We now know that the coronavirus pandemic is deadly serious for all of the world’s people. This fact has been reasonably clear since mid-January, and was undeniably clear a month later. As of now, this nation does not have the pandemic under control, and we did not control it at any time since it began.
Seth Andrews–The Thinking Atheist–discusses death and end-of-life issues from his perspective.
A review of the new HBO documentary “Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America,” 67 minutes in length, which began airing on August 14.
No, it is not an obituary for a specific individual. It is an obituary that recognizes and celebrates taking control of one’s end-of-life suffering.
On April 16, 2018, the Final Exit Network (FEN) filed a lawsuit in federal district court against the State of Minnesota. The suit asks the court to declare that Minnesota’s law prohibiting speaking to a person about how to hasten her own death is a violation of the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. The suit seeks, also, to void FEN’s conviction under the statute, and to bar the State of Minnesota from again initiating a prosecution of FEN, and its personnel, under the statute based solely on the utterance of “speech” that “enables” a suicide.
Talking to children about death is a topic not yet dealt with on this blog. This first discussion by author and blogger Dale McGowan approaches the topic from a freethinking, rather than from a religious perspective. Even for the religious among us, McGowan offers some insights that may be helpful. And even adults may derive benefit from his perspective.
Most objectors to the right to die stand on religious grounds, claiming that God gave life and only God can take life away. Also, any deliberate ending of life is breaking the sixth commandment and therefore a mortal sin. Life is sacred and must be preserved at all costs, only God can decide when and how our lives will end, and Christians are supposed to suffer because it allows them to empathize with Jesus’ suffering.
This interpretation of the sixth commandment is, in fact, wrong.
