Marc Riddell wrote:
on 4/19/07 9:10 AM, Info Control at infodmz@gmail.com wrote:
Who's basic humanity and cultural sensitivity? For some cultures and people, suicide is acceptable. Do we impose a Christian viewpoint? Jew? Muslim? Buddhist? Atheist? Humanist? American? Japanese? African?
And there is one common thread which binds all of your religious and ethnic examples: the human being. For this is what we all are before anything else is superimposed over us.
Actually, the atheist philosophy doesn't necessarily have anything to say about that one way or another.
Respecting and preserving that human life is also a common thread which connects us all.
For some people "respect for human life" also includes respecting peoples' ability to decide how and when to end their own lives. As Info Control pointed out in some cultures suicide is acceptable; as a concrete example a quick Googling provided me with http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3640438.stm which indicates that 4 in 10 Scots would break the existing law to help loved ones die.
But that's beside the point, really. Even if all of humanity rose up tomorrow as one and announced "suicide is bad!" It would still be perfectly reasonable to have an article that went "Even though all of humanity agrees that suicide is bad,[1] the following is a factual description of the common methods by which people have tried killing themselves." It doesn't have to be advocacy or a how-to guide, we can have a perfectly encyclopedic article on this subject.