What's So Morally Wrong With Suicide?

[syo]

God gave as the gift of life. killing ourselves is like negating that gift.

 

[PureX]

I was

According to a Gallup poll done about a year ago on the moral acceptability of certain practices, 82% of Americans find suicide to be morally unacceptable and 18% find it acceptable.

This is a huge difference, and one I would attribute to the influence of Christian thinking if I could find a Biblical passage that condemns it, but I can't. So, is this more of a secular position? If it is, what are the secular reasons for scorning suicide?


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I was raised Catholic, and was taught that to commit suicide is a "mortal sin". One that cannot be forgiven. I don't know where this idea came from, biblically, but the logic given was that we do not have the right to destroy the life that God has given us.

 

[Kapalika]

Suppose you discovered you had an uncontrollable compulsion towards some heinous crime. I have heard, for instance, of some people who at least report that they cannot stop themselves from committing certain crimes, such as murder, rape, and child molestation. Further suppose you didn't want to turn yourself in for the crimes you already had committed, and spend the remainder of your life in prison. Yet, at the same time, you didn't want to harm any more people. Suicide might be moral under those conditions. Especially if no one depended on you, your death would not shatter anyone's life, etc.

Hm. Well I don't know if I would call that moral, but I certainly wouldn't see that bad, maybe even good if they were in jail for life and were just costing taxpayer money, but I'm not sure I could call it moral. It seems more like a neutral act to me.

There have been cases of that with pedophiles afraid they might molest children who killed themselves without ever having harmed a child. As far as serial killers there is somewhat of a problem with the example is serial criminals often rationalize their behavior. I used to be really interested in the psychology serial killers and rapists and the like, as you know, and I can't recall very many that ever felt bad for what they did. I think the ones who do feel bad, have the capacity to stop or avoid whatever crime they have a compulsion to do.