If before being born, God told you everything that would happen in your life but from a third person perspective. — I love Chom-choms

What's your point?

Why not skip the God/Harry Potter stuff, which adds nothing, and just ask: If you had a choice never to have lived at all, knowing what you now know about your life events, what would you choose?

What are you hoping this question would reveal?
Incidentally, how on earth can God talk to you if you have never been born? Your identify, your sensibilities are moulded from your lived experiences, so there would be no one for God to talk to. Unless you are putting forth an argument regarding some kind of eternal, pre-birth soul - in which case you have, I think, a rather different philosophical question requiring further elaboration. — Tom Storm

Incidentally, how on earth can God talk to you if you have never been born? Your identify, your sensibilities are moulded from your lived experiences, so there would be no one for God to talk to. — Tom Storm

Having foreknowledge of one's life kinda takes the fun out of living - you would know in advance what would happen to you and it would be like reruns of a TV show. — TheMadFool

Oh that is an interesting perspective but as I said your decision is only possible because you have lived your life which before living you would not have. — I love Chom-choms

You would choose to exist but then you wouldn't remember about it — I love Chom-choms

Oh that is an interesting perspective but as I said your decision is only possible because you have lived your life which before living you would not have.
— I love Chom-choms

What's the point then if my choice won't make a difference? Is this God just trying to get some cheap thrills at our expense? — TheMadFool

You would choose to exist but then you wouldn't remember about it
— I love Chom-choms

Again, in addition to the amnesia that would make the whole exercise pointless, if there's just too much pain involved, count me out. — TheMadFool

Suicide is not wrong. Would you or would you not put someone out of faer misery if the occasion arises? Would you be able to witness a person being broken on the rack, a person being tortured mercilessly, without feeling the urge to put a quick end to this person's life? The answer to both questions is an emphatic "yes" I believe. — TheMadFool

You're beginning to sound like an evil genius, crafting all sorts of psychological conundrums to torture people to [mental] death and worse, resuscitate them again so that you could do it all over again. :chin: — TheMadFool

Yes, but that is your opinion, I am sure there is some psycho out there who would have the urge to torture that guy more. You may believe that your opinion is better but whatever the reason for you opinion may be, there is someone who would disagree with, I think, a very plausible reason that it is just more fun to see that guy suffer than to save him.
By saying this, I mean to say that the empathy which compels you to save or kill him is not present in everyone. You are in the majority of those who are sympathetic to the tortured person but being in the majority does not make you right. — I love Chom-choms

Please elaborate. I pride myself at being more of a voyeur that just likes to watch people react to funny scenarios than a sadist. — I love Chom-choms

My argument is not based on votes. If you fail to see the logic of putting an end to suffering by any means possible, sorry, I can't help you. — TheMadFool

Would you or would you not put someone out of faer misery if the occasion arises? Would you be able to witness a person being broken on the rack, a person being tortured mercilessly, without feeling the urge to put a quick end to this person's life? — TheMadFool

I have known a few people who have committed suicide and try not to be judgemental in seeing what they did as 'wrong'. However, I do see suicide as being one of the worst possible ways to die and would like to find better solutions than to kill myself, if found my life to be completely unbearable.

One of the aspects of it seems to be that it is an act which often occurs in a moment of rash panic. Also, often people who do make a suicide fail and end up disabled or with long lasting health problems. One of the worst scenarios is that of people taking overdoses of Paracetamol and making some kind of recovery, often glad to be alive, only to discover they are likely to die through liver failure — Jack Cummins

However, it is likely that the person who commits suicide is in such a difficult place emotionally that they are not able to stop and think clearly. Also, there may be a difference between the person who has fleeting suicidal thoughts and the person who has recurrent or almost permanent suicidal ideation. I believe that there may be better ways forward for managing suicidal unhappiness, but I would not go as far as to say that suicide is absolutely wrong in all circumstances. — Jack Cummins

Also, you speak of third person perspective as being more important than the subjective. I believe that both aspects are worth thinking about. The third person analysis is a useful way of looking at the objective aspects. However, I think that looking at the individual person who is on the precipice of suicide is not necessarily about sympathy, but about empathy, in trying to understand the suffering of the person at the moment when they chose to take their own life. — Jack Cummins

Suppose at this very moment, God visited you ... — I love Chom-choms

Suppose at this very moment, God visited you ...
— I love Chom-choms
Can you answer the question without bringing in God or any other external source, but by applying only reasoning? Why? Because the existence of God is not really established and/or universally acceptable. — Alkis Piskas

In other words, is there a rationality and sound ethical principles that supports your statement? That is, principles that are based on pure logic and not on some abstract idea of "good" or "bad".
That would be much more "fruitful" from a philosophical viewpoint, don't you think?

For example, if you define ethical behavior as one that "promotes survival and well-beingness" (both physical and non-physical) or "doing major good for the most", can this support your statement?
I believe yes. These principles, by definition, reject an action such as suicide, don't they? — Alkis Piskas

If God now gave you the opportunity to never have been born in the first place, what would you choose? — I love Chom-choms

think that one should only commit suicide if their life is bad and I just made it clear(I think) that your life is not bad, you just say that it is. So if the reasoning behind suicide is wrong then no matter how much you suffer, it would be wrong to choose to die. — I love Chom-choms

“There is only one really serious philosophical problem,” Camus says, “and that is suicide. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that” (MS, 3). One might object that suicide is neither a “problem” nor a “question,” but an act. A proper, philosophical question might rather be: “Under what conditions is suicide warranted?” And a philosophical answer might explore the question, “What does it mean to ask whether life is worth living?” as William James did in The Will to Believe. For the Camus of The Myth of Sisyphus, however, “Should I kill myself?” is the essential philosophical question. For him, it seems clear that the primary result of philosophy is action, not comprehension. His concern about “the most urgent of questions” is less a theoretical one than it is the life-and-death problem of whether and how to live.

Camus sees this question of suicide as a natural response to an underlying premise, namely that life is absurd in a variety of ways. As we have seen, both the presence and absence of life (i.e., death) give rise to the condition: it is absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none, and it is absurd to hope for some form of continued existence after death given that the latter results in our extinction. But Camus also thinks it absurd to try to know, understand, or explain the world, for he sees the attempt to gain rational knowledge as futile. Here Camus pits himself against science and philosophy, dismissing the claims of all forms of rational analysis: “That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh” (MS, 21).

These kinds of absurdity are driving Camus’s question about suicide, but his way of proceeding evokes another kind of absurdity, one less well-defined, namely, the “absurd sensibility” (MS, 2, tr. changed). This sensibility, vaguely described, seems to be “an intellectual malady” (MS, 2) rather than a philosophy. He regards thinking about it as “provisional” and insists that the mood of absurdity, so “widespread in our age” does not arise from, but lies prior to, philosophy. Camus’s diagnosis of the essential human problem rests on a series of “truisms” (MS, 18) and “obvious themes” (MS, 16). But he doesn’t argue for life’s absurdity or attempt to explain it—he is not interested in either project, nor would such projects engage his strength as a thinker. “I am interested … not so much in absurd discoveries as in their consequences” (MS, 16). Accepting absurdity as the mood of the times, he asks above all whether and how to live in the face of it. “Does the absurd dictate death” (MS, 9)? But he does not argue this question either, and rather chooses to demonstrate the attitude towards life that would deter suicide. In other words, the main concern of the book is to sketch ways of living our lives so as to make them worth living despite their being meaningless. — “SEP on Camus”

Central questions of intergenerational justice are: first, whether present generations can be duty-bound because of considerations of justice to past and future people; second, whether other moral considerations should guide those currently alive in relating to both past and future people; and third, how to interpret the significance of past injustices in terms of what is owed to the descendants of the direct victims of the injustices. — “SEP on Intergenerational Justice”

My argument is not based on votes. If you fail to see the logic of putting an end to suffering by any means possible, sorry, I can't help you.
— TheMadFool
I knew you would say something like that. Well, then please tell me your logic for saving a suffering man's life.
Would you or would you not put someone out of faer misery if the occasion arises? Would you be able to witness a person being broken on the rack, a person being tortured mercilessly, without feeling the urge to put a quick end to this person's life?
— TheMadFool

I would, if I won't be judged for it afterwards and I don't have any duty to save the person in question, just walk away like nothing happened. — I love Chom-choms

There is no rule book to life. I think suicide should be an unstigmatized personal choice. There are many reasons why suicide might be preferable to life - pain, illness, war, old age.... However, people who want to kill themselves are often making the decision based on a situational crisis and with some support through the mess they may find equanimity and joy again. — Tom Storm

I imagine this is what goes through a suicidal person's head. I am not sure though, but if it is then I can understand why he would want to die and I think that I might even help him die. However, I have thought about it many times but always, and I mean always, after a few days later, after my feeling of this matter have died down. When I look back at it, I question then decision and my conclusion is that it was wrong. I shouldn't have killed him neither should I have just watched him die. Maybe if I helped him then even if he had lost all hope, he would feel happy again.
My point is that, the empathy on which your argument is based, I have felt it and wanted to do something but that feeling disappears and I question the answer I found. So I find empathy to be an unreliable judge of morality and opt for a rational judge. — I love Chom-choms

Why 'coerce' someone to live (or demonize a person) who compulsively needs to cease living? — 180 Proof

↪180 Proof Yep. I suspect Christian thinking influences these sorts of positions. — Tom Storm

Why 'coerce' someone to live (or demonize a person) who compulsively needs to cease living? — 180 Proof

My empathy for people agrees with you. I too believe that suicide is a preferable end to the pain that might come from living but I don't see it as "the right thing to do" — I love Chom-choms

1. (Some kinds of) suffering are unbearable
2. We don't want unbearable things
Ergo,
3. We should do something to reduce/eliminate such forms of suffering — TheMadFool