Question from Sam:
Hi,
If I commit suicide, I will:
1) Not experience any of the harms of life.
2) Not miss any of the benefits of life.
So why not commit suicide?
Answer:
Hi. You tell me. Why haven’t you done it yet? Purely because a god told you not to? I don’t think so, or you’d be constantly wishing He’d let you.
If you commit suicide, you will:
1) Not be able to do anything about the harms of life.
2) No longer experience any of the benefits of life.
If you care at all about others, you have an opportunity to help them only when you’re alive. Even if they end up getting your help after you die, in your will for example, you have to prepare for it while you’re still with us. It’s the other people in this world that keep most of us in it, I think. As Robert Frost wrote, we all have promises to keep, and miles to go before we sleep. They can be some fulfilling miles.
If on the other hand all you care about is yourself, then it’s up to you to decide whether the benefits of life still available to you are worth the “harms” you’re likely to go through. Because life is absolutely teeming with potential benefits, depending on what you like, only in really awful cases does the answer to this reasonably approach “no”. It does happen, however, which is why there is a certain amount of support for voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill.
Death to an atheist is essentially a tremendous waste of opportunity and potential. It’s also actual death, rather than a passport to another life. It’s not often worth hastening.
– SmartLX
Suicide
“Death to an atheist is essentially a tremendous waste of opportunity and potential. It’s also actual death, rather than a passport to another life. It’s not often worth hastening.”