Last night, I had this conversation with a theist. It didn’t start off as a theistic discussion, it was about death with dignity and I had no clue it was with a theist when I started, but it all ties together nicely and shows just how clueless the religious actually are.

They’ve got some fundamental problems upstairs. Let’s go take a look.

Essentially, the conversation went something like this. We were talking about quality of life and how, if people decided that their quality of life was insufficient to continue living, they ought to be able to opt for death. It’s one of the things that I’m very passionate about. I’ve written in the past about being in favor of suicide, even assisted suicide, for whatever reason an individual might desire. This person disagreed.

I brought up the example of someone with a terminal disease. Science couldn’t save them, at best, it could keep them going indefinitely but it would be a life of, at the very least, discomfort and at the most, agonizing pain. The individual decides, given their current prognosis, that they didn’t want to go on any longer. Therefore, I argued, they should be able to choose death over the alternative.

The other person said that no one should ever commit suicide, that no situation was ever “so bad” that they should die and anyone who would choose death over suffering, they were insane. Something was wrong with them. No diagnosis necessary, the very fact that anyone would ever seriously consider ending their own life was proof of mental illness and they ought to lose their right to self-determination because of it.

We went around and around for a while. I kept asking him for his expertise on the subject and he didn’t have any. He just knew that suicidal thoughts, no matter how warranted, were proof of mental instability. I even got him to admit that if he was in that situation, he’d want something to change, but he kept saying that maybe there would be a medical breakthrough. Maybe something would happen to change things. Never mind the fact that millions and millions and millions of people have been through that exact situation and nothing ever changed. Nothing ever improved. They died in agony.

Eventually, we drilled down to the actual reason. He believed that God thought suicide was a sin and would send you to hell for it. So wait a minute, considering your own future, based on an actual state of affairs is insane, but believing in a magical man in the sky that will send you to eternal conscious torment if you don’t follow some arbitrary set of rules that no one can verify is not?

I beg to differ!

Obviously, this ended not long thereafter because he couldn’t get past any of it, especially when I started to question his assertions about God. It was true, so there, no further discussion would be acceptable. This happens far too often because people embrace ideas with their feelings and not remotely with their intellect. In fact, a lot of them seem positively allergic to thinking about much of anything. It’s true because they desperately want it to be true!

That’s not how reality works!

Now I don’t frankly care if anyone agrees with my take on suicide or not. This was a discussion borne mostly of boredom. I wasn’t really invested in it until the theist showed up. You are free to disagree, so long as you actually have a rational structure to back yourself up and the religious, they never do. It’s all fee-fees and faith and zero intellect or evidence. In fact, there was someone who showed up in one of my videos this morning who got upset that I kept pointing that out. I asked for his evidence for the existence of his God, since clearly he wasn’t just clinging to the idea for emotional reasons and he immediately got pissy. “I don’t have to prove anything to you!” Sure pal, tell yourself that. If you can’t justify your ideas with anything resembling intelligent thought, you’ve lost before you began. He also seems to have run away when I wasn’t impressed with his impassioned pleas. Can anyone say that they’re surprised?

No, neither can I.