Voluntary death and "spiritual blackmailing"

[freedomandfate]

Hello, I hesitated before joining this forum in fear of being spied(irrational I know).I struggled with mental illness for over a decade, and I lost last year people who supported me in brutal circumstances. I made two suicide attempts in my life, one with sleeping pills, another which was much more violent and left me with physical sequels that might never be recovered from, or just partly though heavy surgery i am not willing to undergo.

As a human, I support right to die and abortion. My problems is more on the non rational part. I believe in God, but don't think voluntary death is forbidden. This stance is widely condemened by mostreligions(I spent a lot of time researching on that), and high ranked priests, mediums or super religious people like to promise hell, forced reincarnartion(hinduism,buddhism,spiritism, new age) or journey in the "low astral plane".

Surveys say religion protects from suicide, but I also feel they can alienate a person.I would not sentence anyone to eternal hell nor forced reincarnation, especially NOT for choosing how and when to leave.
I was wondering if people here had been tormented by such matters. I have come to peace and more or less decide that a person has to stand for beliefs knowing they light, or not, be valid. People around me who had religious beliefs were kind and tolerant, not judgemental.
For a person in frsh shape, religious speches might have less impact, but when you are in pain and told you might become worst of the worst person, I feel it is quite depressing and painful.

 

[Elias]

I'm one of the "spiritually blackmailed". I grew up with a religious father who instilled a terror of death in my mind, with graphic depictions of hell and all the suffering that can be experienced in that lovely place. I've had the same nightmare where I'm tortured by demons, and it happens over and over. I can feel my skin boil and hurt right before I wake up. It's terrifying, debilitating and even though I since grew out of that kind of beliefs, the mental scars are still there. Even with my scientific approach to the myteries of the world, I am terrified of an eternal afterlife, be it hell or heaven. Most of my days are now spent trying to be at peace and convincing my subconscious that it's not real, and that I deserve rest and not torture, but it's not easy. Nighttime is the worst for this. Should I ctb, it will be during the day and with lots of relaxants.

 

[Stan]

Hi and welcome sadly to the forum. I can only give you my own experience. Even though now I am firmly an atheist I was brought up in a Roan Catholic household/ That religion teaches you to be guilty about everything. So in my rational mind (there's speculation on that statement) I know what i need to do and I have reluctantly squared it away with myself, the ghost of the catholic guilt does come out. The bible itself does not condemn suicide, in fact it has tales of suicide in it without condemnation. So I get completely what you are saying. There has been a couple of interesting threads on the forum in the past on this subject.

 

[Bathsheba]

I know how you feel. I had a heavily religious background.. church schools etc.. I fear the wrath of god because I've been conditioned to do so. But if god is the sort of god that would condemn me to hell for choosing to ctb then his version of heaven is not a place I want to be.

 

[GreyMonkey]

Raised by Buddhist parents here. Karma and all that stuff... hell realms, reincarnation, etc.

If you kill yourself it's like murder and you'll get more of the same kind of thing. Or hell. Or something to that effect.

I'm definitely still scared of ctb even though I think about it a lot.

 

[RightToExit]

I don't cooperate with torture-blackmailers. "Obey me or I'll torture you" is the worst behavior I can think of, especially when it's disproportionate. And eternal torture is infinitely disproportionate. It's the worst meme ever invented, and it says a lot about organized religion that it was used for centuries to extract political and economic power from the populace.

Luckily, in this case, the threat is a bluff, since the imagined tortures are completely imaginary. I'm sure there are plenty of theists who would torture you for all eternity if they could - but they can't. They don't have the actual power to do so.

In fact, once my brain shuts down permanently, no one can torture me at all, not even on Earth. It takes that power away from everyone who would abuse it. Knowing that actually makes me more likely to choose suicide sooner.

 

[woxihuanni]

I'm an atheist but have been subjected to the fear by some friends. Buddhism puts it as 'violence to yourself'. Well, if indeed there be any higher power with a moral stance, and they consider suicide 'violence to yourself', I'm sure I'm not going to get along with them or be on their good side even if I die at 93 shitting my bed all alone. Because then they are just evil by my moral standards.

Instead of going to all the trouble of reincarnating me as a worm, they should get busy dropping a couple of tons of bricks on people who drive other people to suicide. I tell you, self-satisfied gods if you exist, come and do it, and I promise to live.

 

[Rachel74]

Atheist through and through here. No god would cause all this suffering.