Agree.

Oh, I think we understand each other, I'm not looking to "win", just make the point that while we're in agreement that in the vast majority of cases suicide is a mistake (a logical error), that I can imagine, admittedly rare, cases where a logical argument can be made that it could be a reasonable choice.

But who are these originators? Can you actually sketch the process because it seems a bit vague? The founders are not generally in this vein: the Buddha, or Jesus (if he was a historical person), were not empire-builders. If we take Christianity, who exactly are the originators to whom this claim is meant to apply.

The originators of spirituality were ordinary folks seeking answers to unanswerable (with the level of knowledge at the time) questions. But my original commentary pertained to organized religion specifically (as opposed to spirituality). So the goals of those who parlayed individual beliefs in the metaphysical into an institutional heirachy (which, they would lead, naturally) centered on the topic of spirituality, is what you're seeking. My guess is those folks sought personal power and wealth. I'm not so cynical to not acknowledge they didn't also personally believe they were leading society to a better place and individuals to eternal life etc. Rather that they were pursuing both goals.

Individuals who make cold lemonade from scratch in their kitchen do it to quench thirst. Those who create bottling companies, do it to make a profit, regardless of their interest in quenching the thirst of their customers.

That's the issue with non face to face communication, better if unspoken insinuations are spelled out.

I don't entirely disagree with the idea that there are numerous goals of something as large and complex as a religion, and in fact I alluded to this in my posting. Though in my mind, the opinion that is the most important is that of the originators of the religion, thus my original conclusion.

One cannot determine the success or failure of an entity without a concensus on what that entity's goal is. In my opinion, organized religion's goal is to consolidate power and wealth. From this perspective they have been spectacularly successful. From other perspectives, success (and failure) will vary.

I commend you for your honesty, though I'm not putting much stock in a generalization based on an anecdote with an N of 1.

I'll take your silence on my last question as acknowledgement that an argument can be made for shortening one's time of suffering in certain limited circumstances.

I always used to think killing oneself is committed when one is in deranged mental state or under illusions of some sort.

When some one is condoning and even actively promoting assisted killings, in most cases they seem to be motivated by their own financial gains by killing the sufferer under the disguise of act of mercy, which is immoral

Used to think? Well now that you're smarter and more experienced, what do you think now?

As to your last paragraph, I'm curious what the source of information you're using to derive your conclusion as to why folks "seem to be motivated" as you describe.

Lastly, for someone whose family and close friends have passed and are suffering from intractable pain that their doctors have no answer for and are due to die of this malady in say 1 year, would extending that to two years be preferable? How about shortening it to 6 months? Could logical arguments be made in both cases?

To sum up my points, it is illogical to recommend suicide or commit suicide, when killing oneself is not the answer to the problems whatever problem it might be.

Okay, but what about the situation when killing oneself is the answer to the problem?

The rest of your posting treats death as an option that those who don't perform suicide can avoid. Alas, everyone must address death, suicide merely alters the timing of it somewhat. I do agree with you that suicide is commonly a mistake, but there are cases when it is a reasonable course to take.

According to the observer. I'm not talking about a value judgment, rather a statistical analysis.

Well there's "natural" and there's "Natural". To use the umbrella term of Natural (describing each and every thing that occurs in Nature, including 6 inch hailstones), while accurate, adds little beyond the label. OTOH, using the term natural to describe a particular behavior of a wild animal in it's natural habitat, identifies it's common behavior, unaffected by human intervention.

In the first example, an Unnatural thing would mean artificial or man-made, in the latter case unnatural would mean unusual or aberrant.

Normal is a bullseye no dart ever hits.

Good one! Obviously folks can be normal in a few (cherrypicked) variables, but to possess the overall quality of normal (implying being normal in each and every possible variable), while possible, has never been observed.

How can a person be free from "external coercion" when they are living in a culture telling them that by failing to live up to the culture's standards they have lost the right to live?

You seem to be conflating influence with coercion, I meant the latter.

I see your usage of organically/naturally, ie without external intervention. Meaning "if left to their own devices". Though the more common lay usage would mean without human intervention, ie you would have to also be removed from the equation.

The identical surgery in a transwoman should also be social, right?
— LuckyR

Again, not necessarily. There is a difference between a trans sexual and a trans gender person. If the person is a trans sexual, this is not gender. This is the desire to embody the other sex, and changing their secondary sex characteristics to resemble the other sex is not gender.

For clarification, my understanding of the terms trans sexual and trans gender seem to differ from your usage here. That is, to my understanding transgender is an umbrella term for all folks whose (internal) gender identity does not completely conform to their biological sex, which includes those who take hormonal and surgical steps (which describes trans sexuals), but also folks who don't take those steps.

Thus why my postings have tried to delineate the borderline between sexual and gender motivations, as described in the OP. But the more I think about it, the blurrier that borderline becomes, to the point that the umbrella term of transgender seems most accurate, since it's an umbrella term, ie all TS are TG, but not all TG are TS.

Its if there is a subjective opinion that doing or not doing these things should be encouraged or limited by your sex.

So if a flat chested woman gets breast augmentation to look "feminine", that's succumbing to social preferences that women should have large breasts. The identical surgery in a transwoman should also be social, right? After all, there are examples of flat chested women, ie large chest size is not a sexual/biological marker for being XX.

And this begs another question - in what circumstances is suicide moral?

It's moral if the individual is competent, free from external coercion and dealing with permanent agony/suffering.

Natural, in my understanding, is normal for nature. Normal, almost identical to common, can apply to nature as well as manmade systems.

To be clear, gender is purely a social expectation that has nothing to do with natural biology. If we said, "All men should get their left toe removed," that's changing your body for gender. There is no biological innate reason a man should get their left toe removed." If a person desires to cut their breasts off to resemble the chest of a man, that's someone trying to emulate sex expectations, not gender expectations of the other sex. That's trans sexual behavior, not trans gender behavior

Well, if I say that women wear their hair long, that's a gender (social) norm. Hair is biology (like left toes), yet the choice of how to wear it is social. Same with eyelashes and fingernails and ear piercing. Folks get plastic surgery to defy age. Facial skin is biology, but the choice to eliminate wrinkles is social. Thus it's established that certain manipulations of our biological physicality falls under social (gender) events. The fact that some women's hip area is less ample than the social norm leads to cosmetic surgery to augment that area, even though their hips were perfectly biologically female to begin with. That's not sexual. So a man getting the exact same surgery is also not sexual (is social), by my reckoning.

I get what you're trying to say and I don't disagree with the central tenets. Though folks who discuss these issues use terms like "I'm a man" and "you're not a man" casually (meaning that sex based language to describe either sex or gender identity at various times). In addition, some of the subjective gender markers include changing one's look, obviously including surgery.

You mean it's "normal" meaning? wink, wink...

I agree there are situations (such as body temperature) that a range is at least as accurate (to the common meaning of "normal") as a single number. I guess my understanding of the word "normal" excludes outliers (since they're by definition, not "normal"), hence the superiority of the mode. For example, statistically the answer to the question at what age do kids normally graduate from high school, should not be lowered because a small percentage of genius 12 year olds have accomplished the feat, in my opinion.

Got it. The presence of life, necessitates the presence of death. Thus death itself is not abnormal or "evil" or "wrong". Assuming humans have agency, then causing someone's death against their will is, as you've noted, the most wrong of wrongs. As would be causing someone's death at their request if you either believed they were incompetent or under external duress or temporary internal duress in my opinion. However, assisting someone who is competent and under permanent internal duress, is an extention of the hospice process, in my opinion.

I see your point, but haven't heard a reason why a range around the mean is superior to the mode. Especially in cases of a bimodal distribution.

Sure. It’s within one standard deviation of the mean

I disagree. If the question is: having how many fingers is normal? The average or mean (less than 10) isn't "normal", neither is the median, nor your range. The correct answer is the mode, that is: 10.

Are you referring to human life or all life?

Are post traumatic stress syndrome and autism spectrum disabilities? How about learning difficulties? Being tone deaf or maybe having stage fright. Who, therefore is completely "abled"?

Define "defective".

Well that's one theory, but as you noted we don't know why the cat behaved the way it did. Another, equally possible explanation is that the cat is indeed a sadist. Similarly, you don't really know why a human sadist does what he does, maybe he's acting exactly as your explanation of the cat. Ultimately, no one knows why anyone (except perhaps themselves, though there are those who doubt that too), does what they do. However, the outcomes of those acts, both human and animal, are very clear. So you're right, humans have observed behaviors and their outcomes and have developed labels (such as good and evil) to describe them and Laws to try to manpulate them, but no one can see inside the Black Box that is decision making. Which is true of both humans and non-human animals.

We cannot say lion's are murderous or evil. We alone have transcended nature

I don't agree. If a cat "plays" with a mouse until it dies, yet doesn't eat the mouse, many would call that torture.

There is plenty of data from depressed folks who attempt suicide, regretting that choice.

Several things. First, I am happy that you found something on your own, bigger than yourself, to work towards. And in my experience, having tangible goals to work towards are the answers to such questions as "why am I here?", "what it all for?" and "why go on?"
True, goals such as accumulate wealth and seek continuous physical pleasure can and commonly do sustain folks in the short haul, they don't have a reputation for being enough in the long term.

Ultimately, everyone will spend the vast majority of eternity in a state of nonexistance, why cut short the brief flicker of time you'll actually exist?

In my experience, you're looking at the issue incorrectly. Humans are not "evil", as a label. Rather all humans will, on occasion, perform "evil" acts. Think about it statistically. If a (as it happens, nonexistent) person chose to do 0% evil acts in their lifetime, everyone would not disagree with labeling that individual "good" ie not "evil". But if the average human makes say 1% evil choices, we should call those folks "average" ie not "evil". If they make 0.01% evil choices, they're likely felt to be "good", whereas those choosing to perform 10% evil, are in fact "evil". Bottom line, no one does zero evil, thus in order to deserve the label one should consider the amount of evil, not merely the presence of evil.

If you mean there is no physical proof of a metaphysical entity, then we're in agreement.

You're, of course, correct especially among lay persons, but here we should be interested in accurate communication. The operative word being: "should"...

Part of the problem with discussions on this topic is that anatomy and genetics are objective, while cultural gender roles are subjective. Thus when someone casually asks "is this person a X?", some view the question objectively, that is that there is one, correct objective answer (and thus the question is obvious and any deviation from this interpretation is misguided). Whereas others view the question subjectively and thus objective interpretations are simplistic to the point of simplemindedness. Better definitions of terms are required for different folks to communicate effectively.

I get what the OP is saying, and the moral "dilemmas" are part of the story, especially in Season 1, but in my opinion, this sort of story (when taken as a whole) is interesting more for HOW things are addressed than WHY. That is it's more of a crime procedural (to borrow the term), than a morality play.

Exactly. Some try to exaggerate what is known. As it happens there's nothing wrong with admitting that the answer to this question is, as yet, not proven one way or the other.

Wrong hands? Ha, ha. Reminds me of a story my wife's cousin told whereby his employer was forced to downsize and thus offered early retirement (which he took), or job retraining, which, of course he didn't. But after thinking about it, he said: I should have told them I needed golf lessons to try to get on the PGA tour as "retraining".

We subjectively by all appearances exist as if we have Free Will, however there is a pathway whereby our decision making could be Determined. This pathway has not yet been proven nor disproven.