I would expose my soft underbelly and apolgise for this ridiculous sniping. Go further and flatter you on your genius and tell you how mostly I am in agreement with you and enjoy your comments when I come across them. But alas, I won’t. I am too mistrustful of what is stacked against me in relation to my outsider status, i.e,

then why get het up about our views anyway?

and realise that I would merely be leaving myself open for some jolly joker to slash me to bits. Sorry to Ken too for de-railing his post and effectively shutting down discussion.

Issues of life and death and what one individual believes are probably going to bring with them questions and of faith or at least I’d like to think so. Superciliously dismissing someone’s faith by implying that it is nothing more than so much hocus pocus mumbo-jumbo when you cannot know that it isn’t, is rude, unthinking, and in some instances dangerous. Feelings held in the heart are strong. So, I am blaming Jason who knows perfectly well his addressing me on this thread, (which normally he would never do) in such a superior and dismissive way, would probably either hurt, or rile me. He could so easily have ignored my comment. As I could his, and will in future. I think I’ve made my point. Instead Jason chose to draw attention to my comment and with it my faith with no idea of what he was actually doing. Ipso facto, twerp.

If you think I am going to disclose any details of my faith to a bunch of Godless cretins, twerps, nerds and buffoons, then you must take me for a greater fool than I actually am. Suffice to say I have one and I must confess I was surprised how strongly I felt about Mr Soon dismissing it out of hand as so much supersitition especially as I am devoid of such. He too has made the mistake of making many wrongful assumptions about me.

I am justified in ’slagging’ of Jason, because he annoys me so intensely with his longwinded, highfaluting, claptrap which is not so much intended to elucidate us to his thoughts but to impress us with how bright he is. Jason is bright there is no question, but rue the day when he gets any kind of say in ‘public policy’.

You ‘guys’, are mostly, all head, little dicks, and no heart. Working on a farm with ‘blokes’ has helped to enforce that too, although you can swap the heads and the dicks around.

“And while I

It was early. Jason is truly a twerp it is about time someone was honest with him. Please forgive me for getting ‘het up’, and thank you for taking the time to defend him, by bolstering is trivialisation of what I feel strongly about.

And no one has been attacking your superstitions here.Jason was just pointing out that belief in intangible and incorporeal metaphysical entities should have no place in setting public policy. I’m sure you’d feel the same way if a fundamentalist Islamic Government imposed sharia law on you and forbid you to celebrate Christ as the son of God.

And if, as you say, all us non-believers are a tiny minority anyway (and doomed to everlasting hell no doubt), then why get het up about our views anyway? Did you skip the bits in the Bible about forgiveness and turning the other cheek and go straight to all the hot begatting action?

For the record, both my parents have given my brother and I medical power of attorney. Unfortunately they’re both in excellent health so it’ll be a while if ever for us to get the chance to play Pong on their life-support systems.

And while I’m feeling narky and pissed off with having to defend attacks on my faith and the right to express its importance (on a blog). See my original comment, (we’re all gonna die suckers, but not necessarily when we want to).

Yobbo maate, surely hell on earth must be anywhere near where you are. Doggy lynch mobs? You participate in these do you? Any other mob activities you’d like to fess up too?

You’d also know that he has both a medical degree from the University of Sydney and a PhD in laser physics, and spent quite a lot of time driving around Darwin in the middle of the night providing medical treatment to drug addicts and sex workers, so how much more “Doctor” do you want? Or are you just being deliberately misleading with the so-called scare quotes, as with the derogatory ‘Dr Phil’? This kind of rhetorical slippage is cheap as well as dishonest.

And blaming him for the decision made and acted on by the father of that woman in your link is completely irrational. Are you saying that man had no right to make his own decision about what he would do?

Great post, Ken, and good on you for writing about it; I was going to, and then bottled out, having overfilled my quota of psychos and flamers this month already. But a word of warning, to you and others with similar plans; my sister, who works as a rehab nurse, says that in a situation like that, you’ll probably only get a small window of opportunity — if you get one at all — before you’re too helpless (or gaga) to act for yourself. Act fast.

The general rule is, if a dog is killing or harassing lifestock or people and the owner refuses to do something about it, they can expect the dog to be baited or shot at the next possible opportunity.

1. If someone is suffering and wants help we have an ethical obligation to help them, even if it means ending their life (subject to 3. infra). Anyone who reads the tragic cases reported in the D.W.D (Dying With Dignity) newsletters would be utterly heartless to deny the sufferers their wishes.

2. I have used the word

Ensure I

Interesting comment. What Jason is advocating here is that if anyone gets sick of life for any reason (romantic or financial etc. disaster) all he or she has to do is find a willing killer, get a contract signed and bang! The law shouldn’t call that murder and therefore must not intervene.

One of the reasons I just can’t go all the way with libertarians.

Link, your superstitions are no basis for public policy.

It is not possible to enshrine such a practise into law, not everything can be rendered ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’. I think it very risky to have kinfolk with vested interests empowered to make decisions, and take such drastic steps, or even cognisant individuals.

People who murder themselves, end up in an effective spirutal no-mans land which can be very difficult to get out of. I know you won’t believe this Ken and can only suggest that you do some afterlife research or spend a bit of time thinking about what will happen to my soul when I die? Why do I have a soul anyway? or, if indeed I have a soul what is its possible use?

I don’t have a religious conviction about this matter, so I guess I differ from The Currency Lad in that I don’t have a moral objection to suicide. However I do have a strong antipathy to murder, however it is rationalised. Motivations to murder are murky at the best of times, and “inheritance self-help actions” (very elegantly phrased, Paul!) present murkier motivations than most.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21299539-2702,00.html

The significant age difference between the partners adds validity to the Oz’s spin, I believe.

Over coming decades, euthanasia is going to become increasingly muddied by “early-inheritance self-help actions” (to put it euphemistically), because of the massive wealth disparities between relatively poor Xer children in their 50s and 60s and their comparatively affluent (home-owning!) elderly parents.

Bannerman is vehemently in agreement and frowns disdainfully on those who would deny that each human being holds the inalienable right to self-determination, inclusive of the day, date and time of their own demise and the manner of the departure.

No-one….absolutely no-one will tell Bannerman what he can and cannot do with his own life, or death.