started in 1930 to study primates. in the books I've written by de Waal, the only aggression he ever mentioned was when a male becomes very aggressive, the dominate female will unite and bite off the male's penis. If and when I have time, I'll have to see if he studied bonobos in the wild. I think he may have to some extent as he did study other primates in the wild. But, he could have missed the more aggressive behavior mentioned in your linked article. Regardless, we primates aren't very peaceful. Sorry we're off topic. I'll stop now.

Nah, we can always start another thread. It’s fascinating stuff.

 

[Jarhyn]

I've always wished we were more like bonobos than chimps, not that I have anything against Chimps. It's just that the matriarchal bonobos are peace loving, who are never violent except when a male tries to get to attack someone. Instead of using violence, they use sex and affection when they meet up with a different tribe of bonobos.

Well, maybe … or maybe not.

That's interesting. Perhaps all of Frans de Waal's research was done among the captive bonobos at the Emory Primate Research Center ( I think that's what it's called ). It was started in 1930 to study primates. in the books I've written by de Waal, the only aggression he ever mentioned was when a male becomes very aggressive, the dominate female will unite and bite off the male's penis. If and when I have time, I'll have to see if he studied bonobos in the wild. I think he may have to some extent as he did study other primates in the wild. But, he could have missed the more aggressive behavior mentioned in your linked article. Regardless, we primates aren't very peaceful. Sorry we're off topic. I'll stop now.

IDK. I would find any society wherein aggressive folks get their steroid factories removed to be quite peaceful, all things said.

 

[pood]

Which is better?

A life on Earth plus going to heaven. (1+1=2)
No life on Earth - just heaven. (0+1=1)

The fuck does this even mean? Is this your idea of he New Math (or arithmetic)?

It’s not a matter of addition or subtraction. It’s about the fact that life is full of pain and suffering and your imaginary heaven, created by your imaginary Santa in the Sky, is full of an eternity of painless bliss.

Of course your 0+1=1 is preferable.

How about this?

Being raped on earth plus going to heaven. (1+1=2)
Not being raped on earth — just heaven. (0+1=1)

And it does no good to point out that for most people, life on earth is much more than just suffering. That is true, but irrelevant. Why should anyone suffer at all, if your Sky Santa can simply create eternal bliss, which you believe he can because you believe in heaven?

 

[TomC]

I'm confused.
Are you or are you not sufficiently trained to tell people they are wrong?

Depends on the subject.
Medical treatment, not much. Picture framing, I know vastly than most people.

Morals and ethics?
I have no problem telling you that I consider your moral principles and ethical code profoundly primitive and self centered. To the point I consider it immoral.

Do you seriously think that's a logical argument?

Which is better?

A life on Earth plus going to heaven. (1+1=2)
No life on Earth - just heaven. (0+1=1)

Your "equations" are way wrong.
If there is an eternal scheme of things,
Our lives on earth ( rarely more than 90 years) are of less relative importance than a spritz of spray paint on the close end of a cable that stretches to the far side of the universe. They are not equivalent things at all. 1+1=2 is an utterly irrational comparison.
Tom

 

[southernhybrid]

To me, the Christian concept of heaven is more like hell. I always think of the words of the hymn Amazing Grace.

"When we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise then when we first begun"

I think that sounds very boring. Eternal life certainly would get old after a few thousand years, or much sooner. And what kind of asshole sentences people outside of his religion to eternal torture?

The conservative Christian god is a very egotistical narcissist. He only rewards those who believe he is their savior and are willing to worship him for all eternity. That god has some serious mental health issues.

If I believed there was a god, I'd try and find a nicer, morally upright one, one who didn't judge people so harshly, but if there were rewards to be handed out they'd be for doing good works, not for belief. I'd also want a god that doesn't let people suffer when they are nearing the end of life. My invisible sky fairy would support voluntary euthanasia or at least make sure that people didn't experience relentless suffering at the end of their lives.

 

[TomC]

And what kind of asshole sentences people outside of his religion to eternal torture?

This is another aspect of an eternal afterlife that is profoundly immoral if standard Christianity is true.
A billion years from now the people in hell are just beginning their punishment. By that point they've suffered more than all of Hitler's victims put together. But it is just getting started because God is unable to fix whatever was wrong with them.
Yuck.

I'm just incapable of believing in Christian theology. It's too irrational and immoral.
Tom

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

To me, the Christian concept of heaven is more like hell. I always think of the words of the hymn Amazing Grace.

"When we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun
We've no less days to sing God's praise then when we first begun"

I think that sounds very boring. Eternal life certainly would get old after a few thousand years, or much sooner. And what kind of asshole sentences people outside of his religion to eternal torture?

The conservative Christian god is a very egotistical narcissist. He only rewards those who believe he is their savior and are willing to worship him for all eternity. That god has some serious mental health issues.

If I believed there was a god, I'd try and find a nicer, morally upright one, one who didn't judge people so harshly, but if there were rewards to be handed out they'd be for doing good works, not for belief. I'd also want a god that doesn't let people suffer when they are nearing the end of life. My invisible sky fairy would support voluntary euthanasia or at least make sure that people didn't experience relentless suffering at the end of their lives.

Yes, their god is rather strange. I wouldn't want to be praised by an amoeba, firstly because it is such an insignificant creature to mighty, glorious me, and secondly its praise would not fully express how great I am, because it is incapable of perceiving my true glory. Of course, the amoeba here is a human. Without the analogy, to a true god humans would be insignificant and their praise too puny and without comprehension of what the god is like.

Also, I think when opponents of euthanasia apply the term suicide to it that they are being devious. They may in a small sense be technically correct, but not in realistic terms. Its like the way they call themselves pro-life, when they should be labelled anti-choice, and incidentally many of them are anti-life in many ways as oppose helping children to live, helping the poor, etcetera.

 

[EricH]

I question whether they would still want to die if they had access to sufficient pain relief

How many mg per hour of Dilaudid would constitute sufficient pain relief in your opinion? What happens when the patient gets habituated to Dilaudid and it no longer works? What happens when the Dilaudid puts the patient into respiratory failure and you have to induce a coma and put them on a ventilator? Would they still want to live?

 

[pood]

I question whether they would still want to die if they had access to sufficient pain relief

How many mg per hour of Dilaudid would constitute sufficient pain relief in your opinion? What happens when the patient gets habituated to Dilaudid and it no longer works? What happens when the Dilaudid puts the patient into respiratory failure and you have to induce a coma and put them on a ventilator? Would they still want to live?

Isn’t it nice of Santa in the Sky to set it up so that dying patients have excruciating pain, but Santa sentences them to keep on living regardless, and then the crafty bastard rigs things so that pain relief drugs work until the patients get habituated to them; and then they don’t work — and still, Santa doesn’t “call them home,” as the saying goes. Wotta guy. It reminds me of how he keeps Jimmy Carter going on and on and on like the goddamned Energizer bunny, even though he’s clearly in terrible shape, and, as a bonus, Santa took his adored wife away from him. Wotta guy! And really, after all those Goddamned Sunday School sessions Jimmy taught on Santa’s behalf!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Pain and suffering is not a consideration?

Of course it is.
The question is about our response.
There's compassionate ways to alleviate pain that don't involve fast-tracking a person's death. (Or making a person think that's the best outcome for all concerned )

Elderly, vulnerable terminally ill people should not have to have their suffering exacerbated by the stress of thinking they are a burden.

This isn't fantasyland where the message makes reality. They know what the situation is.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I didnt claim that.
I said "There's compassionate ways to alleviate pain that don't involve fast-tracking a person's death."

You said it. Doesn't make it true.

Or what about the last days of my father--the morphine took his ability to make memories. Other than what was right in front of him his mind was frozen to what it was before that point. And before that there was a period where he could either have pain control or be lucid, not both.

And in the end something happened where he reacted as if the IV line etc was hurting him (trying to pull them out), but there was no way to find out what he was feeling.

Or what about the woman I believe I've mentioned that killed herself because she broke her hip and knew she wouldn't live long enough for it to heal. That meant nothing but lying flat in bed for the few months she had left.

Why do we deny humans the compassionate euthanasia that we give to the pets that we love and cherish?

Feel free to compare humans to animals if you must.
As for me, I don't think taking the life of a human is on par with taking the life of an animal.

The point is we treat animals more humanely than we treat people.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I know, though, Lion thinks we aren’t really animals because we have a “soul,” whatever the hell that is, and only we can go to “heaven,” whatever the hell that is. I guess because we’re so blessed we deserve to be condemned to keep on living even while in great and untreatable pain? The Christian mentality is unfathomable to me.

Occam's razor: Christianity actually worships an evil deity.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

We are the species that has almost destroyed our own habitat along with countless numbers of other animals species.

To be fair, even in this regard we aren't even close to being as effective at destroying our habitat as the cyanobacteria.

Yeah. Human technology is not capable of such devastation at this point even if we tried. Cobalt bombs are nothing compared to cyanobacteria.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It should never be forced on anyone but I've had so many former patients tell me they were ready to go, or they wanted to die, that I know it's not uncommon when one is nearing the end of life that no longer has any meaning or joy.

I think almost all slow causes of death take away any value in life before they take away life itself.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

But I spent a lot of time volunteering with dying AIDS patients back in the day.

Oh, well in that case Im as qualified as you to talk about the topic of PAS.

The relevance is those who have seen slow dying tend to have a different view. Your view comes across as someone who has never seen the suffering with no hope and little the doctors can do about it.

And how do you figure that if something is OK for God to do - end a life - then it's equally OK for someone who is not God?

Is it your life or is it God's? Your position only make sense if we are property.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And what kind of asshole sentences people outside of his religion to eternal torture?

This is another aspect of an eternal afterlife that is profoundly immoral if standard Christianity is true.
A billion years from now the people in hell are just beginning their punishment. By that point they've suffered more than all of Hitler's victims put together. But it is just getting started because God is unable to fix whatever was wrong with them.
Yuck.

I'm just incapable of believing in Christian theology. It's too irrational and immoral.
Tom

Read the Niven/Pournelle novel "Inferno". A version of hell that actually makes some sense.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I question whether they would still want to die if they had access to sufficient pain relief

How many mg per hour of Dilaudid would constitute sufficient pain relief in your opinion? What happens when the patient gets habituated to Dilaudid and it no longer works? What happens when the Dilaudid puts the patient into respiratory failure and you have to induce a coma and put them on a ventilator? Would they still want to live?

And if you are unconscious what life do you have?

There is only one important difference between humanity and the animals--the mind. Thus I see personhood as extending from first consciousness to last consciousness. Before first consciousness (and not the "brain "waves"" the pro-lifers talk about) it's tissue. After the last consciousness you're dead, it's just your body hasn't figured that out yet. If I'm never going to wake up again I'm gone, there's no point in spending effort on keeping my body alive unless the transplant teams or researchers want it. (Yeah, I know, there are no such research teams--but there is a use. If the transplant teams don't want the organs might as well see what else can be learned.)

 

[TomC]

It should never be forced on anyone but I've had so many former patients tell me they were ready to go, or they wanted to die, that I know it's not uncommon when one is nearing the end of life that no longer has any meaning or joy.

I think almost all slow causes of death take away any value in life before they take away life itself.

I think a big part of the issue is how recent it is, historically speaking. For virtually all of human history, most of the worst conditions would also end the patients life in a matter of days or weeks.
But now, oftentimes, the process of dying can be dragged out for months or years.
Tom

 

[TomC]

And what kind of asshole sentences people outside of his religion to eternal torture?

This is another aspect of an eternal afterlife that is profoundly immoral if standard Christianity is true.
A billion years from now the people in hell are just beginning their punishment. By that point they've suffered more than all of Hitler's victims put together. But it is just getting started because God is unable to fix whatever was wrong with them.
Yuck.

I'm just incapable of believing in Christian theology. It's too irrational and immoral.
Tom

Read the Niven/Pournelle novel "Inferno". A version of hell that actually makes some sense.

I'm not familiar with that.
I am familiar with a Christian denomination called "Universalist". They are otherwise fairly standard trinitarians. But they teach "Universal Salvation". Essentially, "Almighty God wants all his children Saved. Almighty God gets what Almighty God wants. Therefore everyone is saved."

It's not a "get out of Hell free" card. Depending on how you lived your life you might require a good deal of "purification". But nothing like eternal damnation.
Tom

 

[bilby]

There is only one important difference between humanity and the animals--the mind.

This definition makes most mammals and many birds (along with other more distant relatives such as cuttlefish and octopi) a part of "humanity".

If you genuinely believe that Daily Mail readers have a "mind", while dogs do not, then I would love to see your evidence for that belief.