greyhound

greyhound

Arcanist
Oct 8, 2020
471
Lately I've been reading books on NDEs. A lot of the people who experience NDEs seem to be given a choice whether to return to their body or move on and die. Obviously the people who give these reports are the ones who chose to return. But presumably there are many who decide to move on. Isn't this choice effectively suicide or not? So maybe God is not as opposed to suicide as all these religions are saying.

I realize many who hold materialist views have trouble accepting the reality of NDEs. I haven't had an NDE myself but I personally accept the metaphysical possibility that we can be conscious outside of a physical body.
 
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WornOutLife

マット
Mar 22, 2020
7,164
You're goddamn right.
If religions are kinda right, suicide is not a sin. (NDEs prove it as you said)

It just doesn't make sense that a person suffering in this world who CTB, has to suffer even more in the afterlife. There is either something better out there or simply eternal darkness and nothingness.
 
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Lucifer'sRight

Lucifer'sRight

Experienced
Feb 4, 2020
256
If god exists, then s/he gave us absolute freedom and unbounded autonomy over our bodies and minds. I'm more worried about this nazi soul machine made to redirect you right away to another body, but that's just me cause i'm mental..
 
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StateOfMind

StateOfMind

Liberty or Death
Apr 30, 2020
1,195
If god exists, then s/he gave us absolute freedom and unbounded autonomy over our bodies and minds. I'm more worried about this nazi soul machine made to redirect you right away to another body, but that's just me cause i'm mental..
If we all had the same powers as a God, there wouldn't be a God.
There must always be difference.
Indifference is not a bad start.
Imagine that.
A unified global society?
Good luck with that.
Fuck that shit I'm outta here.
 
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ARW3N

ARW3N

Melancholia
Dec 25, 2019
396
NDEs (Near-Death Experiences) by definition are not post-mortem experiences just as UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are not veridical evidence of extraterrestrial spaceships.
 
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esse_est_percipi

Enlightened
Jul 14, 2020
1,747
So maybe God is not as opposed to suicide as all these religions are saying
Apart from the difficulties connected to asserting God's very existence, I think that the idea that religions universally condemn suicide is not completely accurate (I'm not saying you're saying this, I'm just making a general claim).
At least, they don't universally condemn it as an especially bad or egregious sin/wrongdoing meriting a special kind of punishment or eternal hell.

The basis for Jewish condemnation of suicide? Genesis 9:5: "and for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning". You need a special understanding of logic and fertile imagination to get from that statement to the idea that suicide is punished by eternal hellfire.

Christian condemnation? No explicit condemnation of suicide in the new testament.
Catholicism would have to wait hundreds of years until St augustine, a repressed theologian with sadistic tendencies (of the intellectual kind) to interpret the 'thou shalt not kill' commandment of the old testament as implicitly including suicide.
This was further elaborated by Aquinas in the middle ages: "(1) Suicide is contrary to natural self-love, whose aim is to preserve us. (2) Suicide injures the community of which an individual is a part. (3) Suicide violates our duty to God because God has given us life as a gift and in taking our lives we violate His right to determine the duration of our earthly existence. This conclusion was codified in the medieval doctrine that suicide nullified human beings' relationship to God, for our control over our body was limited to usus (possession, employment) where God retained dominium (dominion, authority). Law and popular practice in the Middle Ages sanctioned the desecration of the suicidal corpse, along with confiscation of the individual's property and denial of Christian burial." (stanford encyclopedia of philosophy).

This theological prohibition (but not Biblical) in christianity was compounded in the popular imagination by Dante's vision of suicides in the seventh level of hell, who exist there as trees and have to endure bleeding when cut and pruned (not great, but surely not the worst form of punishment either).

Islam? Things get pretty grim in the Hadiths (the sayings attributed to Muhammed, written by people many years after they had been passed down orally), where it is said that those who suicide suffer hellfire, though I won't go into the details here.

Hinduism? Says suicide produces karmic reactions, and so will not lead to enlightenment/liberation (but most actions won't either), and souls may linger on the earth.
Buddhism: Suicide will lead to reincarnation as it causes some negative karmic reactions and violates the prohibition against killing, though the quality of the rebirth ultimately depends on the intentions which led to the suicide (if someone suicides merely to get revenge on someone and to specifically cause suffering for another, this will have a worse outcome for their future existence than someone who suicides because they are being sent to some horrific concentration camp, or because they are tormented by a mental illness.)

So what we basically have is Judaism basing its condemnation of suicide on a dubious interpretation of vague pentateuch passages (and there isn't even a fully elaborated concept of eternal hell in Judaism), Christianity basing it on theological interpretations/inventions hundreds of years after the life of Jesus (who never even mentioned suicide), Islam founding it on written documents which resulted from hundreds of years of oral tradition (unreliable), Hinduism saying it has vague negative karmic consequences and could lead to souls roaming the earth (certainly nothing as bad as eternal hell), and Buddhism following on quite closely from Hinduism in emphasizing the negative karma produced (which varies according to intent and reasons).

None of this comes anywhere near close to constituting convergent evidence in the world religions that 1) there is actually a God 2) there is a hell 3) there is a God whose nature compels it to send suicided souls to that hell.
Though it is evidence that humans throughout history have invented and imagined a whole lot of theological and eschatological concepts aimed at compelling or coercing people to believe in whatever religion they are promulgating and being apologists for.
 
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RedFoxSwims

Member
Oct 8, 2020
43
Apart from the difficulties connected to asserting God's very existence, I think that the idea that religions universally condemn suicide is not completely accurate (I'm not saying you're saying this, I'm just making a general claim).
At least, they don't universally condemn it as an especially bad or egregious sin/wrongdoing meriting a special kind of punishment or eternal hell.

The basis for Jewish condemnation of suicide? Genesis 9:5: "and for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning". You need a special understanding of logic and fertile imagination to get from that statement to the idea that suicide is punished by eternal hellfire.

Christian condemnation? No explicit condemnation of suicide in the new testament.
Catholicism would have to wait hundreds of years until St augustine, a repressed theologian with sadistic tendencies (of the intellectual kind) to interpret the 'thou shalt not kill' commandment of the old testament as implicitly including suicide.
This was further elaborated by Aquinas in the middle ages: "(1) Suicide is contrary to natural self-love, whose aim is to preserve us. (2) Suicide injures the community of which an individual is a part. (3) Suicide violates our duty to God because God has given us life as a gift and in taking our lives we violate His right to determine the duration of our earthly existence. This conclusion was codified in the medieval doctrine that suicide nullified human beings' relationship to God, for our control over our body was limited to usus (possession, employment) where God retained dominium (dominion, authority). Law and popular practice in the Middle Ages sanctioned the desecration of the suicidal corpse, along with confiscation of the individual's property and denial of Christian burial." (stanford encyclopedia of philosophy).

This theological prohibition (but not Biblical) in christianity was compounded in the popular imagination by Dante's vision of suicides in the seventh level of hell, who exist there as trees and have to endure bleeding when cut and pruned (not great, but surely not the worst form of punishment either).

Islam? Things get pretty grim in the Hadiths (the sayings attributed to Muhammed, written by people many years after they had been passed down orally), where it is said that those who suicide suffer hellfire, though I won't go into the details here.

Hinduism? Says suicide produces karmic reactions, and so will not lead to enlightenment/liberation (but most actions won't either), and souls may linger on the earth.
Buddhism: Suicide will lead to reincarnation as it causes some negative karmic reactions and violates the prohibition against killing, though the quality of the rebirth ultimately depends on the intentions which led to the suicide (if someone suicides merely to get revenge on someone and to specifically cause suffering for another, this will have a worse outcome for their future existence than someone who suicides because they are being sent to some horrific concentration camp, or because they are tormented by a mental illness.)

So what we basically have is Judaism basing its condemnation of suicide on a dubious interpretation of vague pentateuch passages (and there isn't even a fully elaborated concept of eternal hell in Judaism), Christianity basing it on theological interpretations/inventions hundreds of years after the life of Jesus (who never even mentioned suicide), Islam founding it on written documents which resulted from hundreds of years of oral tradition (unreliable), Hinduism saying it has vague negative karmic consequences and could lead to souls roaming the earth (certainly nothing as bad as eternal hell), and Buddhism following on quite closely from Hinduism in emphasizing the negative karma produced (which varies according to intent and reasons).

None of this comes anywhere near close to constituting convergent evidence in the world religions that 1) there is a God 2) there is a hell 3) there is a God whose nature compels it to send suicided souls to that hell.
Though it is evidence that humans throughout history have invented and imagined a whole lot of theological and eschatological concepts aimed at compelling or coercing people to believe in whatever religion they are promulgating and being apologists for.
Catholics no longer bar suicides from burial or think they go to he'll. They go to purgatory instead and say that individuals suffer mental problems and thus are not responsible. I think suicide is a choice in life like any other, not a mental problem but alas most people see it that way.
 
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esse_est_percipi

Enlightened
Jul 14, 2020
1,747
Catholics no longer bar suicides from burial or think they go to he'll. They go to purgatory instead and say that individuals suffer mental problems and thus are not responsible
I know that's what they say now.
So much for papal infallibility.
Think how many people and families suffered over the centuries because they thought their loved ones had gone to hell, because the pope/catholic dogma said so.
Funny how these religions change or modify their precepts and rules to fit in with sociocultural changes and scientific advances.
 
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Meditation guide

Meditation guide

Always was, is, and always shall be.
Jun 22, 2020
6,089
Lately I've been reading books on NDEs. A lot of the people who experience NDEs seem to be given a choice whether to return to their body or move on and die. Obviously the people who give these reports are the ones who chose to return. But presumably there are many who decide to move on.
What I have read is that instead of a real choice they get told they have to go back when they would prefer not to. Sometimes they are sort of talked into going back by being reminded of family members who need them. Some simply find themselves zapped back into their bodies when the shock paddles are applied to their chest.
nazi soul machine made to redirect you right away to another body
I read it was aliens from another star system that do that. This is a prison planet where they dump the ones who won't follow the rules.
 
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greyhound

greyhound

Arcanist
Oct 8, 2020
471
What I have read is that instead of a real choice they get told they have to go back when they would prefer not to. Sometimes they are sort of talked into going back by being reminded of family members who need them. Some simply find themselves zapped back into their bodies when the shock paddles are applied to their chest.

True, some accounts indicate the person wants to stay in the afterlife but is forced to go back to their body. However many do seem to actually have a choice in the matter, here's one example:

"Thaddeus, a physician, had a blood infection that was threatening his life. As he lay in an isolation room at the hospital, suddenly his perspective changed:

Lying on my back. Awake. Suddenly I am looking down at myself from the ceiling. My position is reversed; that is, my head is opposite to my feet on the bed. I see myself very clearly. I have normal vision. I am presented with making a decision. No voice. Just "knowledge" that I have a choice. The choice is stay or go. There is absolutely no value to either choice, which surprises me…. A sense of absolute calm. I choose "stay." Immediately I am back in my body."

Excerpt From: Jeffrey Long. "Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences." Apple Books.
Apart from the difficulties connected to asserting God's very existence, I think that the idea that religions universally condemn suicide is not completely accurate (I'm not saying you're saying this, I'm just making a general claim).
At least, they don't universally condemn it as an especially bad or egregious sin/wrongdoing meriting a special kind of punishment or eternal hell.

It's true that some of the prohibitions are on shaky ground as far as being clearly defined in the religion's scripture. However the fact that they are all mostly pretty negative on it has worried me somewhat.

I guess the ancient pagan religions and also Shinto seem to be pretty relaxed about it. Sign me up.
 
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esse_est_percipi

Enlightened
Jul 14, 2020
1,747
However the fact that they are all mostly pretty negative on it has worried me somewhat.
yes, none of them put any kind of positive spin on it, that's true.
I guess it wouldn't make sense for them to do so though, since they want more adherents, not less. It's just a question of arithmetic and survival in an evolutionary battle of memes with other religions. I really think that's all the prohibitions on suicide come down to, and nothing metaphysically substantial or valid can be inferred. Religions which don't make anti-group solidarity acts such as suicide taboo or prohibited would be at a survival disadvantage compared to ones that do.

Jainism has a more relaxed stance on suicide too (sallekhana practice of voluntarily starving to death).
But along with shinto and paganism you mentioned, these are marginal and minority religions now, having lost out to the more bellicose, manichean and prohibitory religions.
 
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greyhound

greyhound

Arcanist
Oct 8, 2020
471
yes, none of them put any kind of positive spin on it, that's true.
I guess it wouldn't make sense for them to do so though, since they want more adherents, not less. It's just a question of arithmetic and survival in an evolutionary battle of memes with other religions. I really think that's all the prohibitions on suicide come down to, and nothing metaphysically substantial or valid can be inferred. Religions which don't make anti-group solidarity acts such as suicide taboo or prohibited would be at a survival disadvantage compared to ones that do.

Jainism has a more relaxed stance on suicide too (sallekhana practice of voluntarily starving to death).
But along with shinto and paganism you mentioned, these are marginal and minority religions now, having lost out to the more bellicose, manichean and prohibitory religions.

I found this passage that indicates that maybe Buddhism doesn't take such a dim view of suicide as I previously thought:

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with taking one's own life, if not done in hate, anger, or fear. Equanimity or preparedness of mind is the main issue. The important consideration here is not whether the body lives or dies, but whether the mind can remain at peace and in harmony with itself. . . . the early Buddhist texts include many cases of suicide that the Buddha himself accepted or condoned. . . . suicide is never condemned per se; it is the state of mind which determines the rightness or wrongness of the suicide situation.

- Breaking the Circle: Death and the Afterlife in Buddhism Paperback – November 30, 1993
by Carl B Becker
 
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Didymus

Didymus

Clutching at invisible straws
Dec 11, 2018
348
Approximately 108,000,000,000 people have been born since the beginning of our species. Looks like the majority moved on if given the choice.
 
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