All these religious idiots campaign so hard to prevent assisted suicide, but none of them are out there campaigning to stop the government starving us to death by stopping our benefits. Apparently a quick, painless death is against the will of the flying spaghetti monster, but a slow painful death is just fine,
gotta be categorically against suicide always and forever when your doctrine promises eternal paradise in the next life otherwise your adherents will just take the shortcut and then they won’t pay tithes.
This was one of the reasons slave owners spread Christianity among their slaves. Slaves will continue to be slaves if they think the next life is worse. Otherwise, there’d be nothing to stop them from doing a hunger strike or worse.
They also forbidden selfcastration as cheat. Suffering is not only the point, but it have to be the correct kind of suffering.
They don’t see it as a contradiction, they want disabled people to be reliant on and subservient to the church.
Suffering for God’s glory is part of it, and poors do a lot of suffering. It’s the same logic as creating jobs–they’re creating believers!
Authority over death belongs to God alone
Saint Augustine said that you’re not allowed to kill yourself because “thou shall not kill” doesn’t specify “thy neighbor” like other commandments, yet there are clear exemptions in the bible to shall not kill: Laws of one’s state and Divine intervention (like God telling Abraham to kill his son).
What I’m saying is Fundies are more regressive than 4th Century christians.
I think Augustine would not assign carte blanche to any law a state may hold regarding killing, or else the Commandment is meaningless and Christians may support their own persecution (though I guess they kind of did in pre-Christian Rome).
But also this is unimportant because we, as a secular society, should not be binding others by the laws of a religion they do not believe in, and that’s the main point.
He does specifically say “just” laws, which definitely means “ones that agree with Christianism”
