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Comment by throwaway8581 | Hacker News Reader

Very sad to see a Catholic country go down this path. All human life has dignity, and it is always wrong to end your own life.

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It isn't Catholic, but secular. I can see how it can look like that from the outside, as the Catholic church has lots of privileges (down to a checkbox where you can "donate your tax reductions to the Catholic Church" in the state's tax forms - no other religion has this).

> it is always wrong to end your own life

If my options are a) two months of increasing agony followed by death and b) immediate painless death; and there was no c) option, then I think I'd rather skip the suffering, honestly. The fact that it would also mean needless spending is just icing on the cake. Let them use that hospital bed for some child with cancer.

If you choose a) I would certainly respect it. I would like my country to make your last days as comfortable as possible, with the resources available. I would certainly fight anyone who would impose b) onto you.

I only ask you do the same for me.

I think St. Thomas Aquinas was right in believing that some matters of personal sin are left to the individual. But once you enlist the assistance of a doctor or anyone else, that is certainly no longer the case. It would be wrong to impose "immediate painless death" on me because it is against God's law. It is wrong to kill yourself because it is also against God's law.

Then YOU don't do it. Don't force your opinion of "God's Law" on others.

That’s what all laws are. You take some moral idea founded ultimately on some unprovable axiom, and then you impose it on others through violence. Whoever is able to repeatedly and reliably deploy violence to impose their religion (which doesn’t need to have a god) gets to rule society.

Then we should thank God that God does not exist!

> it is always wrong to end your own life

This is a very blunt statement that you proffer as fact - it is, in fact, your opinion. Many other people feel differently, and your opinion doesn't change that.

It's not my opinion. It is the teaching of the magisterium of the Catholic Church, founded by Jesus Christ and led by the successors of Peter.

This viewpoint ignores the experience of the person actually wishing to end their life. I reject the notion that it is always immoral to do so. The fun thing about the universe is that all life is the same. Sure, there are different physical configurations, but life is life. Nature doesn't care one whit about life as something sacred.

I wouldn't agree about that it's always immoral to end one's own life, either, but

> This viewpoint ignores the experience of the person actually wishing to end their life.

...there is an argument to be made that a person whose life has ended has no experience to consider, leaving an absolute moral/utils cost.

>...there is an argument to be made that a person whose life has ended has no experience to consider, leaving an absolute moral/utils cost.

It's hard to say, honestly. Like, for all we know, if brain activity ceases to be measurable, then there is no experience. But how do we actually know that? One cannot know what the experience of death is like without actually experiencing it, just like we can never truly know what the living experience of others is like. I think there is much around the topic that we'll never truly be able to understand, simply because it's not a state we can enter and leave at will. The closest we can get to something like that, in my understanding, is a deep experience with DMT (or the more potent 5-MeO-DMT).

Catholicism seems to have a negligible influence in Spain nowadays. I went to Andalusia a few years ago, and found every single Catholic church there to be closed and shuttered. Crossed over the runway to Gibraltar and found them open daily.

I think the worst that can happen to a church is for it to become the cultural norm.

I don't think it's always wrong to end your life. If you are in pain and have no way out, why should you have to endure suffering?

Indeed, I feel that it's selfish and imposing for a human to impose a morality on the self-determination of an individual to continue living or to cease doing so. Also, outside of natural end-of-life scenarios, if someone of a young age has been pushed to the point where they are looking at suicide as a serious option, then perhaps more should be said about the people to blame for that, instead of just saying "suicide is wrong" and walking away. Perhaps mental abuse should finally be considered as much of a crime as physical abuse.

Spain has a catholic history, but is is officially aconfesional (it is in the constitution)

Spain (I'm spaniard) is passively catholic. Catholic church is everywhere, but you will struggle to find people less than 60 year old going to Mass.

Except for the typical extremes, people here has, generally speaking, a "live and let live" mentality. For example, the latests polls show over 70% of people pro-euthanasia and only 15% against it. Another poll shows that around 75% of the people declares themselves catholic. So when you picture a "Catholic Spain", imagine a lot of people that were born into a religion, they recognize themselves as catholic, but couldn't care less. This is a good place to live your religion or atheism in peace.

I did not make any point with how prevalent Catholicism is in Spain, or any personal observation on it.

I was correcting the original comment, because it is a common misunderstanding. Spain is not officially catholic, and this is explicitly stated in the spanish constitution (Art. 16 section 3.)

https://app.congreso.es/consti/constitucion/indice/titulos/a...

And I was adding to your point that is not only that Spain is officially secular, but also that the society is quite relaxed about religion.

I find Spain quite different from Turkey, for example, which is officially secular but the society is not.

Based on what logically coherent, moral argument?

Based on the magisterium of the Catholic Church.

Spain is a majority Catholic country in part because of a widespread terroristic campaign of torturing and killing Jewish and Muslim Spanish people, carried out by the Catholic Church. What about the dignity of their lives?

It’s a little more complicated, involving the invasion and 780 year foreign rule by the Moors over Spain. The Catholic resistance began immediately and eventually triumphed. And of course Catholic kings were often bad. What does that have to do with it? Secular humanists have also committed atrocities under their philosophy. They were all wrong. The Catholic Church is still the one true church.