lol yup -.-

Which one is it? Universsally accepted, or your own choice?
Murder is not morrally wrong for me because I find it my duty to remove certain genes from the genepool for the betterment of the human race?







Keeping religion out of this, When somebody renders services that are establish, but does not render benefits to said services you still have to pay them.

When I order pizza, all I need to get is pizza. Normally, I also get a side of Garlic sauce for free and without asking. But if that garlic sauce does not come because they ran out, I can't ask for a refund after eating the pizza, nor am I allowed to not pay them if they come deliver it to me.

What do your parents really owe you? What did you do to deserve being taken care of?

Now remember, keep religion out of this.

Simple. If they go and up, they are obligated to take of us when we are born. Or, be crappy parents. They made a choice, and have to pay the consequences for those choices.

The children, however, did not have a choice. They didn't say 'Hmm! I think I'm going to go be born, today. Huzzah!' They are under no such obligation as those parents.

It's hard topic.
Maybe you can't just generalize like that, people often just need some help and, when given, they can lead happy life again. If someone's healthy (f.e. not fully paralyzed or not having missing limbs and such), it's most likely the case.
*sigh

Why are you reducing human life to what is 'owed' by who to who?

i thank my parents for having new years sex in order to spit me out 9 months later. I respect them for that. I'll even help them out when they ask for help. But they don't /own/ me any more, they haven't owned me since I was 18. My parents took care of me because they loved me and they wanted me to be the best I can be. Perhaps this was alturistic, perhaps this was pure selfishness (ie, they had me and looked after me because they /wanted/ a child). But I'm not a pizza, I wasn't ordered like a pizza and I'm not consumed like a pizza.

Like a lot of things, especially when it comes to "morals" and "ethics", there are plenty of situations where you may wish to swing one way in some situations and other ways in other situations. Is suicide right for anyone who wishes to just end their life? No. There's plenty of ways to co-erce people into ending their lives (for example, group suicide pacts still do turn up!). Then there's the "suicide defence" (he asked me to help him commit suicide! Look, a suicide note!). Then there's stuff that has been mentioned, such as mental conditions including depression. People also do choose to do stupid stuff spontaneously, and your spontaneous decision to commit suicide may also involve others (eg, deciding to commit suicide whilst you're driving.) All of these are situations where suicide isn't *cough* appropriate. But there are situations where I believe suicide is and should be appropriate. Those with degenerative diseases, for example. If you're dying of cancer, you /know/ you're dying of cancer, why can't you make the choice, as a conscious living being, to end your life on a happy note?

So here's a fun thought experiment, just to try and understand why suicide /is/ illegal. Imagine, for a moment, that it wasn't. You wished to kill yourself any place, any time.. so you do. How many instances of suicide is avoided by simply linking any thoughts of "suicide" to "this is wrong" ? We're brought up to view things such as murder and suicide as 'wrong', even as children, to condition us into making that specific link. Would things be different if you weren't taught that?

I have no idea why suicide wouldn't be right for anyone who wishes to just end their lives. It's no less their choice when someone's coerced them into it than when they're doing it for no reason at all, or because they're seriously ill, mentally or otherwise.

Otherwise, you're going to have to ban advertising or whatever because it coerces people into doing things with their money they wouldn't otherwise do. However, FORCING and coercing are totally different, so if that's what you meant...

So, you shouldn't forbid people to commit suicide (as it could be done), but you should try to convince them not to if you can't comprehend why they want to do that.

It might have something to do with "people can be quite easily coerced, there's whole arms of science to study how and why.." and "death is a permanent thing."

I don't think gambling, by itself, is a bad thing - but its bad when someone does it to the point of destroying their family. There are some people who can gamble briefly with small amounts of money, then walk away fulfilled. there are those who can't. should it be made illegal? perhaps. as a side note - "pokies" (one arm bandits) are illegal anywhere bar a casino in western australia. in most (all?) other states you'll find them in pubs and bars. the pubs say they make a lot of money from them, the flipside is that a lot of people seem to sink /everything/ they get, including their government cheques (dole, welfare, whatever its called for you) into the pokie machiines. Ah, grey areas.

edit: gambling here as an example of 'forcing' vs 'coercion'. in any case, its all very grey.
edit: and yes, i think modern advertising should be banned. it really is scary - has anyone actually seen the medical infomercials on australian tv? they're presented by a "research" or "consumer" body. they present a problem, suggest ways around it, then how this product fixes it. yes, people can be swayed by that.

Well, it's probably not a case of "should," even. It's more like, some people would counsel a friend not to destroy a valuable painting they owned, but if they really really wanted to for whatever reason, they would let them.

I personally would respect someone more for letting go of someone who wanted to die and letting them do what they want with their life than for trying to convince them to remain alive, but both are virtues of a friend, I just happen to hold one as more important than the other. Both are the right thing to do, in a way.

and at this point i love you. you and your sock puppet. time for me to back to psychology study.

You've convinced me, there is no difference betwenn humans and genetic viruses/bacteria. Just don't kill the viruses cause thats just cruel and you can't tell the virus what to do.

...nooo idea what that's about, but it sounds like you agree with me, so yay! (I've never studied psychology, as a note. Not the type of thing I'd be good at, I think.)

And uh, Daganev, human life's different to a virus life. Yes, I know they're both just animals, we had this debate on that other thread, but viruses and bacteria aren't sapient or sentient.

Suicide is hardly immoral. It is a useful evolutionary tool. The instinct to remove oneself from a population when one's presence lends nothing to the population at large is a cornerstone of well developed societies. Rather than make use of resources that in the end are only prolonging a process of self-deprecation, it is far preferable on the large scale to permit the spread of resources amongst contributory members of the society.

Ah, dear, such a harsh view. :/

Yes, this is excatly why we must kill off all non blond-haired blue-eyed peoples.

How do you know? They appear to me to be much more congintive of thier surroundings than Humans are. They also have a much fater rate of improving themselves and making use of new factors to thier environment. Adaptable, intelegent, and are able to live just about anywhere on the planet. If nuclear war broke out, viruses and bacteria would still exist, and they can form communities and kill others better than humans can. They do everything humans do, only better.

Assuming ofcourse no religious view in life.

Why not other way around this time, eh?
Psh...

They're not more cognitive of their surroundings. Just because they're better adapted to survive than humans, and evolve faster because of their fast reproduction rate, doesn't mean they're more intelligent or even near to sentience. They just don't have the biological capacity to be intelligent. It's not possible, just given the amount of cells they have.

EDIT: You don't have to be religious to know they're different. There's a big difference between the scientific view that humans and viruses are the same because they're both carbon and whatever else based lifeforms that follow the same basic principles (there's no "humans have souls, nothing else does" stuff going on) and the view that humans and viruses are on the same LEVEL. I mean, it's like comparing a sinclair spectrum to the latest weather-prediction supercomputer. Or so.

Do you know how viruses and bacteria work? Just because you think your different doesn't mean you really are. They communicate wirelessly, they form structures. How do you know what it knows? Just because it doesn't have grey squishy matter does not mean it does not have a 'brain.' The central nucloids do everything the brain does, just on a smaller scale. It just happnes to be that bacteria and viruses are normally your human enemy, and are the only living thing on the planet that really poses any threat to human life. Your just being biased.

If you don't beleive me ask Agent Smith