Hacker News Reader

Comment by EnKopVand | Hacker News Reader

What an outright evil thing to say to someone. I think you do yourself, and, whatever religion you may have been indoctrinated into a great disfavour by not actually learning about your faith.

Most religions don’t actually forbid suicide anymore than they forbid a lot of other things like wearing leather pants. The fact that organised religions still make it more tabu has a lot more to do with controlling populations through faith than what is actually written in your religions texts.

View on HN

And it's always about how others should live. I'm perfectly ok with people deciding for themselves that they want to live by scripture x, y or z but then they invariably want others to live by their scripture as well.

I'm not religious but a good analogy for a believer would be telling someone to eat limes to stave off scurvy.

If you had a cure would you just keep it to yourself so you don't "tell others how to live"?

No, that's not a good analogy.

There is evidence for eating limes to stave off scurvy.

This is why you're so upset, you didn't even read what I wrote.

> This is why you're so upset

On the contrary, I'm not upset at all, do you claim to be able to read minds?

> you didn't even read what I wrote.

I actually did, and responded to it. Your analogy is a bad one.

No, you didn't read my comment or you would have noticed I said "a good analogy for a believer".

Not everyone views the world the way you do, so you shouldn't judge their actions or motives based on your world view.

I believe a better analogy would be telling someone to put on some leeches to stave off the Black Death.

No, a better on would be "dont drink from that well or you'll get dysentery" before anyone knew of the microbiology.

You twice used examples where a "believer" has (at least observational) evidence to support that belief.

Some of organized religion has roots in that (some of the Jewish dietary laws have practical basis), but much of the prescriptions of organized religion is preference-based rather than evidence-based.

Observational evidence nobody else believed.

That still makes it testable in a way purely faith-based restrictions are not.

"to the believer"

I know it's tough, but try and picture from someone's else perspective.

Now try picturing it from the someone else’s perspective who isn’t a believer.

I'm not religious either, but a better analogy for a believer would be telling someone to pray or sacrifice a goat to stave off scurvy.

If you really believed some nonsense, sure you'd want to not keep it to yourself, and to tell others how to live. But that wouldn't actually be a good thing, despite the believer believing it was.

Are you talking about the same religions that exists on planet earth? because in our earth suicide is prohibited even in many non-religious Ideologies. It's one thing to feel with the pain of others, but another thing to glorify or defend things that shouldn't be.

The Christian bible doesn’t condemn suicide. Most of the mentions were written in a period where society didn’t combine suicide with something inherently bad. Even in the more recent parts you can see Mathew praising the suicide or Judas because it was better than living with the guilt.

Obviously organised religions have found ways around what’s actually written in the bible, and you won’t have a hard time finding Christian’s who think that not killing includes yourself. That is an interpretation though, and unless God spoke to you personally to clarify it, then it’s frankly a lot worse for you to judge someone than to leave that sort or stuff up to God. Even if you are on some misplaced quest to save souls then Jesus already has you covered by dying for your sins.

Contrary to what you may think I don’t have a problem with religion, but I do think people who use religion to spread hurt are assholes. Considering that religious texts were written, selected and curated by people I frankly think it’s on the individual to interpret them. If your interpretation leads you to harassing dying people then you should stop and become a better person instead.

In all forms of Buddhism, suicide is one of the karmically worst things you can do

Guilt tripping people who are already down based on what you personally believe in is pretty bad form.

So what about Sokushinbutsu?

You going to tell me that all these hardcore monks were actually breaking a core tenet of their religion?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com