I'm not trying to worm out of anything.
You made a claim about suicide rates, for which you've offered no evidence. All I've done is suggest that things might be more complicated than the bare statistics would suggest, even if - on the face of it - numbers have risen.
"Religion" is much too vague a concept to introduce here - it's not as if all religions are of a voice, or even that all adherents to any particular one agree. (I know of at least one clergyman who's a member of Dignity in Dying, for example, and there're plenty more who're sympathetic without being members.)
But suppose there is a "religious" viewpoint: so what? I've never been at all convinced that religious ethics has anything much to say: strip away the apologetics, and it becomes regular moral philosophy done more or less well. (Usually less well, in my experience.)
And while I agree that there's a lot to unpick in appeals to a "right to die", I think that you're rather simplistic about things. Not the least of the reason is that a serious rights claim is not necessarily a utilitarian claim: inasmuch as utilitarianism is a consequentialist line of thought, and rights theory properly so-called is non-consequentialist, it's more likely that there'll be a tension between rights claims and utilitarianism. Admittedly, they often amount to the same in practice - but this doesn't mean that they're compatible.
It's a horribly expensive book - academic volumes invariably are. I'm trying to wangle a free copy, but no joy so far.
(
Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 16:56,
Reply)
It's still premature to analyse statistics you haven't even got yet...
alas I can only find graphs for a few specific countries: Japan, Australia and India; and Scotland which shows the opposite.
I mention religion, in fact I wrote "Christianity" first but then I thought Islam and Judaism don't approve of it either. The point is that other ethical systems come to different conclusions, and religion was a much bigger social force in this country historically, now it's on the wane society is going a different way. (Individual clergy, however, sometimes don't even believe in God, but there you go.) I don't think the secular world has some special claim on being right about this.
True enough, rights claims are essentially moral absolutism, but it rather seems more a case of rule utilitarianism since this new right cropped up, it seems like rule utilitarianism based on Peter Singer's Preference Utilitarianism. The primary idea is that of the satisfaction of the will, the rights come along to facilitate that, or to post-justify it more likely. Call this an oversimplification if you will. I rather call it a distillation. Obviously social forces are in reality far more complex than that.
But to make a point, personally I don't believe that the satisfaction of the will is of primary importance, and that we have not just rights but duties.
I'm glad to discuss this with you anyway because you seem like someone who knows what they are talking about.
(
Moon Girl Technologies horrendous beanbag, Wed 22 Aug 2012, 17:18,
Reply)