Torah and Jewish Idea > Torah and Jewish Idea
Edited Title: Chaim and I agree on this ... as per this weeks Ask JTF.
Lubab:
I find this whole conversation very interesting. I always hear atheists tell me "if the only reason you don't murder is because it says in the Bible, then you are a sick person".
Well it turns out many people still don't have it straight and we would all be a lot better off if people just followed what it says in the Bible.
I didn't realize Skippy, that you had actually done this many times.
Did you actively cause the death or just pull the plug and the death happened on its own? There's a big difference.
Lubab:
--- Quote from: Tzvi Ben Roshel on February 10, 2008, 01:29:35 PM ---I was sort of thinking the same way, (except for the revealing of secrets which does sound somewhat right, allthought I dont know). Lubab I want to ask you- is it concidered suicide if one prays or while praying asks or thinks of G-d killing him/her? Or someone saying something like "please G-d take me from this low world, and bring me closer to you in the higher spiriutal worlds" etc.
--- End quote ---
Every time we say Shma we are supposed to imagine ourselves willing to sacrifice our lives for G-d. Is that what you mean? That's a mitzvah, not suicide. But I'm not sure I understand the question.
Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks:
--- Quote from: lubab on February 10, 2008, 10:50:56 PM ---
How can you talk about a moment of human life in terms of dollars and cents? All the money in the world is not worth one moment of human life. I think what you just said was immoral and repugnant and it's against what the Bible says. You must preserve life at all costs, including your own life. It's not yours to mess with. It's on loan from G-d. He gives it and takes it when He wants to.
--- End quote ---
How is it Biblical to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on expensive heart/lung machines, last-ditch desperation surgeries, experimental superdrugs (that at most slow down the cancer by two or three weeks), etc. on patients in the same category as Ariel Sharon (ys"vz)? It is because of Western society's absurd arrogance and insistence of these enormously futile end-of-life treatments that healthcare insurance is so abominably expensive for all of us.
Please show me how G-d demands that societies spend tens of billons of dollars keeping the likes of Sharon alive that could have been used in providing basic coverage--or even fancy, lifesaving treatments--for people who could actually use them.
Please show me how insistence upon another two or three weeks of torturous, miserable, and quite likely unconscious "life" is preferable to a natural death.
Lubab:
--- Quote from: C.F. on February 11, 2008, 01:24:37 AM ---
--- Quote from: lubab on February 10, 2008, 10:50:56 PM ---
How can you talk about a moment of human life in terms of dollars and cents? All the money in the world is not worth one moment of human life. I think what you just said was immoral and repugnant and it's against what the Bible says. You must preserve life at all costs, including your own life. It's not yours to mess with. It's on loan from G-d. He gives it and takes it when He wants to.
--- End quote ---
How is it Biblical to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars on expensive heart/lung machines, last-ditch desperation surgeries, experimental superdrugs (that at most slow down the cancer by two or three weeks), etc. on patients in the same category as Ariel Sharon (ys"vz)? It is because of Western society's absurd arrogance and insistence of these enormously futile end-of-life treatments that healthcare insurance is so abominably expensive for all of us.
Please show me how G-d demands that societies spend tens of billons of dollars keeping the likes of Sharon alive that could have been used in providing basic coverage--or even fancy, lifesaving treatments--for people who could actually use them.
Please show me how insistence upon another two or three weeks of torturous, miserable, and quite likely unconscious "life" is preferable to a natural death.
--- End quote ---
You are now mixing in a few different issues by throwing Sharon into the equation. I don't think that's a good idea in a discussion like this. We want to stay on point talking about a regular person and whether it's worth spending a boat-load of money to preserve their life, old and sick though they may be.
You want scriptural support for this, right?
Coming up...give me a day to research and I'll be back with sources G-d willing.
newman:
I have to agree with Chaim, too.
Nobody has the right to tell another person who is suffering hideously (with no chance of a cure) to "grin and bear it for G-d's glory".
I'm not proposing anybody be bumped off against their will. But when a lucid patient requests the means to terminate their suffering I think it is their inalienable right.
Same for those who make living wills requesting death in the event of them becoming 'vegetables'. I also know soldiers who have made pacts with their comrades that in the event they are hopelessly maimed (blinded AND crippled etc) that their comrades finish them in the field. This is not uncommon.
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