Category Archives: Killing

Are there any religious experts? “Religion experts” on euthansia

Standard

This post is now available in Polish translation over at Racjonalista. Thanks again go to Malgorzata.

…………………………………………..

The Ottawa Citizen has an advice column which puts questions to so-called “religion experts,” who give answers on crucial issues facing individuals and society. There is a big problem with this, because religion experts are, almost by definition, not religion experts at all. What is there to be expert about? They might be experts in their own religion, but there is no such thing as a religion expert who is qualified to give religion’s answer to any question. A recent column in the Citizen’s “Ask the Religion Experts” column, for 31 January 2012 — thanks to Veronica Abbass for the link – asks the two questions: “Is euthanasia right? Would God want us to suffer?” And then the religion experts weigh in on the side of their favourite god. The nonsense that this makes of the questions should be clear right from the outset. We ask the experts their opinion, and all they can do is refer to the “experts” of their religion. According to Z, this is the way it is; according to Y, the truth is such-and-such, and so on. And, around the edges, a little lie or two will take you over the hump when reason fails.

The first one is perhaps the funniest. It’s by a Bahá’í scholar, Jack McLean. Seeing him described as a scholar reminds me of the day I took my M.Div. degree diploma and cut it to shreds. I no longer consider that to be a degree at all. It qualified me as an Anglican priest, but it no longer seems to me that there was anything to know, except, of course, historically, for the church does have a history (or perhaps I should say the churches have a history, for there is no point, during the whole history of Christianity, where there was an unquestioned unity within Christianity), but it is impossible to be a scholar of religion itself, for religion has no subject matter. The “theo” part of theology (the word ‘theology’ meaning, roughly, the logos of theos, or the reason, knowledge of god) is simply UA (on unauthorised absence), having departed his post, or, rather, never having been there in the first place, for all the confident pretence of religious believers, especially its officer class, to which, largely, the Ottawa Citizen has appealed for enlightenment upon a subject which has no object.

Continue reading →

About these ads

Barbara Kay is really stupid — or irresponsible. Take your pick!

Standard

Barbara Kay, mother of Jonathan Kay, also a columnist for the National Post — official paper, it sometimes seems, of the Tory Party – has said a lot of stupid things in her time, but perhaps the following is one of the stupidest:

I have always found it odd that the same people who feel the death penalty is barbaric often look benignly on euthanasia. And it does show that words matter. One person’s stark “state killing” is to another, as in Quebec’s pitch to legalize euthanasia, “dying with dignity.”

This comes from an article in the National Post yesterday (23 January 2013), and the attempt to assimilate assisted dying to the execution of criminals is perhaps the most hyperbolic claim that has yet been made about assisted dying. No one that I know of has tried this before, and it just shows that Barbara Kay simply does not understand.

Assisted dying is not, contrary to Kay’s opinion, “state killing,” as though the state qua state would be involved as the agent in every act of assisted dying, and that assisted dying, were it to be legalised, would be directed and intentional killing by the state, as it would be were it an act of judicial killing mandated by legislature and courts. Making the suggestion is offensive, but it is also just stupid. Kay seems to think that an assisted dying law would turn every hospital into a Lubyanka Prison, and every doctor into a KGB agent, looking for inoffensive citizens to kill. Has she no control over her mind at all, or does she come out with these kinds of idiocies simply because she has a form of intellectual Tourette’s Syndrome? Instead of thinking things through she just lets her mind spew out the latest idiocy that arises from her unconscious without exercising any rational censorship over what ends up on the page or screen. The entire article, without exception, is evidence for this.

Continue reading →

On Letting Nature Take Its Course. Letting the Religious Justify Assisted Dying!

Standard

The National Post gives a brief synopsis of the case heard by the Supreme Court in the matter of Cutherbertson et al. v. Rasouli, regarding the question of medical decision-making at the end of life. The questions before the court, according to the article, are these:

Who gets to decide when medical treatments are no longer worth pursuing and should be ended? The doctors? The patients? In the case of those who can’t speak for themselves, their surrogate decision makers?

Is discontinuing care when doctors deem all hope of recovery is gone the equivalent of allowing a patient to die — or hastening a death?

Despite what at least one commenter claimed, in response to my earlier post regarding this matter, in reference to a press release from the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, the matter of religion and end-of-life decision making was a crucial concern in the case that was before the court. As the report says:

[Rasouli's wife] and his family insist their faith — they are Shia Muslims — requires them to do all they can to preserve Rasouli’s life.

They also claim that some of Mr. Rasouli’s movements indicate purpose. Although his condition has been upgraded from vegetative to minimally conscious, this appears more in the nature of a fond hope than an accurate account of Rasouli’s condition. Indeed, a question that ought to arise in a caring person’s mind is whether, being minimally conscious, Rasouli is capable of anything more than suffering.

Continue reading →